A Ragamuffin Kind Of Love

    In the Old Testament scriptures, God visited the unlikely ragamuffin and refugee, Abraham, in his tent. He established a covenant with him in a common ceremony in that part of the ancient world. The parties would cut a sacrificial animal in half and walk between the two halves to make their agreement concrete. Abraham cut the sacrificial animals in half.  As the sun set, God passed between the halves as a "burning fire pot," which was just a way to visualize God. This all sounds like a gruesome practice.  But in the ancient world, there were no police or lawyers to come after you if you did not keep your word.  To make an agreement was a serious affair, because your word was the currency you exchanged.  Halved sacrifice and all.  God put his word and reputation on the line with Abraham making a covenant by telling him he would be the father of a great nation and that He would be with them always - and they would have a home.  God passed through the sacrificial halves himself. 

    In a successive generation God appeared to another unlikely ragamuffin, Moses, in the form of a "burning" bush in the wilderness. Moses had escaped to the wilderness after killing a slave-driving Egyptian during the Jewish captivity in Egypt.  After his encounter with God in the wilderness, Moses came back to lead the nomadic Jewish people out of their slavery in Egypt in a very long journey though the desert into a land of milk and honey. It was the homeland given to them in the covenant with Abraham. During their journey through the wilderness, the Jewish people set up a tent where God dwelt with them.  That's what they needed - a physical representation of God's presence.  And God obliged.  But I think in this desire was the 3000 year-old seeds of a modern problem.  It is a problem that turns up over and over in the long history of the Abrahamic religions.  Mine - Christianity, as well as its brother tradition Judaism, and Islam too. But I don't think it is unique to these three.  I think it is a tendency in the human spirit that has a long history the world over. It is a problem Jesus wanted to put to rest. 

     You see, over the next 1000 years or more the tent became a temple. This became The Temple with the Holy of Holies in an inner room.  This temple was quite a structure.  It was the buildings of Temple precinct, located on the extended Temple Mount platform, then the outer Court of the Gentiles, then the Court of Women or Ezrat HaNashim, then the Court of the Israelites, reserved for ritually pure Jewish men, then the Court of the Priests, then the Temple Court or Azarah (with the Brazen Laver (kiyor), the Altar of Burnt Offerings (mizbe'ah), the Place of Slaughtering), then the Temple vestibule or porch, then Temple sanctuary (hekhal or heikal), and finally, in an inner room: the Holy of Holies. The Holy of Holies is were God dwelt. All these courts were separated from each other by exclusionary walls, with the Holy of Holies separated by a curtain.  

    Then Jesus showed up.  He said he would tear down the temple and in 3 days he would build it up again.  But the temple he would build was his body. And he was in us: Jesus's body is said to be the church.  It is us, however little we realize it. And "the church," I think, is a much wider net than any of us give it credit for. Jesus came to show us that God was with us all along.  He was in our hearts, not in some building. In the Gospel of John it says:

    "In the temple courts [Jesus] found people selling cattle, sheep and doves, and others sitting at tables exchanging money. So he made a whip out of cords, and drove all from the temple courts, both sheep and cattle; he scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. To those who sold doves he said, 'Get these out of here! Stop turning my Father’s house into a market!' His disciples remembered that it is written: 'Zeal for your house will consume me.' The Jews then responded to him, 'What sign can you show us to prove your authority to do all this?'

    Jesus answered them, 'Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.' They replied, 'It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and you are going to raise it in three days?' But the temple he had spoken of was his body."  (John 2:13-20) 
     When Jesus died on the cross, the Gospel writers said the curtain tore in the temple.  And Grace set in.  I firmly believe it doesn't matter if you believe Jesus was divine or not.

    And Jesus was pretty fond of expanding the grace of God to just about every Tom, Dick, and Harry he came across.  Women (which was unheard of then), tax collectors, Lepers, Prostitutes, the mentally "ill" demoniacs like me, the hated Samaritans, even those whom others believed were dead.  Jesus said to all these people, God doesn't tally up your sins, He just wants to hang out with you because you are awesome. He told me so. (paraphrased). Jesus was always saying crazy stuff like that. He said this to people who had been told God was angry and vengeful, and had been told they were crap so they had to sacrifice to him because they were all hopeless sinners. Jesus said yes, we are all sinners, but God loves us so it doesn't matter. We can come to Him. Thank God.  (For those that bristled at the "we" in that sentence, I happen to believe Jesus was a sinner too, like the rest of humanity. Otherwise he had no foot to stand on. "Fully God and fully human" is how the Christians say it).

