Instructions for the Tabernacle

 Exodus 25-28

            In today’s reading, we hear the Lord’s instructions to Moses about how to build the tabernacle, sometimes identified with the tent of meeting. I would like to highlight two aspects of the reading: the purpose of the tabernacle and its extravagance.

            Let’s start with the latter: the Israelites use the best of materials and a lot of them in the tabernacle: gold, silver, bronze, acacia wood, dyed wools, the list goes on. The first ones in that list are precious even today. Acacia would have been available in that part of the world and it is a apparently a very dense, beautiful, and hardy wood. And dyes were expensive. One might ask where did they get all that in the desert, and the answer to that is in the gifts the Egyptians gave them as they left Egypt (Exodus 12:36). And the quantities they used are extravagant, too. Exodus 25:39 says they used one talent of gold for the lampstand alone. A talent is equal to about 75 pounds (16 ounces to a pound means about 1200 ounces; call it 1100 troy ounces; the price of gold fluctuates, but its five-year average is around $1500 US. The lampstand would cost about 1.6 million dollars today, just for the material.)

            The extravagance of the tabernacle always makes me think about church architecture and furnishings today. Americans Christians, especially on the Protestant side of things, simply don’t spend that much on anything architectural or liturgical. (Or, if they do, it’s likely for size of the facility more than just ‘art.’) Actually, we’re much more likely to act like Judas, who objected when Mary poured a bottle of expensive perfume on Jesus’ feet (John 12:1-6). What am I saying? Well, I guess it’s just that the Israelites didn’t ask, “Can we afford it?” Their attitude was more like, “The Lord is worth it!” Next week we’ll read that Moses had to tell the Israelites to stop bringing offerings, because they had too much (36:4-7)!

            Seriously, though, the extravagance is just a side issue. The really important thing to see about the tabernacle is its purpose, which the Lord articulates at the very beginning of the reading: In the tabernacle, the Lord will dwell among His people. Now, we modern Christians are so invested in God’s omnipresence (the teaching that God is everywhere) that we don’t understand how some space can be more sacred than other space. Typically in our day we see this in the argument that we feel closer to God in nature than in church. (I’m not sure we feel closer to God in nature: I wonder if we don’t just feel closer to our humanity. Consider this quote from Jacques Ellul, “The milieu in which [man] lives is no longer his. He must adapt himself, as though the world were new, to a universe for which he was not created. He was made to go six kilometers an hour, and he goes a thousand. He was made to eat when he was hungry and sleep when he was sleepy; instead, he obeys a clock. He was made to have contact with living things, and he lives in a world of stone. He was created with a certain essential unity, and he is fragmented by all the forces of the modern world,” The Technological Society. I think the problem is we confuse being out of touch with our humanity with being out of touch with God. Maybe less speed, less devices, would be good for us…) The point is that God is, of course, omnipresent. The Israelites knew that. They also knew that when God showed up, it was terrifying. (See their reaction to His appearance on the mountain, Exodus 20:15-19.) But the Lord God promised to be present for them, to instruct them, to receive their prayers, and especially to forgive their sins in the tabernacle. The tabernacle was the place He promised to be present graciously for them.

            God’s gracious presence: that is a point I make all the time about church. You may feel closer to God in nature, but the Lord has made no promise that He is actually present to give you His grace in nature. No, the promise that He is present is attached to the gathering of God’s people (Matthew 18:20), where especially He speaks through His Word read and proclaimed and where He is present in the Body and Blood of Jesus in the Sacrament. Because the same God who promised to dwell among the people of Israel still dwells among us today. And even though we don’t have a single tabernacle, the gracious presence of God is the same when His people gather where He said He would bless them through Word and Sacrament.

            I haven’t even touched on the furnishings of the tabernacle: the ark of the covenant which acts as the Lord’s throne, from which He talks to Moses; the table with the bread of the presence, demonstrating that God’s people dwell in His presence, etc. The good news is that we’ll have another chance to address all that next week, when we read about the tabernacle and its furnishings again.