Sunday, January 19, 2020. Rev. Dr. Scott Ramsey, preaching.Scripture Readings: Exodus 40:34-38; Exodus 33:7-11; John 1:14

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SERMON TEXT

One of the core questions that the Bible probes and ponders

is, What is the relationship between heaven and earth? How is the life of

heaven related to the life of earth? In our world and in our own lives, some

people wonder where God is, how is God present. Some people can feel the

absence of God more acutely than they can feel the presence of God. Sometimes,

people will experience the presence of God in a transcendent moment, a

‘mountaintop experience’ of some sort, but then when they’re back in the push

and grind of daily life, they can have a harder time experiencing God’s

presence in the mundane.  Some people

observe the injustice, the dishonesty, the oppression, the violence of the

world, and wonder whether God has simply walked away from the whole sorry lot

of us.

Yet, every time we pray the Lord’s

Prayer, we pray for God’s kingdom to come, and God’s will to be done, “on earth

as it is in heaven.” We want the life of earth to reflect and correspond to the

life of heaven. But how does that happen? How do you encounter God in your

life, so that God can guide you in your life?

Today we’re beginning a 4-week

sermon series entitled “The Intersection Between Heaven and Earth.” In the

Thursday email update, we sent around a YouTube link to a short video from the

Bible Project that is entitled “Heaven and Earth.” If you didn’t see it this

past week, we’ll send it around again this coming week. It helps to lay out

some of the framework for this series. The video describes how the Bible begins

and ends with a vision of unity between heaven and earth. In Genesis 2, the

depiction of this unity is the Garden of Eden. God created humanity and put

them to work in the garden, and there is a beauty there, a unity, and there is

no shame. Heaven and earth are united. When sin enters the picture in Genesis

3, however, that unity is broken, and heaven and earth are driven apart. Then

at the very end of the Bible, in Revelation 21, there is a new heaven and a new

earth, where death and pain and crying are no more. Heaven and earth are

reunited. Unity at the beginning, unity at the end. In between, we find the

tragic story of sin and violence and corruption and death, what some might call

“life in the real world.”

What the Bible shows, however, is

that God doesn’t simply check out in Genesis 3, and then wait until Revelation

21 to interact with the earth. There are key ways – “means of grace” – that God

provides for the life of heaven to intersect with, transform, and heal life on

earth. In these four weeks, we’re going to look at four key intersections of

heaven and earth: the tabernacle, the temple, Jesus, and the church. The Bible

does not say that God can only interact with earth in these places, but they

are four primary, regular, grace-filled ways that God’s life comes to, and is

made available to, the world.

Another way that we can talk about

the intersection of heaven and earth, a way that comes to us from the Celtic

spirituality of Ireland and Britain, is the language of “thin places.” “Thin

places” are where it seems as though the thick boundary or veil between us and

God, between life and death, between heaven and earth, becomes thin and almost

transparent. You may have had some kind of experience in the course of your

life where you felt that you came really close to God. The ocean or a mountain

can be this for some people, places in nature often function this way for many

people, being present with someone at the time of death, or being present at

the moment of birth, can be thin places for some people. ‘Thin places’ have an

extraordinary quality to them, acquiring an almost-numinous quality where one

senses the presence of the holy.

This week, we are focusing our

attention on the Old Testament