As you all know I flew to Minneapolis between Christmas and New Year's. And since the terror alert is at orange, inspections are more thorough and lines are longer. Also both the Minneapolis and Philadelphia airports have X-ray machines for the checked baggage. Fortunately the standards aren't so stringent for that category, though, so I wound up at the other end still owning a nail file.
But the inspectors are a lot more thorough than they used to be. There are layers and layers of security before you can get where you're going. Driving to the airport isn't bad, we drove straight up, but getting picked up - by the children's godfather at the Minneapolis end and the Oehlers at the Philadelphia end - wasn't that easy. They couldn't wait at the curb for me to come out; they had to circle and wait. And once I got into the airport security was pretty tight. I had to take both my coat and shoes off. I also had to remove my Christmas present from the god-children, it's a silver Jerusalem cross made in Russian Orthodox style and it's quite heavy. But I love wearing it, so I was willing to take it off and put it in one of my shoes for the trip through the scanner. And I found out after I got back that my checked bag had also been picked for a manual search (they leave a card in your suitcase in case you notice that things aren't in quite the order you packed them in). Fortunately, the baggage checkers are a lot more efficient than they used to be, so it went quite quickly, and everyone was very patient and polite.
Well, we know what it's all about, don't we. It's about safety, and fear, and danger. It's about learning from experience that there are people out there who are hostile, who hate us and want to hurt us.
Security is always about a desire to be safe in the face of fear, and hostility, and danger.
And once upon a time it was just as difficult to come into the presence of God as it is to get onto a airplane. First of all, you had to buy your ticket... that is, you had to bring a sacrifice. And there were pretty specific rules about what you had to bring depending on whether it was a sin offering or a thank offering or one of the other categories. And then of course it had to be inspected for blemishes, and accepted by the presiding priest. And of course your own identity was up for scrutiny, too - only Jews could come beyond the court of the Gentiles. That's where the money changers that Jesus drove out were located. Think of it as where Thomas Cook and American Express had their booths... The next layer of
protection was the women's court, where Jewish women in a state of ritual purity were allowed to worship. There were donation boxes there, but no vendors. Remember the widow's mite? That's probably where she made the offering Jesus commended. Jewish men could go through the Nicanor gate into the next room, the Court of Israel, to gather for daily prayers; it was also where the lambs and doves and other sacrificial animals were slaughtered. Beyond that was the priests' court, where they washed their hands and feet before approaching the sanctuary. Think of it as having a large "Employees only" sign on the door. The next level, the sanctuary itself, was approached by 12 steps and divided into two parts. The vestibule held the lampstand with its seven lamps - the origin of the
Menorah used in today's Hanukkah celebration - a table for the bread of the Presence, and the altar on which incense was offered each morning and evening. And at the center of everything was the Holy of Holies. I suppose you could think of it as the cabin of the airliner, meaning no disrespect, but the curtains separating the vestibule from the Holy of Holies were the last layer of security. Once you made it past those, you were home free.
NOT.
You see, the security surrounding Israel's worship wasn't about protecting God from ill-doers, it was about protecting people from God's power. Most of the people didn't want to get too close. They were scared, and with good reason. Because if you got past all the safeguards and barriers and actually violated the sacred space, you were doomed. The high priest, who only entered once a year, on the Day of Atonement, wore bells around his robe and a rope around his ankle so that if God struck him down he could be dragged out without anyone else risking their lives. The Israelites had vivid reminders in their own history of what
happened when people trespassed beyond the boundaries God had laid out for them. During the wandering in the wilderness, a Levite named Korah got into a snit because only the descendants of Moses's brother Aaron were actually allowed to present sacrifices to God. He and his followers challenged Moses' right to prevent them from serving, and Moses said, basically, "OK, Korah. Tomorrow morning you your followers show up with your censers, and Aaron with his censer, and we'll see who God chooses." And so the next morning, that's what they did, and then "the ground under them was split apart. The earth opened its mouth and swallowed them up, along with their households-- everyone who belonged to Korah and all their goods. So they with all that belonged to them went down alive into Sheol; the earth closed over them, and they perished from the midst of the assembly." [Num 16:31-33] And then later when David brought the Ark of the Covenant back to Jerusalem, Uzzah, one of the drivers of the cart, reached out his hand to steady the Ark against the jolting of the oxen, and he was killed. He might as well have touched a live power line. And it spooked David enough that he put off bringing the ark into Jerusalem for another three months.
