Growing Into a Dwelling Place for God

These people were staying in tents after their homes were destroyed in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. As a young woman living in Oakland, California and part of the First Swedish Baptist Church, she helped care for similarly displaced people in that congregation's facilities. The picture below was taken the same year. It is the string band who accompanied that congregation's worship. My grandmother is in the back row, next to the man playing the mandolin.

As frequently seems to happen, the richest insights come later in the week after I have been encountered by how the passages first present themselves. So here I am on Friday rather enthralled by a connection I first noticed yesterday in 2 Samuel 7:1-14a and Ephesians 2:11-22. When David was securely established as King of all Israel, he wanted to build a house, a temple, for God, which is rejected by God’s word to Nathan the Prophet. This section of Ephesians concludes with affirming that in Christ, we are becoming the household of God, growing into a holy temple, being built into a dwelling place for God.

I am not among those who view biblical prophecy or the Hebrew Scriptures as some sort of code by which we can predict history, if only we could decipher the cryptic message as though the Bible was God’s Ouija Board.  But I do believe profound patterns weave their way in and out of human spiritual consciousness and the shared experiences and insights of the community of faith generation after generation. The expansive interaction of the language in these two passages, separated by perhaps a millennium, illuminates the current path of my journey.

Early in my career, I adopted the metaphor of living in tents from Hebrews 11:9-10 as defining guidance for my path. I started out in Christian education research and curriculum development, went on to congregational education ministry, and concluded as a pastor. My wife of nearly 50 years has been a faithful and patient companion on this journey that took us from Minnesota, to Illinois, to New Jersey, to Ontario, to Wisconsin, to Texas, to Oklahoma, and now back to Wisconsin. When people ask where we are from, I typically answer with some variant on “Yes.” … Then I add, “I grew up in California and my wife in Minnesota, and we have pitched our tent in a half-dozen places.”  Now in our 70s, we anticipate that we will be tenting in Milwaukee, sharing a duplex with our son and his family, for the rest of our days. We have gone from caring for the souls of congregations of God’s people to journeying together with my wife’s Alzheimer’s. We do this with profound gratitude for and dependence on our family’s support, even as we endeavor to support her 91 year old father who continues to live in his own home in Minneapolis as his strength declines. I do not view this as some unjust burden but as a joyful and suitable conclusion of our journey.

So when King David wanted to build a suitable house for God, he was expressing the desire for a tangible expression of God’s power in his own journey. Ah yes, a building people could see and touch and marvel at to focus their attention on the majesty of God. Aware that God had been with David all along, the Prophet Nathan gave the preliminary go-ahead. God did not reprimand either Nathan or David for this, but directed their attention to dig deeper. God didn’t need human trappings to be recognized as glorious. A tent would do. Sure it had been a beautiful artistic expression of worship in its time. Who knows what remained of the Tabernacle from the Wilderness days by David’s time? But human artistry paled by comparison to the God it honored. I won’t spell out the details, but I am not leaving a legacy of institutional success. Two of the congregations and one of the organizations with whom I served no longer exist. Others are much diminished from their peaks.

The image of the tent in Nathan’s word from God for David suggests God is portable, on a journey, not interested in being confined to a single location or moment. So while David would not build a physical house for God, God promised to build a house from David. The sense of the word switched to mean a legacy in descendants, people. This goes beyond the Davidic royal line in ancient Judah and takes on what have come to be identified as messianic overtones, but mingled with the seemingly contradictory promise of building a physical Temple, which happened through David’s son Solomon. Held up against this elevated language, Solomon was surely a disappointment. Yet, the promise of a community of people to come after David points to something far greater than a building or a regal dynasty.

So while not a wooden, literalistic prophetic fulfillment, the imagery of Ephesians expands of the household motif. Gentiles who had no connection with David, inherit a place in the household of God. The scope of David’s legacy is so expansive that all humanity is included. It is about people, not physical buildings or human institutions or structures. On my journey I have been a participant in this community of love. At every one of the campsites on our journey we have added to our rich treasury of relationships. Though measuring my contribution to the lives of these folk is impossible and probably counter-productive, we thrill to continue to be included in the now widespread journeys of many whose paths crossed ours decades ago. I am learning to appreciate that this legacy in people is far more significant and satisfying than career monuments. Indeed, we are the ones who have been enriched. We are the rich legacy of many hundreds of others, some we knew but most we didn’t.

The whole Temple motif, built and joined as a structure with foundations and cornerstone, is given a distinctly organic significance in Ephesians. This household of God grows into a dwelling place for God. I grew up hearing 1 Corinthians 6:19, “Your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you,” as a stern caution about tobacco, alcohol, drugs, and sex. As I probed scripture and faith with emerging adult maturity, I began to quiver at the wonder of the Spirit of God dwelling in me. As my meditations progressed this week, I have pondered that the temple God inhabits is in the spaces between the people in my treasury of relationships, and far beyond that to the entire realm of human love.