Summaries:
God continues to give Moses laws, such as how to treat slaves, how to repay injuries (mostly eye-for-eye), how to treat burglars, how to handle loans, how to celebrate feasts, etc, and God promises to reward those who worship only Him (21-23). Moses, Aaron, and 70 elders are called up on the mountain, but only Moses is to be closest to God, where God will give him the tablets with the commandments (24). God instructs Moses to take collections from the people to make a sanctuary, and instructs him how to build an Ark for the tablets , a table, a lampstand, the Dwelling, the tent cloth, the wooden walls for the Dwelling, the veils, the altar of holocausts, the court for the Dwelling, and instructs about priestly vestments (25-28).
Reflections:
Sometimes I wish that God would speak to someone important in our modern times and just be very specific about what He wants. Although, after thinking this, I heard it said that what the instructions from God to Moses were for the Israelites, the letter to the Hebrews is for the Church. Interesting to think that just because God is no longer telling us specifics on how many dimensions his churches should be, he gives instructions as to how our Church is to be.
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One of my professors is an architectural historian turned architectural theologian, and so his specialty is the theology of church architecture. I can't sum up for you his whole book in one comment, but he has one perspective that fits into play nicely here: Shadow, Image, Reality.
ReplyDeleteThe Old Testament events (in this case, God's instructions about the building of the Tabernacle) are a Shadow of what is to come. The Reality is heaven (most of what we know is from the Book of Revelation). The Image is now, the in-between time.
We must look to the Shadow of the past and what we know of the Reality of heaven in order to fill and inform our worship (and, in this case, our church-building) now, in the time of the Image. We orient our worship toward the heavenly Reality, of course, but God's revelation to Israel of how to worship Him is still worthwhile. (Personally, I love all the plants and other garden imagery - already they're looking at a new Eden!)
Of course, building churches today is not nearly so simple as following God's directions to the letter. But this is your typical both-and Catholic situation: it allows for real continuity throughout the centuries while leaving room for the flowering of human creativity.