It wasn't that God was their enemy. It wasn't even that they were his enemies, although they rebelled against him often enough. It was that God was - and is - dangerous. And even if they tried to be good, they could never be sure how God would receive them. Because all too often their idea of what constituted "good" had nothing at all to do with what was actually acceptable to God. I mean, if even the high priest was at risk, how could the ordinary Joe or Jill actually have a relationship with God? No, better to stay at a safe distance. Pay your respects and go home and live your life. Maybe even better to have a nice commercial relationship with a lesser deity, where you paid your dues and knew where you stood.
Of course a few gifted souls did have a clue what God was all about. Abraham, Moses, and David all figured out that what God was interested was faith, and trust, and love... obedience was good, too, but faith and trust and love all came first. Even David, when he wasn't winning battles or stealing other men's wives, spent his life pouring out love songs to his God. That - and his willingness to repent when confronted - was what made David a man after God's own heart. But even those great men of God never had the temerity to call him Father. God was great, and good, and merciful, and long-suffering, but he was out there, somewhere else, thinking great and awesome thoughts. As Isaiah puts it, "My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways," says the LORD.
"For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts." [Is 55:8-9] They understood that in some indefinable way God was like a father, but to actually claim kinship? It would be safer to pull King Herod's beard!
It was the coming of Jesus that changed all that.
It was the example of Jesus that showed us once and for all the lengths to which God would go to get us back into a right relationship with him. The disciples and all the others that flocked around Jesus as he taught and healed couldn't get close enough to him. When they touched him, they didn't burn up, they were healed - as Helen pointed out so eloquently last week. When people were near Jesus, they felt safe, they knew everything would be okay, they knew that he would take care of them.
But it was the death and resurrection of Jesus that made it possible for us to approach the Father with the same confidence. The curtain in the temple, the curtain keeping everyone but the high priest out of God's immediate vicinity, was torn in two when Jesus died, and that signaled the end of the old security system and the beginning of a whole new way to relate to God.
And for two thousand years Christians around the world have called God "Father." For two thousand years we have known that God is love. For two thousand years we have expected our Father to give us good gifts, even as human fathers "who are evil, know how to give good gifts to [their] children" [Mt 7:11] And over those two thousand years we have also forgotten that although God in Christ is here, with us, even as he promised, God is also out there. God's ways are still higher than our ways, and his thoughts are still not our thoughts. "God's foolishness is wiser than human wisdom." [1 Cor 1:25]
Just because something seems good to us, does not mean it looks the same to God. "All one's ways may be pure in one's own eyes, but the LORD weighs the spirit. [Pr 16:2] The good news is that the same Holy Spirit that "bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God" [Rom 8:16] also reveals to us the very thoughts of God. Jesus told his followers that the Spirit of Truth would guide them into the truth, and the Apostle Paul confirmed that "we have received ... the Spirit that is from God, so that we may understand the gifts bestowed on us by God."
[1 Cor 2:12]
Our security in the face of an awesomely holy God is no longer in elaborate rituals and barriers, guards and checkpoints. Our security is in Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit, who alone make it safe to come into the presence of God. God is with us, yes, but God is also out there. God is still dangerous.
God is different from us. When we pray "Our Father" we must not forget that he's not watching TV in the den. Although this Father is with us through the Spirit, He is still Out There, somewhere, in a realm that we can only see dimly, as the Holy Spirit gives us light. "Trust in the LORD with all your heart," said the writer of Proverbs, "and do not rely on your own insight. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths." [Pr 3:5-6] Let us take care to remember that hallowed means holy, and holy means set apart, different, not to be treated casually or taken for granted.
