Exodus 31:1-11

This week’s passage sounds a soaring melody – God includes us in the crafting of God’s dwelling place on earth! —but is followed by a terrible crash and burn. 

For nearly forty days (since Exodus 24), Moses has been at the top of Mount Sinai, in face-to-face communion with God.  Nearly all of Exodus 24-31 is God’s instructions for constructing the tabernacle and its furnishings.  In Exodus 31, God is wrapping things up with Moses.

The LORD tells Moses that Bezalel is commissioned to be the master craftsman in charge of the tabernacle construction project.  Bezalel is the first person in Scripture who is said to be “filled with the Holy Spirit” (verse 3).

It’s important to understand what the tabernacle means, what it represents.  It is not simply that Israel needed “a place for worship.”  The tabernacle (or “Tent of Meeting”) was God’s “local address” on planet Earth.”  It represented God’s presence dwelling in the midst of God’s people, the place where God drew near to humanity, and humanity drew near to God.  It was the place of atonement and reconciliation, prayer and worship, sacrifice and celebration.

And the tabernacle was Creation in miniature form, a holy place filled with the life of God.

That’s what Bezalel is in charge of crafting.  Yes, he must construct it exactly according to the pattern that God showed Moses on the mountain.  And, his Spirit-filled creativity and skill are invited into this world-making project, Creation “contained” in a mobile structure.

Bezalel represents us all.  As bearers of the image of God, humans are called to participate with God in crafting a world that is beautiful and bountiful, a world that is filled with God’s Presence, and which is therefore filled with all kinds of abundance for all kinds of life.  

Talk about soaring!  To be invited by God into that kind of work is to fly very high indeed!

But there is a “Meanwhile …” in the story.  While God is finishing up with Moses in Exodus 31, Exodus 32 recounts the catastrophe of the people of Israel choosing to worship a god of their own making, a Golden Calf.

There was a great deal of gold to be used in the Tabernacle furnishings, and a great deal of creative skill needed in working with it.  And a great deal of gold went into the Calf, along with no small amount of human skillfulness in crafting it.  (And consider how much gold and other precious metals are needed for our smartphones and screens, and the skill that goes into crafting them.) Human creativity is a tremendous gift, but like all gifts, it can be twisted in terrible directions.  Making gods for ourselves is the opposite of soaring.

Bezalel is commissioned by God in Exodus 31, but doesn’t get to work until Exodus 35.  Assisted by all of God’s now repentant people, he and his team complete their task.  Here’s how that task, and the Book of Exodus, ends:

Then the cloud covered the Tent of Meeting and the glory of the LORD filled the tabernacle … So the cloud of the LORD was over the tabernacle by day, and fire was in the cloud by night, in the sight of all Israel during all their travels (Exodus 40:34, 38).

Perhaps the difference between human creativity going in good or bad directions has to do with whether the creative humans are also filled with the Spirit of God.  How can we invite and welcome the Spirit’s fullness into the works of our hands?