2 Sam 7:1-5,8-12,14,16; Psa 88:2-5,27,29; Rom 16:25-27; Lk 1:26-38
Theme: From the Tent to the Virgin’s Womb (God’s Dwelling Place).
Beloved in Christ, we celebrate today the last Sunday before Christmas. The readings focus on where God has chosen as his dwelling place. Right from the creation of humankind, God shows his desire to have a share with man. God created man to live in his presence and with him, but man lost this position through his choice. It is not just that man lost his position to live with and before God, but that man has no power to restore his position by himself.
Hence, he can no longer on his own ascend to God. But even after the fall, God’s plan to be with his image and likeness did not stop. Throughout the Old Testament, we see God continuously seeking to make his presence known to his people.
THE TENT OF MEETING
When God chose Israel as his own and delivered them from slavery, he accompanied them throughout their journey. Having made a covenant with the people, to be their God and they his people, God gave them a Law to follow as his people (Ex 20). God himself wrote the Torah on two stone tablets and gave it to Moses for the people of Israel (Ex 31:18). This Torah became a covenant between God and his people. The two stone tablets were placed in an ark, and so it became the Ark of the Covenant. In Exodus 25-27, God commanded Moses and the people of Israel to construct a Tent (a Tabernacle) for him. The Ark of the Covenant was placed inside the Tent. The Hebrew word for Tent is Mishkan which means “a dwelling place; a residence”. Hence, with the Tent of Meeting, God once again shows his desire to live, to reside,
to dwell with and among his people. However, because the people of Israel were afraid that if they allow the Ark of the Covenant to be in the same place where they were living, God might destroy them out of anger because of their continuous stubbornness and disobedience.
Hence, they located the Tent of Meeting containing the Ark in a place far away from where they were living. Whenever they wished to meet God, they would go to the Tabernacle (the Tent). But the important point to note is that with the Ark of the Covenant, God no longer lives in a faraway
heaven but among his people.
FROM THE TENT OF MEETING TO THE TEMPLE
Throughout the years of Israel’s movement to the promised land, God accompanied them through the Ark of the Covenant. And at each point where they camped, they elected a Tent of Meeting for the Ark. Now, when Israel finally settled in the Promised Land, the tradition of the Tabernacle continued but under the watch of a chosen charismatic leader and later by the priests (example the Ark of the Covenant in Shiloh, Eli’s abode in 1 Sam 4). With David as the king of the united kingdom of Judah and Israel, the story changed. The initiative to build a Tent of Meeting came directly from God. But in the story of David as we have it in the first reading (2 Sam 7) it was David who on his own thought of erecting a better house for God. David considered it an absurd for him to be living in an expensive mansion built with the best quality material while God (the Ark of the Covenant) dwells in a mere tent. David thought of more expensive and befitting dwelling place for the God who has been with him and who has granted him victory over his enemies. This thought alone made God to make an everlasting promise to David.
Thus, in seeking to make a more befitting house for God, God promised to build David’s house and to stand it in eternity. Although the thought began with David, it was his son Solomon who built the Temple in Jerusalem and dedicated it to God (1 Kgs 8). From the Tent of Meeting, God moved to the Temple. As beautiful and magnificent the Temple built by Solomon was, it was destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 BCE. And from that time, the Temple was severally rebuilt and destroyed. Hence, the Temple was not capable of being a permanent residence for the Ark of the Covenant, for God.
FROM THE TEMPLE TO THE VIRGIN’S WOMB
With the tablet of Stones containing the Law (which was the summary of God’s covenant with his people), God made a representation of his presence among the people. He gave an instruction on both the material to be used for the Tabernacle and how the Tabernacle that will harbor the Ark of the Covenant will be constructed. At the appointed time, when God decides no longer to have a representation but to come himself to man, he chose the womb of the Virgin Mary as the Tabernacle. In this way, God re-enacts his original plan of living in and with the humankind he has made. It has never been God’s desire to live faraway from humankind nor to live in a man-made structure. In the Virgin’s womb, God found for himself a Tabernacle for his dwelling. Jesus becomes the New Law and the Covenant of God and his
people who now lives in the Tabernacle that is the womb of Blessed Virgin Mary. This is why Mary is referred to as Ark of the Covenant.
WE ARE THE DWELLING PLACE OF GOD
God’s incarnation in the womb of virgin Mary culminates God’s desire to live in and among his people. The period of Christmas celebrates not only the desire of God to come in the form of man, but also his desire to be incarnated in humankind in order to live with them. While advent tells us “Christ is coming, our Redeemer is near”, Christmas asks us “do we have a place in us for Christ to be incarnated?” Christ comes to be for us an Immanuel, but above all, to make us worthy Tabernacles of God’s goodness. Christmas reminds us that we are meant to be God’s dwelling place so that whoever comes to us and whoever we meet, may encounter God. The people need no longer to go very far to a Tent of Meeting located very far from where
people live in order to meet God; the people need no longer to climb the mountain to reach the Temple in Jerusalem; the people need only to encounter us because we are all the holy and dedicated Tabernacle of Christ. Therefore, as we await the coming Christ, we have to ask ourselves, “Have we prepared in ourselves a dwelling place for him?”
As St. Paul rightly says in the second reading (Rom 16:25-27), Christ should no longer be a secret to other people because we carry him everywhere we go. The message of Christ, which is message of love and peace must be made open to everyone because we now live out Christ who is incarnated in us. He is not only God who is with us, but also God who lives in us.
Fr. Nnamah Henry Chukwuezugo
Catholic Diocese of Aguleri.