A quick preview of Sunday’s sermon:
We continue our series on “Why We Party” as we explore the various festivals of the Hebrew Scriptures (aka Old Testament). This Sunday: Sukkot or the Festival of the Booths, which God commanded the Israelites to commemorate and celebrate in honor their liberation from Egypt. (If you want a nice 6-minute summary of Sukkot, listen to this piece from NPR that ran a couple years ago.)
Sermon listeners are somewhat at the mercy of the preacher as to how s/he will enter the text, but this Sunday, I’m giving people three entry points. A sermon buffet, if you will. Three things Sukkot teaches us:
1. Express gratitude. The Israelites did this for their liberation and for the harvest. One of the best practices you can take on is, sometime during the day, stop and think of three things for which you can give God thanks.
2. Acknowledge dependence. One of the main tasks of celebrating Sukkot for Jews is to erect sukkahs, temporary booths that remind them of their ultimate dependence on God. The booths are supposed to have roofs that, according to George Robinson in Essential Judaism, “should be dense enough to protect the better part of the interior from the sun by day, although not so dense as to completely block a heavy rainfall, and thin enough that the stars are visible by night.” The booth is not another home to move into. It is flimsy, temporary. We do not depend on things we make, but on the One who made us.
3. Welcome all. We talk a lot at Urban Village about how everyone is welcome. Part of that also should be a challenge to us to explore our own attitudes of welcome. It’s great to receive welcome, but are we denying welcome to someone in our lives? The Israelites were told (in Deuteronomy 16:13-17) to welcome the slaves, Levites, strangers, orphans, widows. We are to do the same.