Searching for God's Temple

While I was working on my Master’s degree at Iliff School of Theology, there was a clear narrative about what classes were for PhD students, what classes were for PhD students that Master’s students could survive, and what classes were primarily for Master’s students. I decided to delve into one of those “Master’s students could survive” classes with Dr Amy Erickson.

The class was focused on the time after the 2nd Temple was destroyed in Jerusalem. For the first time in history, the Hebrew people needed to reestablish a relationship with a God that had previously lived in a house, the Temple. Much of their relationship had been centered around the Temple - it was where God lived, it was where they made pilgrimages, it was where they and the high priests conducted rituals and sacrifices.

Not only was the temple destroyed, but the Hebrew people were removed from Jerusalem and the surrounding areas and taken to be slaves and sub-citizens within the Babylonian Empire. The temple was both gone, and even if it had been standing, the temple and God would’ve been inaccessible. The Hebrew people were living what was named the Diaspora.

Where was God? Where could God be found? How could God’s people be slaves and sub-citizens? How could God abandon God’s covenants? Who were the Hebrew people if they didn’t have God on their side?

This may seem overly simplistic and even counter to your understanding of the Holy Spirit, but so often we draw different lines of where God is or isn’t, where God has abandoned some people and not others, where we find God to connect and where we go to be away from God (or deny God).

But, what if God really is everywhere? What if every day is made by God and is good? What if each person really is made in the image of God with a kernel of sand of God deep within them despite their words, despite their actions, despite their choices? What if we can find God in both the creation and in the moments of destruction?

Was God still with the Hebrew people as the temple lay in crumbles and the people were scattered across lands beyond the valleys of milk and honey? Is God with you even when you can’t imagine God being in the crassness of another’s words or the hardship of your latest failure?

On the wall of a building in Auschwitz, this quote was found etched into the wood:

I believe in the sun, even when it is not shining.

I believe in love, even when I don’t feel it.

I believe in God, even when he is silent.

Where is God’s temple for you this day? Where else could you find it?