As I write this October newsletter article, it’s the first day of Fall (September 22nd) and it’s three days before the beginning of the Hebrew festival of Sukkot. In our American life, Autumn is marked by harvest festivals, Halloween celebrations, and the initial rumblings of plans for Thanksgiving and Christmas. And for the Church of Jesus Christ, Autumn is a season that the Holy Bible itself associates with themes of stewardship, harvest, gratitude, and the giving of thanks.
Ancient Israel knew this well. After the grain had been threshed and the grapes pressed, God commanded a joyful Fall festival called Sukkot — the Feast of Tabernacles. Families left their solid houses and lived for a week in temporary tented shelters called booths (or tabernacles). They remembered that God did not abandon them after they had fled Egypt, but he dwelled with them by tabernacling (or tenting) with them in the desert wilderness. They also brought the fruit of the land and appeared before the Lord at the place he chose. Deuteronomy is very clear about the grateful intent of this…
“They shall not appear before the Lord empty-handed; all shall give as they are able, according to the blessing of the Lord your God that he has given you.” – (Deuteronomy 16:16b–17)
Notice that the giving of offerings comes in response to God’s blessing. Consequently, stewardship is not a tax levied on us by a distant God; rather, it’s the grateful response of a people who have already received God’s good gifts. In other words, the harvest is the Lord’s before it’s ours. We can only give back to God what he has first given to us. Therefore, we do not appear before the Lord empty-handed because he has not first appeared before us empty-handed.
Yet Sukkot was never only about the crop harvest. The temporary booths were a symbolic confession of faith. That is, we are merely pilgrims in this life. Our best houses are ultimately temporary. Our strongest barns will one day stand empty and derelict. Furthermore, this biblical feast did not only look backward to the desert wilderness. It also looked forward to a day when God would not merely visit his people for a time but permanently dwell with them forever.
While most Christians do not observe the festival of Sukkot, the foreshadowing and prefiguring of Sukkot have met their fulfilment ultimately in Christ. By God’s grace, the meaning of this Fall festival is completely fulfilled both already and not yet in Jesus Christ. Already the Word became flesh and tabernacled among us. Already the crucified and risen Lord is present through his Word and Sacraments, gathering a harvest of souls from every nation. And yet the Church and all creation await the return of Christ. Then and only then, at his great Second Advent to come, the booths of this age will be dismantled and the New Jerusalem will descend from on high, and the voice from the heavenly throne will be heard in full…
“Behold, the dwelling place of God is with mankind. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God.” – (Revelation 21:3)
The biblical Greek word translated “dwelling place” in Revelation 21:3 is the word for tabernacle. So, Sukkot’s eternal meaning is completed in Yeshua (Jesus) the Divine Messiah. Here in Revelation 21, the temporal world gives way to the eternal world, and the impermanent realm gives way to the unshakable City of God. The temporary pilgrims become the everlasting household of God. God himself will tabernacle with a redeemed humanity forever — not for seven days as is symbolically observed during Sukkot, but without end in a world where death, mourning, crying and pain have passed away.
This is the free gift (by God’s grace and the power of the Holy Spirit) that we have received from the One Lord and Savior who first pitched his tent in our human flesh 2000+ years ago, who bore our sins on a cross, and has risen to make us his own. Christian faith and life flow from here! Moreover, Christian stewardship and gratitude do not flow from a fearfulness that we haven’t given enough but from the confidence and blessed assurance that Christ our Savior is entirely enough (infinitely more than enough!), and he has gone to prepare a feast for us that has no expiration date.
So, this October, as the leaves change and the Sunday morning offering plate is passed, our congregation will continue doing two things at once: [1] We will give thanks for the earthly harvest we can see, and [2] We will look to the heavenly harvest we cannot yet see — the day when all believers shall not stand before the Lord empty-handed, because Christ himself will have filled every hand by his infinite atonement and unlimited grace freely received through faith.
Together in Christ, Pastor Tim