Our lesson from the Hebrew scriptures tells of the consecration of King Solomon’s temple in Jerusalem, of bringing the ark of the covenant into the holy of holies. We hear Solomon’s prayer of dedication invoking God’s presence “on this house that I have built.” It speaks of God’s transcendence where it says: . . . a cloud (a symbol that the Israelites recognized as the presence of God) 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,” and “even heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you, much less this house that I have built.” That is the awesome otherness of God that we can’t begin to imagine; all our words, no matter how erudite or eloquent, fall woefully short. All we can do is stand in awe and wonder, offering our hearts in adoration and praise.

Solomon asked rhetorically, “But will God indeed dwell on earth?” With our eyes and hearts opened by the Easter resurrection of Christ Jesus, we know that God indeed did and does. The gospel lessons of the last few weeks focusing on bread as the symbol of Christ’s body culminate in today’s lesson in Jesus’ words: “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them.” “Abide (dwell) in me, and I in them,” the awesome immanence of God, God’s presence here and now. We experience it, we feel it, we know it is real, but we don’t begin to understand the immanence of God any more than we do the transcendence of God. We can, however, respond with humility and thanksgiving as we go to the altar to accept God’s offering.

It is particularly difficult for us to hold the transcendence and immanence of God in tension in our thinking, the both/and not the either/or. With our analytic minds tending to focus on discreteness, we can only speak of one aspect or the other at any one time, yet somehow we know full well that God is not one or the other, but that God simply IS, BE-ing, I AM. God, “in whom we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28), shares God’s being with us and with all creation, with the entire cosmos through the act of love. That too is unfathomable to our finite minds. Whatever constructs we may devise to describe or explain our understandings of God are never enough—there is always more, more for us to know, to experience, to see, to accept, to relate to, to enjoy, to love. God continues to reach out to us where we are as we are. If we need a transcendent experience, God provides it. If we need an immanent experience, we can trust God to be there. Knowing God happens in the heart, not in the head.