Author: Steve

I’ve grown used to long goodbyes. They were a tradition in my wife’s family. I quickly learned that simply moving toward the door did not mean anyone was leaving anytime soon. The first few times I stood there with my hand on the doorknob for another ten to twenty minutes while hugs, kisses, and final exhortations like “Drive safe!” and “Call us!” and “Come back soon!” and other expressions of love were repeated over and over.

As I preach through the last chapters of Acts this year, I find it sweet that Paul’s long goodbye to an Ephesian envoy sent to him in Miletus, found in Acts 20:13-38, falls on Ascension Sunday when we are remembering how Jesus said goodbye to His disciples. It’s also Mother’s Day, so I will unabashedly state that it seems to me that mothers are often the primary agents in long goodbyes, though Paul and the Christians around him prolong the moment as much as any parent ever did.

I also recall saying goodbye to our own children when leaving them with a babysitter or, rarely, with friends from church while we attended a retreat or other denomination event. Beth would write long “Care and Feeding” manuals with instructions both the care givers and for our daughters. Likewise, both Paul and Jesus left instructions when they said goodbye to ancient Christians. Those instructions were calls to mission and calls to properly relate to and care for each other, just as parents might wish for children.

And despite the goodbyes, we are not left alone, as we will remember next week in celebrating Pentecost. As Christians, despite the physical absence of our Lord, we are neither alone nor without guidance. And goodbye is not forever, when we say it to fellow Christians as Paul did there in Miletus.

I have complete sympathy with anyone who falls asleep in church, including those who might doze off during my sermon. I’m sympathetic because I’m prone in that direction as well. I can’t tell you how many times, not just in a worship service, but as a student in a class or a participant in a large business meeting and especially at home in front of the television I’ve felt my eyes droop then nodded off for a few minutes or even longer.

It is probably good that I am a pastor, or I would likely sleep in church more often than I do. Even being up front is not always a perfect preventive. The picture here is from our conference annual meeting last week, where I sat up front at the moderator’s table serving as parliamentarian. There’s not much to do in that role and I occasionally felt drowsiness steal over me. My wife Beth says she can see my heavy eyes in this picture.

So Eutychus in our text this week, Acts 20:7-12, is one of my heroes. Clearly, even listening to the Apostle Paul could get dull, as he went on and on trying to get in everything he wanted to say in one last sermon or teaching session in Troas. Eutychus dozed off in his seat in the window frame and fell to his death.

There are several warnings in Scripture about wakefulness, not the least our Lord’s own warnings about being awake and ready for His return, especially in the parable of the ten virgins. Bach’s famous cantata, Wachet auf, ruft uns die stimme, “Wake up, the voice is calling us!” is based on that text from Matthew 25:1-13. Eutychus is a living and dying illustration of those warnings!

Yet along with all those calls to be awake and alert, there are also calls to rest. After that four-and-a-half-hour meeting last Saturday, I had a five-hour drive home. That drowsiness, which might only embarrass me in a gathering with others, could kill me on the road. So I did the sensible thing. After an hour or so I pulled over into a rest area, parked, reclined my seat and went to sleep for a half hour. I woke refreshed, started the engine and continued down the road with eyes wide open.

Eutychus may be a warning about staying alert, but the miracle of his raising from the dead is also an assurance that our Lord will care for us even when we are deathly tired and have to rest. I’m not recommending that one doze off while driving, but I do see here a promise that God will watch over us at times when our own strength and wakefulness simply gives out. Even if we fail and our failures are deadly, there is resurrecting and restoring power in Christ our Lord.

So if you notice someone sleeping in church, let them be. If you doze off yourself, it’s O.K. The one who, as the psalm says, neither sleeps nor slumbers, is watching over us all, whether awake or asleep.

The public demonstration was caused by a sensational collusion of business, corrupt morality, and politics, or “money, sex and power” as a Richard Foster book title has it. And it was all overlaid with a spiritual veneer that gave religious justification to it all.

