In the Jewish harvest festival, Sukkot, the Feast of Booths - the week after next - people build shelters out of branches (olive, pine, myrtle, palm) outside and go and live in them for the seven days of the festival. (unless it’s raining or your booth is full of wasps or you’ve just got married) And they dance with the law. A pilgrimage festival. Why booths? because of the shelters they lived in in the wilderness. Or because of the huts the harvesters made in the fields. More shade than sun, but not so much that you can’t see the stars.
We do that in reverse. We bring the fields inside. But it would be good also to go outside - bareheaded, barefoot even - and go on a journey, or stand getting wet for five minutes in the garden. Because harvest is not, after all, a time to sit contentedly on your heap. Harvest is when you remember that you’re on the edge. Deuteronomy.
Deuteronomy: the copy of the law. A tendency to tell you things again. A wish to make things absolutely clear. A mission to explain. Who is the explanation for? A people on the edge of the promised land. A pilgrim people. A people in exile. Beware lest you say in your heart, ‘My power and the might of my hand have gotten me this wealth.’ That is false security. Pilgrimage is deliberate insecurity, the antidote.
The people looking for Jesus wanted bread and certainty. What is the sign? Where is the bread?
- work for the food that endures for eternal life
- believe in the one whom God has sent
- the bread is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world
A conversation at cross purposes. Where is God definitely guaranteed? God is here now. But you can’t take possession of God: you can only join in. Do not try to gather everything up and sit on it, it will not work. Even the promised land didn’t work, because they forgot they were on the edge. Seek first the kingdom of God, and live in that. You’re not on the edge of that. You’re in it.
A pilgrimage story. Galicia. Cowsheds, rain, spring flowers, green hills, tiny villages, no bread. Out of nowhere, the bread van.
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1 comment:
Very interesting that when the sermon was heard, it included a start and end with a pilgrimmage taken in Spain. When I now read this blog I can say that it looks complete without it, but including it adds so much to the narrative given in church. Very interesting.
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