    Back to the problem I mentioned: there is this tendency in man, when he has found God, to say "God is with me."  This becomes "God is with my group."  Then "God is in my building."  Or "God is in my religion."  And not yours.  This is so common in religion. Jews and Gentiles, Christians and Muslims, and in all the blood that has ever been shed in God's name in religions the world over. Over the next 2000 years after Jesus, my group, the Christians, succumbed many times to this same belief: God is with us, and not with you. Think The Crusades. But weren't we forgetting what Jesus said? The Kingdom of God is in our midst.  It's not here or there.  Jesus responds to the Pharisees question of when the Kingdom of God was coming.  Jesus says,  “The kingdom of God is not coming in ways that can be observed, nor will they say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or ‘There!’ for behold, the kingdom of God is in the midst of you.” (Luke 17). I think Paul said something really poignant later, "Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God?" (1 Corinthians 6:19)  He was urging the Corinthians to abandon sexual immorality because their bodies were holy.  Holy temples. (No, this has got nothing to do with what gender you identify with or what gender you are attracted to. It's about the sanctity of the marriage covenant.  It's about keeping our word.  These guys were pretty big on covenant. Remember all of society breaks down if they (and we) don't keep our word.)  God keeps his word. I think Jesus, and later Paul, were saying all along, quit looking for God in any one place, he is in you. And, just as importantly, he is in others. All others. Aren't we all sons of Abraham now, since Jesus?  Didn't God keep his word to us? The Gospel writers said Jesus was God, and Jesus died and came again to take up residence in our hearts.  Ergo, in my thinking, God is in our hearts. All of our hearts.

    How does Jesus take up residence in our hearts? I don't think there is anything magical or divine going on here.  When I study the words of Jesus, when I am surrounded by people that do the same and love on me, Jesus takes up residence in my heart. Dead or alive, he is alive in my heart. And where Jesus is, God is. God is in us. All of us. Some may not follow me there. That's ok. I think the Christian Mystics wouldn't bat an eye.  And so too, more Christians than you can shake a stick at. I love the bible. It speaks to me because God inspired it.  There are larger themes overarching the small stories, and deep meaning in every word.  To me the belief that God is in all of humanity's hearts is not a stretch by any means.  He is lying there just waiting to be found in every human being. God lives in his kingdom.  His kingdom is in our midst.  Jesus was dying to get his message into our hearts. The Holy Spirit (one aspect of God) has taken up residence in us.  I would be banging my head against the wall trying to talk to God if I could not hear his voice within me.  It is the still small whisper in the quiet of my soul.  It is the voice that came to Elijah outside the cave, in the wilderness, where there are no walls. "What are you doing here, Elijah?” it said to him. In Christian thinking, God is in relationship.  He is in the relationship with the three aspects of himself: Father, Spirit, and Son.  And he is in the relationship we have with him.  And he is in our relationships, the relationship we have with others and the relationship we have with ourselves - the relationship inside of us.  God is right there in that muck. 

    God-relationship is truly the great equalizer. Where ever I go and really sit down and listen there are all these people on the other end of that relationship in unexpected places, in Ghana, in Guatemala, in the gas station parking lot, on the street corners and in the church. So we have something in common even if we don’t speak the same language or have similar upbringings or worship in the same kind of buildings.  I think THAT’s why God doesn’t reside in the Temple any more.  God doesn't want any walls. He’s in our hearts regardless of how he we identify ourselves, Christian, Jew, Muslim, Mormon, Hindu, Spiritualist, Agnostic, Atheist: all one hundred percent of Adam and Eve's offspring.  We are all made in God's image: we have a heart. He is even in the hearts of those who deny he exists. (The perfect parent is not phased by us denying He exists.)  He/She is in the relationships in nature. He is in all of our relationships. Our relationships are the holy dwelling place of God.  Because God is in us, outside of us, and most importantly, between us.  We are all the sons and daughters of God, and anywhere we go, we can find God in our brothers and sisters: whether we believe Jesus was divine or not. If we are really looking for God, sooner or later we are going to find him. I think that is a law built into the universe. I guarantee if you spend enough time to really look at someone else, you will be able to dig down deep and find God staring back at you. There You are. In this person I can't stand. What are you trying to teach me? God's kingdom is not here or there, it is among us. We can choose to live in it or not. Isn't that the point of human life: to learn to recognize love and then learn to love?  Do as I do, says Jesus.

    When I was growing up I didn't realize the importance of relationship.  It holds everything together.  Without it, humankind would cease to be.  And I think God would be horribly lonely. Christian tradition says God is a relational being. I feel I can attest to that: I believe I have a relationship with him. And like God, we too are lonely if we build walls, cutting off brothers and sisters - the sons and daughters of God, the offspring of our spiritual parents Adam and Eve.  The Adam and Eve allegory said that the two original humans walked and talked with God in the wild and beautiful garden of Creation. There aren't any walls in the garden like there were in the Temple. We are all Adam and Eve's offspring in the garden. What did Jesus die for?  To teach us how to love again after Adam and Eve forgot how.  He showed us how love our neighbors and ourselves, as well as God.  Because God bends down on one knee, puts his hand on our little shoulders, looks us square in the eye, and says “you haven’t done anything wrong.” "Now do what I do." It is a life-long learning process.  I still have a long way to go.  I am really pretty shitty at relationships.  Ask my wife.  But St. Jude loves the lost cause. 
     Love is so big, only God can do it fully.  But perhaps if we all can have eyes to literally see God in others, all others, however different they are from us, whatever religion or un-religion they identify with, the Kingdom of God will be that much closer: the Kingdom Without Walls.  Because God will be that much more concrete in us.  We will be living in the kingdom of God. In response, maybe he will be more concrete in the people with whom we interact. And they will realize they are in living in the Kingdom too. The blind will see. And on it spreads. Not too put too fine a point on it, this is how the kingdom comes: one person at a time. That, my fellow human being, is the Gospel message.