No, I’m not talking about a contemporary American event or American people of power, although I certainly could be. No, I’m talking about what happened a couple thousand years ago in Ephesus in what is now Turkey. Money, sex and power came together with idolatrous religion in a civic action which threatened true Christian faith with eradication from that city. The story is in Acts 19:21-41.

At the heart of it all was the worship of Artemis, the Greek goddess of the hunt who became Diana in Roman mythology (sidelight for fellow nerds, the character of Wonder Woman has a confused relationship with her ancient mythological roots because she is given given Greek background and parentage, but called by the Roman name Diana). In Ephesus the figure of Artemis, a virgin goddess, becomes a many-breasted idol by apparently blending the name of the Greek goddess with a pre-existing cult which worshiped a fertility goddess. The resulting distinctive image of Artemis of Ephesus was very popular and led to the construction of a beautiful temple there along with an apparently quite profitable trade in reproductions of her image.

Like people at all times and places, the silversmiths and other artisans of Ephesus responded with fear and anger when their livelihood was threatened. In the words of one Demetrius in verse 26, the Christian notion that idols made my human hands are not real gods endangered their brisk business in selling such images. The result is a vociferous rally which threatens to turn into a riot. In verse 34, the tradesman manage to shout down a city official trying to respond to their concerns by chanting their slogan, “Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!” One is reminded of recent American politics which focus on economic fear and a reclaiming of greatness.

Money, sex and power are at the heart of much idolatry, much false religion. As a recent Doonesbury cartoon reminded us all too painfully, that unholy trinity can falsify our own faith, make it less than credible and turn it into its own kind of idolatry.

The escape from idolatry is in the person of Jesus Christ. In Him, the one God who is truly material, truly human flesh and blood, we worship One who calls us away our own greatness and power and into His sacrificial and humble way of life. In Jesus, as the Eastern church, the Orthodox way which began in Greece, understands, all images of the divine become icons. They are not images to be venerated in themselves, but “windows” to view through in order to see the one true God, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

May God once again turn us away from the many-faceted idols of this world, away from the money, sex and power which they represent, and bring us to true faith and holy living once again.

Signing your name for a purchase is rapidly becoming a thing of the past. Last week Mastercard declared that signatures are no longer required on any credit card purchases. Visa, American Express, and Discover are expected to follow suit later this month. Your signed name is no longer the key to protecting against fraud. Businesses are relying on chip technology and other measures to ensure that transactions are secure.

People have long talked about the ominous specter of numbers replacing names in ordinary society and commerce. Some fundamentalist Christians have associated that trend with the “mark of the beast” mentioned in Revelation 13:16-17. Whether or not such a literal reading of that text is correct, Scripture does often highlight the importance of names, especially the divine Name.

In our text from Acts this Sunday, Acts 19:8-22, it is the name of Jesus which is at the heart of events, as observers of the Christian community see miracles happening in Jesus’ name. Seven would-be exorcists find themselves in over their heads when they attempt to duplicate Paul’s results by using the name of Jesus to drive out an evil spirit. The reply in verse 15 is a demonic, but spot-on calling out of their hubris, “Jesus I know, and Paul I know; but who are you?”

In attempting to make use of the name of Jesus, in what might be called a sort of “identity theft,” those seven sons of Sceva failed to take account of their own identities in relation to Jesus. We may want to read and be cautioned about our own presumptions in relation to the name of Jesus. As we invoke His name in our own prayers and petitions, we may want to consider who we are in relation to Jesus. Does our own sense of personal identity legitimately connect us with that Name? Or are we constructing our identities, our very selves, in some other way, perhaps on our own accomplishments or on other relationships that have little to do with Jesus?

Do we have a good answer for a demon, or anyone else, who asks us, “But who are you?” May it be so. May we place our primary identity, our personal sense of who we are, first and foremost in Jesus Christ our Savior.

Who would have known? If you are missing a piece to a favorite jigsaw puzzle and the manufacturer cannot help by replacing it, then you can contact a company (see Jigsaw Doctor) that will manufacture a replacement piece, even matching the colors and picture of the missing piece.

