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October 08, 2006
The Great Feast of Tabernacles
Leviticus 23: 33-43
John 7: 1-9
October 8th, 2006
(Baptism of Erin Menser)
The section from John’s Gospel that we have just read is timely for us to read today. First, the Feast of Tabernacles or Succoth stands behind the message of this section of John’s Gospel. Second, yesterday and today are the very days in the Jewish calendar to celebrate this Feast. Third, this is the weekend of the Feast of the Hunter’s Moon when a lot of people come to Ft. Ouiatenon, and many folk sleep outside in makeshift shelters. Now if this is not a current use of Scripture, what is?
Before plowing into the significance of this great harvest festival, the third great Jewish Feast, I want to ask a question. Why have the great Jewish feasts not been kept in Christianity? It is true that Jesus chided the Pharisees for putting too much emphasis on the tradition of the elders. But the great Feasts were not just human traditions; they were commanded by God.
Paul wrote harshly about those who thought religion was a matter of keeping Sabbaths and feast days, if the reason for this was to impress God with the goal of being saved. But did Paul then denounce the third commandment, to keep the Sabbath Day—that he kept faithfully? When God commanded Israel to keep the feasts, it was for a good reason.
What if we joyously kept the Feasts out of gratitude? What if our children came to look forward to these Feasts because they were fun, a time when church was fun as well as “significant spiritually?” What if in family life children and parents and grandparents thought of life together in the community so that this community event, this time of joyous togetherness was a dominant joy in the life of the family? What if? Why not?
There were three reasons God commanded Israel to keep the great feasts: first, to remember His care for them in the past, second, to keep them together as a people; third, because of a longer range significance they did not yet know. All three of these purposes are pertinent to us too.
We take the Lord’s Supper to remember Jesus’ death for our sins. We gather together around a table here to do this. And I always try to remind you that this is a harbinger of the Marriage Feast of the Lamb when “all will be well and all manner of things will be well.”
Water baptism itself reminds us of how God saved His ancient people using water—bringing Israel through the Red Sea on dry land before enveloping their pursuing enemies with the same water that had parted. It is a Sacrament that we always do together publicly, unless the person receiving it is very ill. And as a sign of washing it points to the time when we “shall be as we should be,” “when we see Him as He is.”
The thought has occurred to me often over the past years of being a pastor that we have lost something precious in our land in not stressing the fundamental significance to Christianity of being together. “Freedom in Christ” has dove-tailed a bit conveniently with the freedom of democracy. Having stressed freedom, individual choice, the priority of individual over family, family over community, community over nation, our nation over other nations, the weekend by contrast with the Lord’s Day, we have forfeited something very precious. In the grave we discover we’re all together—finally.
When people leave us we gather and sing, “Bless be the tie that binds.” Something contradictory there. What tie? They’re leaving us! What Christian love that binds? Binds us—how? Sometimes when people leave it would be very ironic to sing this song.
When God gave Israel the command to come together to Jerusalem three times a year, in days before airplanes facilitated long-distance travel, He gave them the means of maintaining their identity as God’s people. It took considerable effort to stay together, particularly after many Jews were taken into exile. At Pentecost we remember that there were Jews in Jerusalem from all over the ancient world. It took some effort for them to be there to celebrate Pentecost together.
The Gospel lesson this morning tells of an unusual, I’m tempted to say strange moment in Jesus’ life. His brothers tell Him to go to Judea so that all may see His works. Immediately after this we read that his brothers didn’t believe in Him. I wonder, were they taunting Him? Here was this kid brother who often seemed preoccupied, doing remarkable deeds that made people flock to Him—feeding a huge crowd with a shepherd lad’s lunch, passing strangely at night from one side of the Galilee to the other without getting into a boat. But what would be His reception in the more sophisticated precincts of Jerusalem. Besides, it was the Feast of Booths (or Tabernacles) when Jews were supposed to go to Jerusalem.
Jesus told them to go to the Feast. He also said something so strange: “My time has not yet fully come.” When they heard this they must have thought, “Your time is no different than ours. Is it or is it not the Feast of Tabernacles when we’re all supposed to go to Jerusalem?” We should not imagine that anyone then saw things as we see them when we read the Gospels.
Then Jesus must have seemed an overly reflective, puzzling young man. No wife, though past the age when young men married. He’d abandoned the livelihood of their father in the carpenter shop to go traipsing off around the countryside doing strange things. What did Jesus mean when He said, “My time has not yet come?”
