-
13. The Tabernacling Presence
- Augsburg Fortress Publishers
- Chapter
- Additional Information
13. THE TABERNACLING P R E S E N C E OlflM^ to the literary artistry of Priestly interpreters, the Torah presents a mar velous vision of a history that extends from creation in the beginning to the reve lation at Sinai, when Israel was established as a cultic community, a worshiping people. When one stops to contemplate the overall work (Genesis through Numbers), the overarching theme is theologically exciting. The Priestly Torah announces that the holy God, the creator of the universe and the sovereign of history, has graciously condescended to be present in the midst of Israel, a wor shiping community.1 The Service oj Worship The Hebrew term for "worship" is abodah, from a verb that means "serve." Worship is the service of God, and Israel, in this sense, is called to be the servant of God. Even yet we speak of worship services or "liturgy" (from Greek leitourgia, meaning "public service"). The prophets of Israel insisted that the service of God, properly understood, should extend beyond the confines of the temple into daily life, where God requires people "to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God" (Mic. 6:8). But none of the great prophets was against the "cult" as such. A noncultic religion, one without forms, does not exist. Religion, when it goes beyond individual piety or otherworldly mysticism and is a community exercise, inevitably involves rituals, prayers, holy times and places, leaders, and ordination—in short, a system of worship. It is in the basic sense "cultic." Here, of course, we bracket out the popular, pejorative use of "cult" that the dictionary defines as extravagant, fad dish devotion to a program or practice, for example, the cult of nudism. The whole story that begins with creation, and is structured in a sequence of covenants (Noachic, Abrahamic, Mosaic), is an imaginative construal of a world in which God is present in the midst of a worshiping people. As Gerhard von Rad remarks: the Priestly theologians who have given us the Pentateuch in its present form are "utterly serious in wanting to show that the cult which entered history in the people of Israel is the goal of the origin and development of the world. Creation itself was designed to lead to this Israel"—that is, the people gathered at the foot of Mount Sinai as a worshiping "congregation" (edab) or "assembly" {cjabal). In the Greek Bible (Septuagint), these terms for the people of God are translated as ekklesia (church) and synagoge (synagogue). Early Christians, who read Israel's Scriptures in Greek, adopted the term ekklesia to show that they, along with the Jews of the synagoge, belonged to the people of God. (Notice Acts 7:38, "the church in the wilderness.") I. In this chapter I draw on a lecture that 1 was invited to give on the Catholic rite of ordina tion in use at that time, "Ordination to the Priestly Order," Worship 42 (August-September 1968) 431-41. 106 The Tabernacling Presence 107 God's Dwelling Place The keynote of Priestly theology is given in connection with the Sinai revelation, the large block of priestly material that has gravitated to Mount Sinai (Exodus 25-32, 35-40,- Leviticus 1-17,- Numbers 1 — 10). Right at the beginning of this sec tion Yahweh instructs Moses about the establishment of the cult: Let them make me a sanctuary, that I may dwell among them. —Exod. 25:8; see also 40:34-35 This note is echoed a few chapters later (Exod. 29:42-46) in a passage where it is said that the tent of meeting is the place where Yahweh intends to meet and speak with the mediator of the covenant, Moses. I will meet with the Israelites there, and it shall be sanctified by my glory,- 1 will consecrate the tent of meeting and the altar,- Aaron also and his sons I will conse crate, to serve me as priests. I will dwell among the Israelites, and 1 will be their God. And they shall know that I am the LORD [Yahweh] their God, who brought them out of the land of Egypt that 1 might dwell among them,- 1 am the LORD [Yahweh] their God. —Exod. 29:43-46 At first glance it would seem that this announcement, that God intends to tabernacle in the midst of a people, is parallel to pagan myths about the building of a temple for the supreme deity. For instance, the Babylonian creation...