The difficulty with missing puzzle pieces, of course, is that you can work on the puzzle for quite awhile before discovering a piece is not there. That is like the situation when Paul found twelve believers in Ephesus who were missing part of the Christian story. As we read in Acts 19:1-7, they had gone on for some time not realizing what they were missing, in particular the role of the Holy Spirit.

Whether by divinely inspired discernment or not, Paul gets to the heart of the problem in verse 2, asking, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you became believers?” Their reply is probably less drastic than it sounds in English, “No, we have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.” Since these were followers of John who had received his baptism, they are almost certainly Jews, which means they could not have failed to hear about God’s Spirit in the Hebrew Scriptures. One would guess that they also heard John himself say about the One to come, as he does in Luke 3:16, “I baptize you with water… He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit…”

We can only surmise that these disciples of John, who have received John’s baptism (verse 3), are missing some key component of the message about Jesus which comes later than John. The missing piece could even possibly be the account of Jesus’ death and resurrection. They almost certainly have not heard about Jesus’ promise of the gift of the Spirit and the events on Pentecost.

So these believers in Ephesus are pleasantly surprised to learn that their faith includes much more than they had imagined. The work of the Holy Spirit in their own lives is a wholly unknown and unexpected benefit available to them upon good instruction and proper baptism that includes the name of Jesus (almost certainly the Trinitarian formula prescribed by Jesus Himself). The gifts of tongues and prophecy in verse 6 demonstrate that they truly did then experience the gift of the Holy Spirit.

With a complete New Testament and many centuries of Christian witness available to us, it is unlikely that we are missing some key element of Christian doctrine which ought to be included in our faith. However, we may at a practical level be functioning as if we have not heard the whole story. Acting as if one has not heard of the Holy Spirit may be a rather common Christian deficiency, as we fail to rely on the Spirit’s guidance, gifting and comfort. We may need to recall again that His work in us is in fact included in Christian life. When we are trying to put our lives together, the Spirit should not be a missing piece of the puzzle.

I’m returning now to a series of sermons in the book of Acts. My hope is to finish it over the summer and early fall. We left off last year in the middle of chapter 18, so our text for this coming Sunday is Acts 18:18-28. Verses 18-23 record Paul’s first visit to Ephesus, the end of his second missionary journey, and the beginning of his third. Verses 24 to 28 give us a glimpse of the eloquent preacher Apollos and his instruction by Priscilla and Aquila.

A superficial reading of the narrative of Acts might give the impression that Paul is constantly on the move, always looking for new territory in which to plant the Gospel. If you skip the first phrase of 18, this week’s text might confirm that impression. Paul visits Ephesus for only a short time, sets sail for the Palestine coast, lands in Caesarea, heads for Jerusalem, only to turn around, depart and return westward to Galatia and Phrygia, where it appears he is constantly moving around visiting believers in that region.

However, we need to note that verse 18 begins, “After staying there [in Corinth] for a considerable time, Paul said farewell…” Moreover, when Paul does return to Ephesus, as we will read the following week, he spends over two years there. Yes, Paul scatters his church planting and ministry as widely as he can, but he does not plant shallowly. The length of some of his stays and his letters back to churches when he is not there demonstrate that he is also concerned to plant deeply, that Christians be well-instructed in the Word of God.

That same concern for depth can be seen in the reception of Apollos by other believers and missionaries in the next section. Apollos is eloquent, smart and enthusiastic, but that is not enough. He knows only a truncated version of the Gospel, evidently derived from John the Baptist. He is missing parts of the story, perhaps including the Crucifixion and Resurrection and the Holy Spirit. In any case, Priscilla and Aquila take him aside to complete his instruction in the basics of the Christian faith. The result is even more powerful preaching and persuasion by Apollos when he travels on to Achaia (verses 27 & 28).

