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Pitching Your Tent in the Mission Field
by Thomas L. Garlitz
The Apostle Paul, writing to the Colossians, says to “Let the Word of Christ dwell in you in richly.” Col 3:16. At first reading, this seems like an admonition to a pious and devout study of the scripture, a good discipleship practice. And it is, and we should. But it is so much more.
With the word dwell, Paul calls to mind an earlier image as told in a verse from the Gospel of John. “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us, and we have seen his glory: from the Father, filled with enduring love.” Jn 1:14 And so, Paul is not simply calling us to Bible study, he is saying that we must allow Jesus, the Word, to become flesh in our lives, to live in and through us. He is saying that just as Jesus lived and walked along the shores of Galilee and the highways and streets of Judea, talking with the people, healing them of their diseases, reaching out to them to lighten their heavy burdens, thus revealing the love of the Father, we must make Christ’s love present to those we meet in our travels. Christ must become incarnate in us and live through us today.
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But this word dwell hearkens still again to another, even earlier image in scripture. The word dwell in the Greek gives the picture of pitching a tent; that is, it could be read, “Jesus pitched his tent among us.” John is calling to mind the story of the Hebrews sojourning in the wilderness, everybody living in tents, but in the middle of the camp was the Tent of God, called, in fact, the Dwelling, Ex 25 – 40. This tent was filled with the radiant Glory of God. All life was ordered and organized around the Glory of God dwelling inside a tent in the midst of the people. Wherever they traveled they followed the Glory of God in the cloud by day and the fire by night above them, and carried that same glory with them in the Tent of God. The Israelites were God’s first missionaries, taking the Light of God with them wherever they went. It was God’s hope that as they lived so close to him that all nations would be gathered to him. In the Gospel of John we see that Jesus became the Tent of God and gathered around himself a new missionary community.
As God’s people today, as his missioners, we too are sojourners in this world. We have no permanent dwelling, only a tent. We travel light, owning only what we can easily carry. We live simply. We do not want to be burdened and distracted with the accumulation of things. What wealth we may have is used for the journey and to help those we find along the way. Ex. 35: 20-29 As tent dwellers our lives are centered around God. God is the organizing principal for everything we do. We follow the glory of God wherever it might lead us, from Sucre, to the Navajo, to Quito, to the Philippines, to Kenya, to the Gulf Coast. The Light of God radiates throughout every aspect of our comings and goings. Further, according to Paul in Colossians, as children of the New Covenant we go beyond the reality of the Israelites in the Wilderness, living with the Tent of God in their midst; we now have ourselves become the very Tent of God. As we allow God to live in us and shine through us, each person we meet is drawn to God.
A final image. Remember going camping as a child? You pitched your tent and got out your Coleman lantern. As darkness fell you brought your lantern into the tent and turned it up to its brightest. Looking at the campsite, there in deep of night, you see the tent softly aglow. That is our life as missioners. We travel into the darkness and despair of peoples lives and allow the light of Christ to gently glow through us.
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