We Are Made By What We Make

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, the Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregation of the British Commonwealth, used to have regular bible study with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair.  Blair said to Sacks one day that he was reading in Exodus and had "just come to the boring bit."

Of course Rabbi Sacks had to ask him, "Which boring bit?"

"You know," he said, "the passage about the Tabernacle at the end of Exodus.  It does go on, doesn't it?"

Exodus Chapters 25-31 and 35-40 deal directly with provisions for construction of and worship elements in the Tabernacle.  The Tabernacle pre-dated the Temple in Jerusalem.  After the Hebrews left Egypt, they wandered in desert forty years, finally settling Israel.  They were, essentially, a nomadic people, and so the Tabernacle, for them, became a sort of Temple which could be moved and set up like any other tent.

Except it wasn't like any other tent.  It covered 11,250 square feet, had a courtyard, a separate tent within it which contained the Ark of the Covenant.  There were multiple altars, multiple rooms, and everything was made out of gold and bronze and acacia wood.

Rabbi Sacks pointed out to Tony Blair that the description of the building of this Tabernacle in Exodus takes up about 500 verses, whereas the creation story in Genesis only takes up 34 verses.  His point was that "it is not difficult for an omniscient, omnipotent God to create a home for humankind.  What is difficult is for finite, fallible human beings to create a home for God.  This tells us that the Bible is not man's book of God, but God's book of humanity."

In the Bible, we see God fashioning for himself a community of people who create community.

But first, he takes a group of people who were victimized and enslaved and who lament their fate that God has abandoned them.  God sets them free and leads them out of Egypt, but the people complain and grumble against God, saying that it would have been better in slavery to the Egyptians.  There's no food, they say. There's no water, they say.

So God provides for them.  Manna from heaven, water from a rock.  Meat.  Freedom.

When Moses leaves them to go up Mt. Sinai to commune directly with God, the people complain and grumble, and decide that they don't like Moses' God anymore, and they don't know what's become of him anyway, so they make a new god for themselves.  An idol, a Golden Calf.

These are a people to whom God has given and given and given.  These are a people who are too immature to come together as a unified nation.  They're only worried about themselves, their own wants and needs, and what they can get, rather than what they can give.  And so they remain a nation of slaves.  They are enslaved by their worship of the god "Me."

It's not until God gives them the instructions for building the Tabernacle, with all its complexity of design and function that a fantastic change begins to come over the people.

Rabbi Sacks says, "It is as if God had said to Moses: if you want to create a group with a sense of collective identity, get them to build something together.  It is not what happens to us, but what we do, that gives us identity and responsibility."

Through this experience, the Hebrew people truly begin to grow into the nation that is Israel.  Why?  Because they worked together.  And during that entire time while constructing the Tabernacle, there is no mention of grumbling or complaining.  When Moses asked the people to contribute to the construction, either through material gifts or by donating their skills, he actually had to restrain them from giving!!

In our reading of Holy Scripture, in our service to our churches, to the community, to our families, I think we often miss this, or at least we forget it: "The most effective way of transforming individuals into a group is by setting before them a task they can only achieve as a group."

Why are churches and volunteer fire departments and social organizations that promote volunteerism dying out in our society?  I believe it is because the concept of the group is being replaced with the idol of self.

At the moment, while I write this, a song came on the radio.  A man is singing about how we look around at the state of affairs in the world and say to God, "Why don't you do something?"  God, then, replies, "I did.  I created you."  The artist then issues us a challenge, "it's time for us to do something.  If not us, then who?"

God has given and given and given to us.  Now it is time for us to give back.

I do believe very strongly that there are some people who try to do too much in their group, and by doing so, they actually end up having very little effectiveness over all.  That is a problem in and of itself.  But there are many more who are completely content contributing so little that they end up taking more than they give to the group.

God has called us out of slavery to be a community of givers and doers and builders, not takers, and so to lead others to do the same.

"When leaders become builders, they create peace; otherwise they merely create dissent."

What are you building?

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Unless otherwise indicated, all quotations are from Sacks, Jonathan. "Nation-building: Ancient Answer, Contemporary Problem," in Covenant and Conversation Exodus: the Book of Redemption. Pp. 289-295 (Maggid Books, 2010).

How can a church be the Church?

Last Sunday, in a sermon that I preached, I talked a little bit about how we grow as people and as a church.  One of the things I said was this:

"Relationships involve a growing trust which leads us to be more and more personal and vulnerable with Christ, allowing Him to gently confront us with ever deeper truths about ourselves, without judgment, from which we can grow and find new strengths.  Let us help one another to build relationships like that with Jesus Christ, and with one another, because that is the only way the Church will grow."

Today I read, from William Barclay's commentary on Galatians:

"A Christian Church cannot continue to be a Christian Church if in it there are any kind of class distinctions. The labels which men wear amongst men are irrelevant in the presence of God. In the presence of God a man is neither Jew nor Gentile, noble or base, rich or poor; he is a sinner for whom Christ died. if men shared in a common sonship they must be brothers; they have a new kinship which cuts across all earthly barriers because they are now sons of the one Father, even God."

I believe that one of the biggest problems that the Church faces today, in terms of its decline, is that the church is no longer the Church. If the Church (note the capital 'C') is to be the Body of Christ, as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 12, then it seems to me that we are missing some very important and necessary first steps toward achieving that goal. We are not a church, we are a Church, and we must be the Church by actively pursuing growth individually and by supporting and encouraging others to grow as well. We must learn to let go of our preconceived judgments about people whose differences from us make us uncomfortable, and we must learn to open our minds to new ideas and perspectives.

The church (note the lowercase 'c') has become a social club; it seems to exist today mostly to serve a consumer-driven society that is largely interested in what it can get, not what it can give.

As a newlywed, I've been learning a lot about the differences between married life and single life. As a single person for 36 years, I only really needed to be concerned about myself and my own well-being and growth. Now, as a married person, I must also consider the well-being and growth of my family. Of course, I cannot do that unless I am health first, but the interconnectedness of family dynamics means that a part of making me healthier is to contribute to their health.

Our relationships with Christ is a lot like a marriage. Christ serves us in much the same way that we serve our spouse. And we can and must serve Christ, not because he needs us to, but because we need to. By serving Him we serve ourselves.

Expanding this idea into the family dynamics of a church, we find much the same thing. We grow by helping others to grow. This is how the church becomes the Church; this is how churches grow.

Just a thought.