I submit that Apollos represents the situation of all believers. We should never assume that our instruction and grounding in the faith is complete. There is always room to grow deeper. That is why our movement (both Christian and Covenant pietist) is so committed to education and formation, especially centered in Scripture. The aim is to avoid being the rocky ground about which our Lord spoke in the parable of the sower, and to grow deep roots which result in solid and lasting growth in Him.

Like probably every other preacher in the English-speaking west, I am tickled by the humor of celebrating Easter on April Fools’ Day this year. It seems wonderfully fitting to remember on a day filled with pranks and tricks the event which from ancient times was perceived as God’s greatest trick, played on Satan. Augustine, in more than one sermon, famously portrayed the Cross of Christ as a muscipula diaboli, a mousetrap (or at least a trap) for the Devil. Satan is enticed into thinking Jesus is an ordinary mortal human being, tries to take His life by crucifixion, and is caught when Jesus is raised from the dead.

That notion of Jesus as God’s trap for the Devil captured the Christian imagination. The picture above from The Hours of Catherine of Cleves appears at the bottom of a page depicting Mary’s meeting with Elizabeth when both John the Baptist and Jesus are in utero. So the little “cartoon” at the bottom shows infant John the Baptist (on the right) ready to spring a trap baited with the infant Jesus.

More recently, the notion that the death and resurrection of Christ fools Satan is the basis for C. S. Lewis’ depiction of the death and resurrection of Aslan in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. While many theologians have questioned the appropriateness and biblical warrant of this mousetrap theory of the Atonement, it nonetheless seems to be a harmless and playful way to celebrate what God has accomplished for us in Christ, overcoming sin, death, and yes, the devil.

So this Sunday I propose to play around with the notion that God had the last laugh on Easter Sunday and that the great grace of it all is that you and I get to join in the laughter. I’ll be using the beautiful text from Isaiah 25:6-9 and mixing together the images of a grand feast, the dispelling of clouds, and yes, the end of verse 7, “he will swallow up death forever,” presumably because death is caught in the jaws of the trap.

Mean pranks are certainly not appropriate for this Easter April Fools’ Day, but joking and laughter definitely are in order. May our celebration of new life in Christ brings smiles to our faces and laughter and joy to mouths.

For this Palm Sunday, I’m backing up the lectionary text John 12:12-19 (the alternate Gospel reading) to the beginning of the chapter to include the day before story of Mary of Bethany anointing Jesus, verses 1-8. Then speculating a little, based on verse 17 which mentions the presence of a “crowd that that had been with him when he called Lazarus out of the tomb,” I suppose that Mary was also in the Palm Sunday crowd.

So I’d like to reflect on what might have been the thoughts of Mary and her critic Judas Iscariot, who complained the day before about the waste of the expensive perfume to anoint Jesus. The two of them must have had very different impressions of that donkey ride into Jerusalem, Mary looking on with love and gratitude, Judas watching with resentment and growing dissatisfaction with his master.

To my knowledge, no figure except Jesus is specifically identified in the pre-Raphaelite painting (by William Gale) above, but one might image Mary as either the exuberant woman just to Jesus left (our right) or the more quiet face of utter devotion a little further to His left. Then we might suppose the dark bearded man a little further on to our right as Judas conniving with a member of the Sanhedrin to betray Jesus.

In it all, we might wonder where our place in the crowd might be. Would we be enthusiastically greeting the Lord or worrying about the commotion He was causing? Would we be expressing devoted thankfulness for His work in our lives or would we be concerned with protecting our assets and place in the world?

Mary and Judas certainly do not exhaust the range of possible responses to Jesus, but they do highlight the fact that encountering Jesus demands a response. Will we rise to worship Him or fall back into despair and bitterness over our personal situations?

One of my favorite books by one of my favorite authors is Robert Farrar Capon’s An Offering of Uncles: The Priesthood of Adam and the Shape of the World. The second chapter is an extended reflection on the cutting and carrying home of a reed from a marsh. Capon’s notion is that carrying a ten-foot long stem with a large head on it necessarily transforms one into a figure out of story or sacred history, a knight carrying a lance, a deacon holding the bishop’s crozier, or a king or apostle with a tall walking stick. You cannot simply hold and carry it without it working some effect upon what you appear to be.

