Josh preachied that the construction and dedication of the Temple marked a transition, from a God who moves in a pillar of cloud and fire to a God who chooses to dwell in a house among the people.
When the ark is brought in, the text says:
“The cloud filled the house of the Lord, so that the priests could not stand to minister because of the cloud; for the glory of the Lord filled the house of the Lord.” (1 Kings 8:10–11)
The same divine presence that had led Israel through the wilderness now settles, thick and luminous, within the walls of stone and cedar. God’s movement and God’s mystery remain, but now they inhabit the heart of community life.
In Exodus, the pillar of cloud by day and fire by night is the first theology lesson for a people just liberated. It teaches that God accompanies even when the road is uncertain. Despite what we might assume, God's presence transforms danger into direction. What Josh suggested with these parallel Exodus passages was that Light and darkness are not opposites in God’s hands, but interwoven expressions of divine care, even when God's particular response can be unexpected.
in Exodus, God dwells in the “thick darkness” on Sinai (Exodus 20:21). and, in the Red Sea story, the cloud even becomes a paradoxical sign:
“The cloud was there in the darkness, and it lit up the night” (Exodus 14:20).
Light within darkness, not apart from it. Later, in Exodus 40, the cloud fills the completed Tabernacle, the portable sanctuary, foreshadowing the later Temple scene in 1 Kings 8. Both moments mark a dwelling of divine presence, a resting of glory that both conceals and reveals.
Stromberg-Wojcik reminded us throughout Scripture, light often represents revelation, guidance, and hope; darkness can signify mystery, unknowing, or oppression but the Bible’s portrayal of “darkness” is not always negative, it’s often where God hides to heal, After all in Genesis 1, God speaks into darkness to bring forth light, but the darkness is not destroyed. Also, the darkness brought to Josh's mind a seed in fertile soil
This is why in 1 Kings 8:12, Solomon says: “The Lord has said that he would dwell in thick darkness.” Darkness, then, becomes the womb of revelation, not its enemy. The cloud that conceals is the same presence that comforts.
Stomberg-Wojak's sermon also brought up light and shadow as seen in the American church, which reminded me of reading Lenny Duncan's Dear Church
In his book Lenny Duncan, a Black Lutheran pastor and prophetic voice, confronts the church’s tendency to claim “light” while ignoring its complicity in systems of racism and exclusion. He calls the ELCA, and the wider white church to confess that “our light has cast shadows.”
In Dear Church, Duncan invites us to redeem darkness, not as evil, but as the place where truth is uncovered, where marginalized voices, so often dismissed as “too angry” or “too radical,” speak with the clarity that light sometimes blinds us to. In his sermon, he admitted to wrestling with that understanding.
Ducan asks: What if the church stopped equating whiteness with light, and instead allowed the Spirit to dwell in the thick cloud of God’s transforming mystery? This could be the same cloud that filled the Tabernacle and Temple.
No comments:
Post a Comment