Gladness in God's house
122:1 I was glad when they said to me, "Let us go to the house of the LORD!"
122:2 Our feet are standing within your gates, O Jerusalem.
122:3 Jerusalem built as a city that is bound firmly together.
122:4 To it the tribes go up, the tribes of the LORD, as was decreed for Israel, to give thanks to the name of the LORD.
122:5 For there the thrones for judgment were set up, the thrones of the house of David.
122:6 Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: "May they prosper who love you.
122:7 Peace be within your walls and security within your towers."
122:8 For the sake of my relatives and friends I will say, "Peace be within you."
122:9 For the sake of the house of the LORD our God, I will seek your good.
Advent is one of those times when we “go into the house of the Lord.” Never thought of that, had you? Because I don’t mean church on December Sundays, or Wednesday nights (did those services a few times in my ministry). Going to church is a fine thing, but I mean something else; and it isn’t going to the mall or the store the website to render unto Manna your credit cards. I mean, in fact, something a little more spiritual and a little less physical.
Although it can be spiritual in the physical. I live near enough to a mall that the traffic around my neighborhood is multiplied by the season. The grocery store I frequent is crowded two weeks before Thanksgiving, and the crowds don’t abate until New Year’s Day. The traffic around the mall is so bad I avoid the entire area near and around it; and that starts in early November, too. By December it’s a nightmare that won’t end until the 25th. But that, too, can be the House of the Lord.
At the time the Psalmist wrote, the House of the Lord was undoubtedly the Temple in Jerusalem. Synagogue centered worship came after 73 C.E. The “House of the Lord” had become metaphorical by then, less a location than a presence. Ezekiel foreshadowed it when he had a vision of God on a chariot throne, with wheels within wheels, rising out of the Temple after the Babylonia assault, and going wherever God saw fit. That vision was a metaphor, a symbol of God untethered from place, free to go anywhere and be found everywhere. Centuries later Jesus would ask people why they went into the wilderness to find John the Baptizer, and imply they did it to find the presence of God.
Wilderness was a good place to seek God, away from noise and distractions that take us away from God, and into the world. But the House of the Lord sounds like a noisome place, and full of people. Is it a paradox to seek God there?
No more than to seek God in the quotidian, the every day. Silence and solitude can be restorative and beneficial. It can also be escape, and self-involvement. Self-care can be good; but it can be inhibiting. I hate crowds with a passion, especially holiday crowds in stores. But in the bleak midwinter when indoors is better than out, (and I do love a bookstore at any time of the year), crowds are hard to avoid. And even harder to tolerate.
Unless, if I may suggest, you turn that experience into the House of the Lord. Not for worship and prayers and singing; but for finding the presence of God in whatever you do for others; because Jesus tells us, we’re doing it for him.
If you want a spiritual Christmas, you probably want to think you’re doing it for the baby Jesus. So share that gift: patience; kindness; thoughtfulness for others, instead of yourself and how you’re inconvenienced. I’m not talking to you, really, Imagined Reader; I’m talking to me. I really hate holiday crowds. But I don’t want to ruin everyone else’s holiday; or my own. So maybe if I recast it as going up to the House of the Lord (why not?) and I’m glad to be there; maybe if I pray (silently!) for peace within those walls and for the sake of my relatives and friends I say, "Peace be within you,” maybe it will make the holidays come a bit closer to the most wonderful time of the year we all wish it would be.
That doesn’t have to be just a metaphor, after all. And it can be for absolutely anybody. When I say it, it seems simple and silly. But what else is the basileia tou theou, except the place you live when you expect to live in it?
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