Tag Archives: Solomon

Dwelling in Sacred Space

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When I read Mircea Eliade as a college student, one of the first things I learned from him was the importance of sacred space, of a designated space being the center of the world. The designation might seem arbitrary in that it could be any space, sort of like Winnie-the-Pooh and Christopher Robin planting a pole in the ground and proclaiming it the North Pole. But once a space was designated as sacred, it truly was sacred ground and treated as such. Although the sacred space could be anywhere to begin with, there is a tendency to see certain landscapes, such as tall mountains and luminous lakes, as more likely to be considered holy space than others.

The early humans who designated sacred space didn’t have any notion of confining God to a certain spot. They instinctively knew that God is everywhere, but they also felt the need to focus. Solomon shares the same insight in his prayer at the dedication of the Temple in Jerusalem when he says: “But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Even heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you, much less this house that I have built! “ (1 Kings 8: 27) Although the Israelites knew that God is everywhere, the temple was a focal point for Jewish piety. The Psalmist exulted in dwelling in the temple with God and longed for it desperately when torn away from it when taken into exile. I have the same sort of experience with the churches I worshiped in while growing up and with the Abbey Church where I have worshiped for more years than I can count. During the Eucharist, I keep getting the sense that the Abbey Church has become the center of the world as the bread and wine is consecrated. Not that the abbey is the only center of the world. There are countless more. As a practical matter, it is much easier to appreciate the fact that God is everywhere and act accordingly when a particular place is entered at a specific time to focus on God. By practicing decorum and reverence in a designated place, we are more apt to practice decorum, and reverence elsewhere.

Stemming from the insight of early humans and Solomon that the Temple cannot contain God are the various prophetic critiques of misuses of the temple for personal advantage of one sort or another. Jeremiah, for example, warned against trusting in words such as “This is the temple of the Lord! The temple of the Lord! The temple of the Lord.” (Jer. 7: 4) Hosea insisted that God preferred mercy to burnt offerings. (Hos. 6: 6) Jesus’ act of driving out the money changers was a climax of such prophecies. In Matthew’s version of this story, Jesus then heals the blind and the lame, (Mt. 21: 14) suggesting that such healing is much more in line of what the temple is for than changing money to keep the sacrifices going. Matthew’s placing of these acts of healing seem out of context, but they allude to an odd incident when David attacked the Jebusites and took the city. The defenders taunted David by saying that even the blind and the lame would be able to stop him. (2 Sam. 5: 6) David was believed to hate the blind and the lame as a result of the taunt, but it is more likely that David hated the able-bodied defenders who taunted him. One could say that Jesus was fulfilling David’s conquest of Jerusalem by healing the blind and the lame. In the end, nobody is going to stop Jesus.

John adds that Jesus implied that he himself is the Temple when he said that if the Temple is destroyed, he can rebuild it in three days. (Jn. 2: 19) St. Paul and St. Peter famously extended the human temple to everybody. St. Paul said that each of us is God’s temple, (1 Cor. 6: 10) and St. Peter said we are all living stones “built into a spiritual house.” (1 Pet. 2: 5) Jesus was a particular person who lived on earth at a particular time and place, but he has extended his sanctity as a temple to each of us, not least the blind and lame whom he cured in the temple. In his climactic teaching in Matthew, Jesus said that what we do and don’t do for the “least” of people is done, or not done, to him. (Mt. 25) Peter adds depth to this teaching by reminding us that Jesus was the stone rejected by the builders which has become the cornerstone. (1 Peter. 2: 7) God continues to build God’s house, God’s temple with stones rejected by those who would build human culture.

Just as sacred space can be, and is, anywhere and everywhere, everybody can be, and in fact is, a temple of God. We should treat ourselves and each other accordingly with decorum and reverence.

On Being the Pearl of Great Price

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The story of Solomon’s encounter with the Lord upon assuming the throne is edifying and inspiring. As the Lord noted, Solomon could have asked for wealth or long life or the death of his enemies but he only wished for a “discerning heart.” One could say that, in this story, at this particular time in Solomon’s life, Solomon was willing to put all his marbles in a quest for wisdom so as to be a just ruler. There follows the powerful story of the two harlots and the two babies (one dead) where Solomon makes a decision out of his “discerning heart.” Other material about Solomon is less edifying. Perhaps one reason he did not wish for the death of his enemies was because he had already killed his brothers who had competed for the throne. Solomon accumulated great wealth later on and became less wise, not least because he married hundreds of women who turned his heart to deities that weren’t capable of giving a discerning heart to anybody. Solomon did build the temple and at the dedication he made a stirring speech full of reverence for the Lord, but unfortunately, he used slave labor to build it. These things tended to go with the territory of Israel becoming a monarchy like the other nations as the prophet Samuel had warned. This story challenges us to decide if we wish to have a “discerning heart” above all other things and, most important, if we are willing to persevere in this wish and not pursue things like wealth and death of enemies which will make the heart less discerning.

