Little Boxes

I was watching a television show last night about Jesus’ birth and childhood.  As the narrator was describing Jesus’ first trip to the temple in Jerusalem, I was struck by his statement that the Jews believed that God actually lived in the temple.  Of course, this is not new information, but somehow it penetrated my consciousness in a new way.  Then this morning, I read in Psalm 11, “The Lord is in his holy temple,” always before such a worshipful phrase to me.  Yet now, as I gazed out my window at the sun breaking over the horizon to flood our valley with light and transform the frosted grass into a silvery blaze of glory, confining God to the temple seemed much too small.  As we move into Holy Week, we are aware of the many boxes in which the Israelites attempted to place their ideas and expectations of the Divine.  We do the same today.  But God and Jesus won’t fit in those boxes.  God cannot fit into the box of the temple; Divine law was intended to be more than the tightly circumscribed list of do’s and don’ts practiced by the righteous; and Jesus most certainly didn’t fit into the box they labeled “Messiah.”  He was crucified because he didn’t fit, in fact refused to fit, inside that narrow little box and do what the people wanted from him.  Instead, he died, and rose again, breaking open the tomb, breaking open our hearts, and flinging wide the doors of heaven.  And all the little God boxes are now lying in tiny splinters on the ground.  Halleluia!

Enjoy the following poem as my gift to you as you make your own journey to the cross and beyond this week:

Little Boxes

How could they seek to

contain you, O Lord,

when they saw

how you break forth like the morning,

how your love expands

beyond the skies?

How could they imagine

a God so small

when your glory is so great?

How can we

seek to control you

with our petty prayers,

our desire for a neat and tidy

little life

when we witness your wild

Abandon,

your lavish and unruly hand

throughout your Creation?

Can we not dream bigger?

Can we not allow

our thoughts of you

to encompass more

than the small portion of the world

we can see with our eyes and

hear with our ears?

Is there not planted

within us

a blazing hope,

a fantastic imagination

that dares to consider

a greater possibility?

A God who surprises,

who breaks all the molds

humanity

has ever created?

O children of the Infinite,

of the reckless ruler of the universe,

let go.

Prepare to receive

the wild abundance

of God’s reckless Love.

©Sue Magrath 4/18/11