God’s Tabernacle

What if we allowed God to make us a home, a tabernacle where we will stay with him forever?

Aren’t we all just looking for a place to call home? Somewhere we can feel safe and comfortable, where we can be ourselves? For me, that physical space is a church—its ultimate is the beatific vision. I know it’s probably not the same for everyone, but for me, there’s something about walking into a church that just feels right. It’s like coming home. When I’m there, I feel closer to God. Like He’s right with me, leading me on my journey. There is something extraordinary in our Catholic churches—a tabernacle.

The Feast of Tabernacle and Comfort

We read about a tabernacle in biblical history in Exodus 23:16, 34:22, Leviticus 23:34-43, and other Old Testament books. God asked that His people, who were sojourners from Egypt, should celebrate the feast of the tabernacle—Sukkot (also called the feast of booth or shelter). They are to celebrate it on the seventh month and for seven days. Sukkot is one of the three major religious feasts in Israel. It commemorates 40 years of Israeli wilderness wandering and harvesting the fruits of their farm on their land. The feast reminds the people of the reality they lived in temporal tents while in the wilderness.

For us Christians, it is a typology of our lives here—a temporal home as we await the eternal homeland. Features of our house on earth can make us too comfortable we forget it is still temporal no matter how beautiful it might be. Owning out spots in this temporal space might result in territorialism. We don’t want anything to jolt us from our comfortable spot.

This territorialism might become our ethical default. It might also be our physical spaces. The sight of a superior standard—the holy other—might make us uncomfortable. The Book of Wisdom (Chapter 2) identifies this in the plot against the holy, anything that challenges our comfort zone. The presence of the holy challenges us when we live contrary to its standards. Though the holy doesn’t judge us, we assume it does because it is different, and we can’t evade its dazzling purity.

Christ is Making You a Perfect Home

Making our tent the permanent safe harbor isn’t the answer. Our artificially made decors can’t come close. Like the people in the Gospel of John chapter seven, we might try to reject the simplicity of the Lord, who is the essence of the eternal tabernacle we seek. Instead, we want to make our booths. Meanwhile, the essence of the eternal tabernacle is in our midst. In any case, the Blessed Lord Jesus does not go away. He keeps working as he kept walking through the streets of Galilea on the feast of tabernacle, your streets, and imperfect home, making a fantastic abode in the hearts of those who live in the insecurity of the temporary tent.

What the Lord wants to do is to make a permanent home in our hearts. C. L. Lewis (1958) describes how:

“Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently he starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make any sense. What is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of, throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself” (Mere Christianity, p. 160).

God love you. God bless you.

[Readings: Wisdom 2:1a, 12-22; John 7:1-2, 10, 25-30]