The parables of the Treasure in the Field and the Pearl of Great Price present us with the same challenge with greater intensity. They both make clear that the Kingdom of God costs us everything, just as the Rich Young Man was asked to give everything and follow Jesus. What is the Kingdom of God that is so precious as to be worth everything? Surely it has a lot to do with having the “discerning heart” that the young Solomon asked for. It takes a discerning heart to know when a treasure or a pearl really is worth everything, leaving no remainder. Having a discerning heart sounds a lot like having the purity of heart that Jesus says makes one blessed, along with being meek and lowly and willing to mourn and thirst for righteousness as preached in the Sermon on the Mount. Purity of heart requires an uncluttered life that is not filled with the conflicting desires Solomon indulged in as he grew older. Purity of heart is especially important and powerful if and when persecutions come, another blessing, a harder one to accept. Indeed, right after Jesus delivers these parables, Jesus is rejected by the people of his home town. These two parables seem to teach much the same thing but there is a difference. In one, the kingdom of God is like the treasure that is found. In the other, it isn’t the pearl itself that is like the kingdom of God; it’s the merchant who buys the pearl. The two parables progress from desiring to have the kingdom of God to actually being the kingdom. By buying the pearl that costs everything, the merchant becomes the kingdom so that this person, who obviously can’t be a merchant anymore, embodies a discerning heart and the teaching of the Beatitudes.

The parables of the Mustard Seed and the Loaf of Bread that becomes leavened all through suggest an inexorable growth of the Kingdom of God, both in society and within each human heart. If everybody is destined for salvation, than this is true even if it takes a very long time to happen. The wish for a discerning heart to make us pure of heart is the tiny seed and the smidgeon of leaven that starts the process. As Benedict teaches at the end of his chapter on humility, what used to take an effort eventually becomes something of a second nature. However, Paul’s reversal of the image, that a little leaven creates a loaf of malice and wickedness, warns us that the process can work in the wrong direction, as it did for Solomon. The kingdom does not happen automatically; one has to make a fundamental choice in life.

In Romans 8, Paul teaches roughly the same thing when he says that nature, in its groaning and yearning, is on the way to the kingdom so that “in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” (Rom 8: 28) This doesn’t mean that God has a plan that involves God’s planting weeds in the garden; it is an enemy who did that as we learned last week and putting God’s son on the cross is something the enemy did. But, given the weeds planted by the enemy, persecutions and all, God inexorably transforms this garden as God transforms the mustard seed and the loaf of bread. Perhaps God does not want the weeds pulled prematurely because God is transforming the weeds to plants. On top of that, the mustard plant itself is actually a weed that threatens to take over the garden. Is Jesus, then, a weed planted to transform the garden? He sure was treated like a weed and weeded out. More important, Paul says that God did not spare God’s own son but gave that son along with all other things besides. The kingdom of God may cost each of us everything, but the kingdom also costs God everything and God gives us everything God has got. If God really is for us, God is for all of us, not just some of us. If God works everything for good in the midst of trials and rejections, God works everything for the good of everybody, not just some of us. Maybe, just maybe, all the fish pulled out of the sea to be sorted by the angels will turn out to be keepers. Surely God hopes so.

See also Sowing Parables in our Hearts

A Church of Living Stones

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altarWhite 1When we celebrate an event like the anniversary of the consecration of the Abbey church, we are brought up short by the many negative things scripture says about temples and church buildings. Solomon humbly notes that not “even Heaven or the highest Heaven” can contain God, let alone a dinky temple in a backwater of civilization. Many of the prophets expressed discomfort or worse over the idea. David had wanted to build a temple but Nathan said God nixed it because David had fought too many battles that had made him impure for the task. A big part of the problem was that God wanted more elbow room than a temple would give. One of the more dramatic denunciations was Jeremiah’s admonition not to put any trust in stammering: “This is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord.” Fast forward to Jesus and we have him throwing the money changers and animals out of the temple.

What’s wrong with having a temple or a church building? Although Christians can and have worshiped in private houses, there are many practical reasons for having a building dedicated to worship, among them the problem of a host and hostess or their servants having to clean house before and after the service. Mircea Eliade famously pointed out humanity’s need of sacred space to draw attention to the Divine. St. Benedict affirmed the importance of the oratory in the monastery when he said that nothing else should be done there and nothing should be stored there so that there would be no mistaking this being the place for prayer and nothing but prayer. In throwing out the money changers, Jesus said that temple should not be a marketplace but a place of prayer.

There is an interesting detail in Matthew’s account of the cleansing of the temple that helps us understand Jesus’ actions in the temple. Jesus healed the blind and the lame who came to him there. We easily skip over this detail because Jesus was healing the blind and the lame all the time so yet another healing session doesn’t seem worthy of note. An obscure verse in Second Samuel sheds some light on this. When David brought his troops into Jerusalem, the Jebusites insulted David by saying that even the lame and the blind would turn him back. David reacts to the insult by heaping scorn on all lame and blind persons and barring them from the “house,” presumably once it was built. This was hardly fair to handicapped persons.

Jesus, by healing the lame and the blind was giving a strong signal that maybe he was the Messiah but if so, he was not a Davidic Messiah who would conquer by military might. More important, Jesus is giving us a positive teaching rather than simply denouncing the sacrificial cult. In short, Jesus was demonstrating, in action, the word of Hosea that God prefers mercy rather than sacrifice, a verse Jesus quoted more than once. In his first Epistle, Peter says we should rid ourselves of malice and all guile, insincerity, all slander and envy” so that we can become “living stones” “built into a spiritual house.” We are the ones who are called to be the temple of God, the Church grounded in Jesus who is the true temple. Being living stones that prefer mercy to sacrifice is how we do it. If we so allow ourselves by the grace of God to become such living stones, then having a place dedicated to precisely that is more than just fine.