|
Foundry United Rev. |
|
|
The Tent of Meeting: Working on a Building Sunday, August 13,
2006 |
|
|
Exodus 33: 7-11
|
This
brief passage – 4 verses – is a very early fragment of the Exodus story. It is
about the Tent of Meeting. The Israelites
traveled for 40 years between During
the Israelites’ 40-year journey through the wilderness between Moses’
household, like everyone else’s, would pitch their tents, carrel their
animals, set up their cooking areas, their hygienic areas, just like nomadic
Bedouins do in the Middle East still today. But
then Moses would pitch another tent outside the camp that he called “The Tent
of Meeting.” It was not a large tent originally. Even
though the Hebrew terminology is a bit unclear, I think it is best translated
to say that Moses, he, himself, pitched
the tent.[1]
In other words, it was a small and simple enough tent that Moses himself
could pitch it with his own hands. During
these times of encampment or settlement, Moses would regularly leave the camp
to enter this tent where he would meet with God. The Hebrew word which is
translated meeting here has the connotation of meeting at an appointed time.
John Durham says it should be literally translated as the Tent of Appointed Meeting[2]
or the Tent of Meeting at an Appointed Time. We do not
know if it was daily or weekly or how often, but at an appointed time Moses
would walk through the camp, outside the camp, and enter the Tent of Meeting
to meet with God, the God he called by the name YAHWEH or I AM. When
Moses left the camp to go to the tent, all the Israelites would stand outside
their tents and watch him go. When he entered the Tent of Meeting, according
to this ancient account, a cloud would descend and position itself outside the
entrance to the tent…a cloud in the shape of a pillar. In
other words, the people could discern the presence of God. They could
perceive and feel that the divine was there in the tent with Moses, and they
would kneel outside their tents until the meeting was over and the cloud
would ascend again, and Moses would come out of the tent. This is
what was at stake here: the slaves in Egypt had followed Moses through the
Red Sea with the mighty Egyptian army of chariots chasing them because Moses
told them the God I AM wanted them to
be free. Then they had followed Moses into the wilderness where there was no
food to eat or water to drink because Moses had told them that I AM was
leading them to a Promised Land. Now the
Israelites were going in circles in the Wilderness living like nomads,
dependent upon some strange food called Manna or What is it? The
Israelites didn’t know where the Promised Land was or how to get there. They
were in a strange place where they did not know how to survive. It was pretty
important to them to have a sense that Moses and I AM were still talking with
each other. So
watching Moses enter the Tent of Meeting at the appointed time and having a
sense that God was truly there meeting with Moses was an important time of
the day or week or month. Then
eventually the people, when they felt a need for a sense of the presence of
God in their lives, would go stand outside the tent of meeting…because it was
a holy place, a place where I AM had been and where I AM might be again. Over
time, this simple tent that Moses could pitch with his own hands became
larger and larger, and more and more elaborate, until it took a small army of
people to carry it, and to pitch it. Eventually it became so large and
complex it couldn’t be taken down any more. It became a permanent structure.
Eventually it became the This
simple little Tent of Meeting that Moses could pitch with his own hands is
the prototype of every house of worship in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam
that exists today. Every synagogue, mosque, church and cathedral has its
beginnings in this little Tent of Meeting. This
short early account from the Exodus story – 4 verses – is a reminder of why we
build and repair houses of worship still today. We do
it because we are still in the wilderness. We are still traveling in circles.
We still aren’t quite sure where we are going, or how to get there, or how to
live in the meantime. We are still vulnerable. For all
the medicines, safety nets, armies and weapons in the world, we are still
vulnerable. Anybody here not know that this week? 9/11
was accomplished by a group of young men with box cutters. Here’s a quote from an
expert quoted in an AP story that ran this week this week: “The raw materials
to make [the liquid explosives seized by British authorities this week] are
available anywhere, in hardware stores, agricultural stores, pharmacies,
supermarkets. And they're really cheap. I have calculated that to bring down
an airplane it will cost you, at retail prices, $35.”[3] We are a congregation
of people who fly all the time. Who of us isn’t feeling vulnerable this week?
But it is more than our
vulnerability. It is I still go regularly to
the CNN website (http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2003/iraq/forces/casualties/2006.08.html)
that posts the names and photos of I am not saying
anything partisan here. I really haven’t seen one political party being
smarter about this than the other, but what are we doing here…sending one
22-year-old smiling Brian after another to accomplish who knows what anymore.
I still go to the
website site IraqBodyCount.net that tallies Iraqi deaths reported by
reputable news sources. (http://www.iraqbodycount.net/database/bodycount.php?ts=1155414195)
It is up to 82 pages now with 50 causalities at least a page. I have no answers. I don’t
know what to do, that’s for sure, but I feel incompetent for We are in a wilderness. There are two reasons
we need the Tent of Meeting in the wilderness. First, in the
wilderness, a sense of the divine is essential. In the wilderness a sense of
the transcendent, a sense of the numinous, of the holy, of the telic is essential
for survival. We can face our vulnerability and need and start again only if
we know that we are not alone, not merely on our own. When Jane and I were in
We sat so long that at
least 7 or 8 others groups of people sat next to me on the bench as space
opened up. With half an ear, I could hear people speaking all sorts of
different languages as they sat next to me. Then two middle-aged
American men sat down next to me. As they sat there waiting for their wives,
with Michelangelo’s great scenes of the biblical stories above us and his
portrayal of the final resurrection a few yards to our left, one of the
American men began describing for the other his most recent visit to his
urologist. At first I was surprised.
Then I was amused. Then it occurred to me that it is perhaps when we are
sitting in the presence of such powerful signs of eternity that we can most
face our humanity and vulnerability. Because we are not
doing so well on our own, these are important days to pitch a tent outside
the camp. These are important days to discern the presence of the I AM in our
world. The Tent of Meeting
allows us to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we are lost and confused
and not very competent at finding our own way without becoming hopeless. The second reason we
need the Tent of Meeting is this: In the Wilderness, someone got to be
meeting with I AM. Somebody’s got to be listening to a transcendent voice. It is no secret that we
live in a time when religion is being abused. There are churches, synagogues,
and mosques that teach hate, that teach exclusion, that teach repression. No
meeting happens there. If you have been to a
church, synagogue or mosque and you come out hating, you have not been to a
meeting with I AM. You have not met the God of Moses, Jesus, and
Mohammed. No one ever leaves a
real meeting totally unchanged. We can’t come to this building as people who already
have the answers hoping to get our answers reinforced. We come here as people
who are lost in the wilderness and who need a meeting. The tent is just a tent,
but the meeting is everything. And because this tent is where someone once
met the divine, and because it is where we might meet the divine again or
someone near us might meet the divine – that would be enough – this tent is
our hope in the midst of our wilderness. www.foundryumc.org |
|
|
|
|
|
|