Capon’s reflection on the marsh reed is the beginning of his exposition of the idea of human priesthood, that we were created by God to receive the things of this world and give them back to God as sacred offerings. The Reformation notion of the priesthood of the believer is simply an outworking of an office designed into humanity from our beginnings.

So the epistle text for this Sunday brought Capon’s thoughts on priesthood to my mind. Hebrews 5:5-10 looks at the most enigmatic priestly figure in Scripture and compares him to Jesus. In Genesis 14:17-20, Abraham meets the king of Salem (Jerusalem), Melchizedek, priest of God Most High, and is given bread and wine in gratitude for Abraham’s defeat of their enemies. The bread and wine are especially evocative for Christians, particularly because Jesus associated himself with the kingly figure of Psalm 110, who in verse 4 of that psalm is said to be “a priest forever, after the order of Melchizedek.” Abraham also gives a tithe of his spoils from the battle to Melchizedek, further establishing the creds of this mysterious king/priest.

With Capon and the Reformation, I would say that priesthood is fundamentally a role for all human beings. Abraham plays that role himself as he receives bread and wine and then returns a gift to Melchizedek. We are all meant to receive God’s gifts in creation and give them back as sacred offerings to the Giver. That includes each other. We are at our best in human relationships when we find ways to offer each other back to God, to bring each other to Him.

The human record is that we have utterly failed in our priesthood. We have taken both creation and human relationships as our own possessions to do with as we please, and failed to give them back to their Creator. That is why in our text Christ becomes the perfect Priest, the priest with “having neither beginning of days nor end of life” as Hebrews 7:3 reflects in a longer elucidation of the Melchizedek/Jesus connection. Jesus became a high priest in order to heal and restore human priesthood, to set us right again with God and with the gifts of His creation, to make us able to once again receive it all, hold it properly, and then offer it back to God in faith and love.

Last Sunday, our text was Deuteronomy 34 about Moses’ final vision of the Promised Land from Mt. Nebo. This Sunday as we return to the lectionary assigned texts for Lent, I find the Old Testament lesson from Numbers 21:4-9 connecting us back to Mt. Nebo, where a modern sculpture Giovanni Fantoni depicts a serpentine cross. It is a tangible illustration of how Jesus used the story of the bronze serpent in the wilderness to describe His own mission to die on the Cross for our salvation.

Our worship this Sunday will be a bit unusual because we have chosen to “fast” from any printed materials or PowerPoint slides. So we will use no bulletins, hymnals, Bibles or projected words. Our Scriptures will be offered up from memory and likewise the songs we sing together. It is partly a way to remember the various Christian groups in our world who cannot afford the luxury of the printed Word or who may not even have Bibles or worship resources in their own language.

This fast from print also reminds us the power of image and the Incarnation of the Word of God in Jesus. God’s word was made visible in Christ. Men, women and children didn’t just hear about it, but saw Him with their eyes. The Crucifixion, says Jesus in John 3:14, would lift up Jesus so that He could give eternal life to anyone who believes in Him, just as anyone who looked on Moses’ bronze serpent lifted up in the wilderness would be saved from death.

In some respects our society is becoming once again more visual as media proliferate and images are easily available and everywhere we look. Yet we also continue to live in the modern age of the printed word, also more ubiquitous and easily transmitted by text or tweet. What we may miss is the vital connection and integration of word and image, the incarnate nature of reality as embodying physically words and ideas which originate in God.

So it is good to have a Sunday to remember that God “speaks” in the visible world (as Psalm 19 said last Sunday) and that God chose physical things like a bronze serpent, but especially water, bread and wine, to be the effective sacraments of salvation. Let us look on those signs and on our Savior and live.

We come this Sunday to the end of Deuteronomy and thus the end of our reading together as a congregation the first five books of the Bible. The account of the death of Moses in Deuteronomy 34 is poignant and evocative. The thought that the leader of Israel, who has come so far, endured so much and put up with so much from his people, is not able to enter the Promised Land with them feels so sad.

