Temple attendance is a Christlike gift

"In the beginning was the Word," begins a Christmas story that we seldom read at Christmas, "and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. … And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us" (John 1:1, 14).

The Greek verb translated as "dwelt," "skeneo," means "to dwell in a tent" — which, in Greek, is a "skene." So John 1:14 could be rendered as "And the Word was made flesh, and tented among us."

This recalls the Old Testament tabernacle in the wilderness, a tent-sanctuary symbolizing the presence of God that was pitched in the midst of the traveling camp of Israel:

"And it came to pass, when Moses went out unto the tabernacle, that all the people rose up, and stood every man at his tent door, and looked after Moses, until he was gone into the tabernacle. And it came to pass, as Moses entered into the tabernacle, the cloudy pillar descended, and stood at the door of the tabernacle, and the Lord talked with Moses. And all the people saw the cloudy pillar stand at the tabernacle door: and all the people rose up and worshipped, every man in his tent door. And the Lord spake unto Moses face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend" (Exodus 33:8-11).

The Hebrew word translated as "tabernacle" is "mishkan," which refers to the place where God's presence, his "shekinah," resided. "And let them make me a sanctuary," says the Lord in Exodus 25:8-9, "that I may dwell ('ve-shakan-ti') among them, according to all that I shew thee, after the pattern of the tabernacle ('mishkan')." John's Greek verb (built from the root "s-k-n") seems to play off of the Hebrew root ("sh-k-n"; in Arabic, the equivalent root is, precisely, "s-k-n") in order to suggest that the presence of Moses' portable temple among the Israelites prefigured Christ's earthly life in a "tabernacle of flesh" among mortals.

The epistle to the Hebrews also links Christ closely with the temple — most notably when it compares him to the high priest of the earthly sanctuary.