The Beam Team
Ordinary Time
“Very truly I tell you, you will see ‘heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending on’ the Son of Man.” John 1:51
Inside the Golden 1 Center in Sacramento, California, a celebrity presses an oversized button at the center of court as thousands of fans chant in thunderous unison –
LIGHT – THE – BEAM.
Outside, on top of the basketball arena, six purple lasers combine to form one beam of light so intense, it extends beyond human eyesight, touching the heavens. Composed of 1800w of RGB power, this six-stream column of purple light is the brightest full color laser in the world.
Church Steeples dot the landscape of every town in America. Made of wood, brick, or steel, they function practically as a visual marker, helping seekers in an earlier time locate a Christian place of worship. Beyond their wayfinding function, steeples are powerfully symbolic. A steeple acts like a bi-directional ladder – spanning the divide between heaven and earth. Rooted on earth, they reach and touch the sky, creating a bridge that allows for up and down movement – blessing descends, prayer and worship ascends. Because of this, many of the earliest steeples stood apart from buildings and contained chapels at their base. Inside these chapels was a baptistry where newly catechized believers would receive their new identities as baptized persons transformed by the power of God’s grace – grace flowing straight down from heaven along the conduit provided by the steeple.
Places where heaven and earth touch are special and often become significant places of worship. Later Celtic spirituality names this unique touching a “thin place.” A thin place is a physical location where the divide between the two realities is so slight, they cross over into each other and create an overlapping blended area. Inside this sliver of harmonized space, anyone who enters with an open heart will leave different than when they came.
Unknowingly, the Sacramento Kings built a steeple that connected heaven and earth – a bridge not of brick or steel – but of light. On Oct 29, 2022, “The Beam” touched the sky and The Golden 1 Center became a thin place with the most powerful (and purple) steeple the world has ever seen.
If this sounds like a stretch, search for The Golden 1 Center on google maps and zoom in – someone tagged it as a place of worship. Google has since removed the tag, but early comments testified in religious language to the power of the light. One person wrote, “When The Beam is lit it feels like you’ve been touched by an angel.” Another testified to the healing power of the laser, “The Beam somehow cured me of my lactose intolerance.” Still another spoke of amazing grace when referring to the purple light, “My life was changed by The Beam. I’ve never felt so much hope. We’re all undeserving of the great and mighty Beam, yet it blesses us with wins.”
These online testimonies are meant to be taken lightly, but strangely, the conduit created by the laser has been having a real and powerful effect upon the team. Since The Beam first touched the heavens in late October, the Sacramento Kings have been consistently winning and for the first time in 16 years, they made the playoffs.
In fact, the blessing has been so transformative, the Sacramento Kings have been dubbed – The Beam Team.
Jacob once had a dream of a bridge connecting heaven and earth. Genesis 28:10-12 says,
“[Jacob] had a dream in which he saw a stairway resting on the earth, with its top reaching to heaven, and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it.”
In Jacob’s vision, he discovered that heaven and earth are separate… but they are connected by means of a ladder that serves as conduit for up and down movement. Inside this ancient thin place, Jacob received a blessing flowing down from heaven that would transform his family and his future. In the dream, the Lord made a promise that Jacob’s descendants would multiply and flow into the far corners of the earth, bringing the divine blessing with them.
In John 1:51, Jesus sees Nathanael sitting under a fig tree and says to him,
“Very truly I tell you, you will see ‘heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending on’ the Son of Man.”
In one powerful sentence, John reveals to his readers that the ladder in Jacob’s dream was not a bridge of stone… but of bone and blood. Later in the gospels, on the Mount of Transfiguration, Jesus beams like a bridge of blinding light. In that moment we see with clarity that Jesus unites heaven and earth in his body and lives as the overlap between the two.
Jesus is the most powerful thin place the world has ever seen.
After Jesus beams as Jacob’s bridge, Peter wants to stay and set up a shelter, but Matthew is quick to continue the narrative – “they came down the mountain.” (17:9). Having come down, Jesus continues to move into the neighborhoods, alleyways, and gutters to bring freedom, healing, and hope. Thin places are usually static. Like the Golden 1 Center, they stay in one place. But Jesus, having come down, moves out to the edges of society.
Jesus is a thin place on the move.
Fifty days after the ascension, Jesus sends the Spirit on his community of followers and infuses them with his own life, power, and presence. Now, the thinnest place in the world in not an ancient stone altar, basketball arena with a purple laser, or a church building with a wooden steeple, but a group of ordinary people united to Jesus – a Beam Team transformed by the power of God’s grace, shining with the hope of God’s faithful promises.
Peter doesn’t use the language of team, but he says something similar when he wrote to early church to remind them of their thin place identity and their call to move down and out like Jesus -
“But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.” 1 Peter 2:9.
The Beam was initially conceived as a visual symbol that could signal a victory and rally the city around the team. But word has spread to millions of people all over the world about what is happening in Sacramento. Owner of the Kings, Vivek Ranadivé, says that he believes The Beam can become more than a purple laser – it can become a symbol of hope.
The great Christian hope is that one day, because of Jesus, heaven and earth will merge and become one – the divide will be completely overcome, and every thin place will endlessly expand and shine with the glory and goodness of God. Until then, the church participates in and continues the work of Jesus – a thin place on the move – bringing the promise of reconciliation and the message of hope to every earthy corner.
Whenever light pierces the darkness, and blessing flows down and out, it causes those lingering in the shadows to rub their eyes, look around with surprise and exclaim like Jacob,
“Surely the Lord is in this place, and I was not aware of it… how awesome is this place!” Genesis 28:16, 17a