He had more in mind than that His time to be crucified for the sins of the world had not yet come. His time is fulfilled when all people come to Him. We will read next Lord’s Day that Jesus did, in fact, go to Jerusalem. But His hesitation now to do what every devout Jew was obliged to do, to go to Jerusalem to celebrate all three great feasts of the Jews—Passover, Pentecost, and Tabernacles—was because of the immense significance of this Feast to God’s purposes for this world—a purpose that centered in Him. As God made flesh, sent to trigger the fulfillment of these purposes, Jesus had to go to Jerusalem, not with the family, but alone to do the will of His heavenly Father for the sake of the world.
Jesus fulfilled the purpose of the Feast of Tabernacles. We might note that John’s Gospel tells us that “the Word became flesh and tabernacled among us.” Actually the word is “tented,” but the tent in mind was not like the tents we use in camping. No easily assembled shelter made of nylon and aluminum poles. It was a tent like the one the children built with me this morning. Leafy branches, willows, myrtles, palm branches on a wooden frame.
If we had looked around Jerusalem on the day when Jesus went to celebrate this Feast we would have seen little leafy huts like this all over the place. People would share materials. This family is short of palm branches, while another family has more than it needs. This family is made up only of aged grandparents because the younger generation died of sickness or at the hands of the Romans. This family is poor and hasn’t enough good food to make merry, so another family shares of its bounty. And everyone is equal as they stay in a little booth made of freshly cut branches. The rich family sleeps in as humble a home as the poor. The poor family sleeps as magnificently as the rich.
Not only that but strangers are welcomed into the humble little huts. In Deuteronomy 16 we read: “you and your son and your daughter, your manservant and your maidservant, the Levite who is within your towns, the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow who are among you, at the place which the Lord your God will choose, to make his name dwell there.”
This was very likely the Feast mentioned in the book of Judges, a harvest feast, when young men of the Tribe of Benjamin watched young women dancing and chose from them wives. The Tribe of Benjamin had been nearly wiped out by the other eleven tribes because of a disgraceful deed of one of its men, that they refused to punish, but defended the man. But the sadness of the civil war was ended with merriment as they gathered for the Feast of the harvest and young people danced—and young men were drawn to their future wives.
The closest we come to this is at our pot-luck dinners. Then you bring your best cookin’ and share it. And I see you going back again and again by the long tables to enjoy the bounty of shared food.
We often think of truly sacred times as times when we are reading the Bible, praying, or engaged in some other explicitly devotional exercise. But the purpose of the gatherings God commanded Israel to keep included specifically being happy together. Our talent shows are sacred events. Our pot-luck dinners are sacred events. Our softball games and our picnics together are sacred. At everyone of them we are together, bound by our common attachment by faith to Jesus. Strangers join us, sojourners, to use the Old Testament term. You invite guests. And not infrequently it is at times like this that young men and young women are drawn together in a way that sometimes results in weddings at the front of this sanctuary!
When God commanded Israel to keep these feasts together it was to provide a balance to the sacrificial system, the “serious” side of being His people.
There is a place for sermons and prayer meetings and hymn-singing; indeed, a great and necessary place I might say in defense of my position with you. But life together in Christ needs the happy moments, the dinners and picnics and talent shows. We are no less gathered in Jesus’ name when we are laughing and enjoying one another. When our children see this how fond is their impression of the Christian community. They are never bored of them as they might be when sitting in church trying to listen to that old fellow there in a black robe who is talking far too long. I was told by one of our little fellows yesterday he thought I was about ninety seven years old!
Well, what about it? Ought we to be celebrating the great Feasts God commanded Israel? We have no command to do so as a means of being approved by God—as was the case for Israel. But maybe there is wisdom in seeing that the directions God gave Israel were for our instruction too. Did not Paul write, “The former things were written for our instruction.” Let us be instructed by the good heritage bequeathed to us in the faith explained in the Hebrew Bible. Let us keep what is good. Let us recognize the fulfillment that was intended in each of the Feasts—the Lord’s Supper from Passover, the gift of the Hoy Spirit at Pentecost, and the ingathering of all people at the Feast of Tabernacles.
There is a three-fold, we might say “Trinitarian” lesson given us in the Jewish feasts. Remembering God’s works in the past. Togetherness. Seeing what God intends as the fulfillment of the Feast’s meaning. Let us claim and celebrate too this heritage. What might develop in this place in days to come, under the instruction of this goodly heritage?
Let us pray: Thank you Lord God for all that you teach us in your word. Grant to us the wisdom to be instructed by it. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Pastor Stuart D. Robertson
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, IN 47906
Posted by faithpres at October 8, 2006 09:30 AM