The Tabernacle

Today I got the real privilege of putting away the Communion elements from the altar at Kaw Prairie after the services were over. I have not done this much, or at all in the 5 years I've been a part of the church. A few minutes before that I had listened to Pastor Dan do a teaching based on the Shema:
⁴ Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.^{[a] 5} Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. -Deuteronomy 6.

He challenged us to think of the things in our lives that become so great a passion that they dethrone God and take the place of our affection and attention.

So you can see why after church I was in a sort of Old Testament mood. You get those too right?

As I'm cleaning up the altar, pouring out the wine and juice back in the earth, and cleaning the goblets and plates, I was taken back to another Old Testament story which has long intrigued me. The Tabernacle of worship. 

The full, and number-filled story, can be found in Exodus beginning in chapter 25, after the ten commandments and the first few days and weeks of Israel's wanderings in the desert. 

What I was remembering specifically was that the Tabernacle was a movable structure. It was designed for God's presence to dwell among the people but it was also designed to move with them through the wilderness and anywhere God lead them with the pillar of fire by night and the pillar of smoke by day. 

Simple enough right, well not if you read the description in Exodus. If you manage to get beyond the long list of measurements, weights, and descriptions of design, you'll likely end up overwhelmed with the number of furnishings and tools used in the Tabernacle, commissioned for use in the Worship of Yahweh.

This is what is crossing through my mind as I hand wash wine goblets this afternoon. Dorky perhaps.

The Exodus is believed to have started somewhere around 1313 BC. After some time Israel would settle into the promised land, establish Jerusalem, and finally in the days of King Solomon, David's son, they would build the Temple there which would render the Tabernacle obsolete. 

Some estimates date the construction of the first Temple around 832 BC. That means that the children of God were setting up and tearing down the Tabernacle with all its many parts, pieces, furnishings, tools, decorations, and other articles of worship for somethign like 500 years. Of course, I'm building an estimate from two estimates, but this is not science fiction; these are actual numbers that many scholars accept today.

Worship in the Temple would continue much as it had in the Tablernacle but at a larger scale and without the need for the structure itself being set up, torn down and moved regularly. Well that Temple was destroyed and later another would be built in its place. That Temple was destroyed in 70 AD, an event connected even to some things Jesus said during his ministry.

So that's about 1400 years of setting up and tearing down, a good chunk of those also moving from place to place; of arranging, preparing, cleaning, organizing, mobilizing, training, and worship by God's people. And as all these thoughts are crossing my mind, the suds of the sponge with which I'm washing wine goblets covering my hands, a huge sense of gratitude and humility hit me like a ton of bricks.

Next year Kaw Prairie will be 10 years old and for all its history faithful children of God have been taking time each week to put up chairs, brew coffee, set up the altar for Communion, clean up after, put stuff away, prepare the room for other ministries and for the next worship service. Some weeks I'm sure they feel very fulfilled doing it and other weeks they probably wish they hadn't signed up. But these people are walking in the footsteps of the faithful who go before them several millennia. For thousands of years hard-working faithful children of the Father have labored to prepare and steward the meeting places of God's people, some times in the forefront but more often behind the scenes.

Today I say thank you to those people. I honor them for their hard work and am privileged to join them in this amazing tradition and eternal work of the worship of the One True God Yahweh and of His son Jesus. They make a great sacrifice to do all this setting up and tearing down but because of them the House of the LORD on Prairie Star Parkway and K-7 continues each week to be a place of worship and of life-change. 

Thank you all, I'm am honored to serve with you.