Idolizing God's Presence

There’s a bit on Saturday Night Live, called Really!?! with Seth and Amy, where the two “newscasters” lampoon the blatant hypocrisy of some public figure. I think of it now that I’m reluctant to consider the implications of New Testament passages that claim that the veil between God and worshiper has been removed. It belies my oft stated claim to desire to be in God’s presence.

I want to be in God’s presence? Really? Doesn’t the Bible say that I can but enter God’s presence? Why then act like I long to be there? Really!

On God’s end, it seems clear that he wants to be present with us. From the moment that Scripture mentions the existence of human beings, it also records God’s driving desire to be with them. But time and again they rejected him.

At the beginning, Adam and Eve had immediate access to God’s presence but insisted on their own way, even for the price of slavery and fear. The best gift God could give them under the circumstances was death, because without destruction of their unholiness, they would be left eternally cursed like Satan and other rebellious immortals. But God already had an inkling by which, through death, their descendents could be restored…

Such was the efficacy of God’s Inkling that he could call a pagan “righteous” when Abraham believed, left his world behind, and wandered off after an inheritance of faith.

Hundreds of years later, God turned whole nations upside down in order to bring Abraham’s promised descendents into his presence. For the sign of Exodus is not the liberation of slaves; it is his presence: “And this will be the sign to you that it is I who have sent you: When you have brought the people out of Egypt, you (all) will worship (serve) God on this mountain.[1]” The liberation was but a necessary prerequisite to the real purpose of God’s work.

Sure enough, the people did arrive at the very mountain, but then there was a problem: they refused to stay in God’s presence and ran away[2]. So God allowed one man, Moses, to approach in their stead to hear all the rest of his words directly[3].

So , they refused to stay in God’s presence because they were frightened of God’s holiness or power? Really? Despite being brought there through many solicitous and mighty miracles? Huh!

Because they certainly weren’t too afraid, in plain sight of that thundering cloud that had so “terrorized” them, to melt down their loot to construct a replacement for Moses, one that conveniently couldn’t walk off into the cloud for divine instruction nor oppose their subsequent licentious behavior—all clear violations of the few words that they did hear directly. Were they afraid Moses had died, or did they hope he was? Really!

For God has this really inconvenient peculiarity of really being God, and hence is the only thing out there that can challenge our presumption to serve only ourselves (however piously we pretend to worship anything else).

Thus rebuffed, God ended up biding a couple centuries in his tabernacle cum temple, memento of the mountain, with the terrible veil of smoke replaced by an ornate curtain. He demanded two things that could penetrate the heavy fabric of that curtain—the incense representing prayer and the fragrant oil his spirit—because even after all of this he still desired even an intangible representation of intimacy. For he expected to restore his presence through the actual event that makes any person’s faith good; namely, Christ’s death in penalty for human corruption and his resurrection at the forefront of those that believe and are restored…

When that time came, and Christ died, it is written that the curtain of the temple was torn in two. This was in full accordance with Jesus’ main message, “the kingdom of God is imminent.” With the death penalty of imperfection more than met by the sacrifice of the Perfect Immortal, God’s presence could now range freely in the world without endangering those who trusted in that sacrifice. So God busted out. He broke out of the temple, the vestibule in which he had been waiting since the time of Moses to reenter our world, a prison not so much his as ours, both by cause and effect. Now the Mountain has come to people, and this time, Egyptians and all other nations are invited to be liberated along with their former slaves, the Hebrews.

The apostles affirmed this new state of affairs with awe. In Hebrews it is written, “This time, you have not come to a mountain cloaked in smoke and thunder. You’re inside, baby, with all the angels and saints and God himself on the throne.”[4] Paul puts it this way, “Do you not know your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you…”[5], a verse that crops up (sans Spirit) everywhere nowadays to proclaim the spiritual ascendency of the material. Contrary to the commercial appropriation of the message, Paul is not telling us to care for our physical bodies by not smoking, drinking a particular brand of bottled water, or engaging only in safe sex. “Body” here is plural, the constantly re-coalescing community of believers that has replaced God’s former, geophysical dwelling. Again, Peter writes, “you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house.”[6] By “house,” I believe Peter was thinking of the Tabernacle, the mishkan, the “dwelling” God had formerly inhabited. All this goes back to Jesus’ hint at Sychar, “You will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem... God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and truth.”[7]

So, it seems free access to God’s presence has been restored, the self-placed curses of Adam and Horeb having been broken by Christ’s holy act. Every worshiper now has the same access Moses’ did to the Father (if not better). And as a consequence, God’s current dwelling, the Church, is smoking with his glory and thundering with his word.

Really?

I can only confess my own state. The sad fact is that, if I am in God’s presence when I gather with the other saints, I usually don’t behave like it! I remind me of the comedy routines where someone is clowning around, unaware that they are in the presence of someone who is likely to be offended by their antics. All the while sighing about how I long to be in God’s presence.

Jesus tells this funny story where a king is slighted by all the friends he invited into his presence at a wedding feast (they, at least, were honest enough not to claim to be too frightened!). He then realizes that his friends are precisely those who come to his feast when invited and, not wanting to miss a single potential friend, invites everybody. Some poor slob thinks this means that he can show up in shorts and a dirty t-shirt. “Hey, dude, this is still a royal wedding,” remonstrates the king, and removes the man promptly.[8]

In the Bible, clothes are a symbol of one’s behavior, and I like to point out here that the custom is to change into ceremonial clothes before the event being celebrated. So the point is that, if I can simply walk into God’s presence at any moment, then I need to behave righteously at all moments. Unless, like Ananias and Saphira[9], I think entering God’s presence is just some symbolic ritual to impress others. But God remains real and holy, so such unbelief in his very presence gives God the dilemma, “Do I kill them now or just withdraw my presence?” I have to admit I ought to be a corpse many times over if God hasn’t mercifully chosen the latter time after time for me.

The truth is that I am not in God’s presence for the same reason the Israelites refused to be in his presence. I have things to attend to, pleasures to fulfill. I don’t need some God to dress up for. Rather, I piously construct a theology that puts a great distance between the kingdom and me, build an idol in God’s image, spend my hard-earned cash to make it look impressive, show up punctually on Sundays to reverence it, and imagine in its shadow about how much I’d like to be in God’s presence. “Someday,” I tell myself, “I will be…”

Really! Huh.