As I looked for images of paintings of the moment on Mt. Nebo/Pisgah, I was surprised that it does not seem to have been a theme used by some of the great artists of the Renaissance, etc. But I like the painting shown above, a 19th century piece I found. For me it evokes, the ultimate smallness of even a great man like Moses’ place in the grand design of God’s plan. It is fitting that a man known for his humility is dwarfed by the huge scene of where his people will find their future.

The account of Moses’ death, with his unknown burial place, is enigmatic, made even more so by Jude verse 9, about the archangel Michael and Satan contending over Moses’ body. Yet that may again point to his humble willingness to simply bow out of the story without great fanfare, yielding the future to God and the next generation.

As we face the end of our own lives or perhaps for younger souls the smallness of our role in things, I find this scene instructive. The great assurance of it is in God’s words in verse 4 as Moses looks over Jordan north, south and, perhaps supernaturally, as far west as the Mediterranean. “The Lord said to Moses, ‘This is the land I promised on oath to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob…'” Moses does not enter the land, but he is allowed a glimpse which affirms that the promise of God has not failed and will not fail. May you and I be granted glimpses and assurance like that.

For at least a couple years in high school, I carried around a binder with a picture of Billy Graham pasted on the inside cover. As a young man with an at-the-time confused sense of calling to pastoral ministry, I found Graham’s life and ministry inspirational. In years to come, as televangelist and mega-church pastor scandals unfolded, I was somewhat surprised to discover that Graham continued to live up to my youthful appreciation of him as a model for service to God. Not only did he remain free of scandal, I began to appreciate more and more his concern for racial equality and justice and his willingness to embrace and serve the whole range of the Christian church. Now, with many in the world, I mourn his passing. He was not by any means perfect, but he consistently pointed the way to God through Jesus Christ and lived that way himself.

As we near the end of our Immerse reading of the Pentateuch, I realize how much Moses presents us with a model of consistent, faithful service to God, constantly pointing his people in the right direction. The little summary of the Law in Deuteronomy 10:12-22, which is our text for this Sunday, shows us Moses at his best, pointing Israel toward that which matters most in their relationship with God.

In particular in this text is a key word for our time, that God is perfectly just, while at the same time particularly concerned about the poor, widows, orphans and aliens. Verse 19 focuses in on asking Israel to “love the alien” in the same way God does, because they themselves were aliens in Egypt. As Scripture does throughout, the first part of the text focusing on love and devotion to God connects seamlessly to loving and serving others.

Our Gospel lesson from Mark 8:31-38 shows us Peter being rebuked for misunderstanding the nature of Jesus’ mission, for trying to dissuade Jesus from the way of the Cross. Once again we see that loving our Savior directly involves us in sacrificial love for others. Attempts to avoid that sort of sacrifice take us down the the wrong path.

The way of the Christian is the way of Jesus, Moses and Billy Graham, the way which consistently holds together love of God and love of others, no matter the cost.

The Oregon Department of Transportation recently rolled out flashing orange arrows as a new form of traffic signal here in Eugene. Unfortunately, those signals are not accompanied by the helpful sign seen in this photo, which was apparently taken in Pennsylvania. These arrows are supposed to tell us that a turn is allowed but, as the sign in the picture says, to do it cautiously, yielding to oncoming traffic. But with no explanatory sign or other driver education, many folks just don’t get it. I’ve seen a driver sit there waiting, apparently, for a green arrow when a turn was perfectly safe and also seen drivers make the orange arrow turn in the face of oncoming traffic when it wasn’t safe at all.

We hope for clear directions for vehicle drivers, but even more we hope for clear direction through life and in relationship to God.  That’s why I chose this week’s sermon text from Numbers 9:15-23. The Israelites in the wilderness were blessed with crystal clear guidance about when to stay and when to move on from each of their encampments. A cloud covered the Tabernacle by day and a pillar of fire by night. When the cloud lifted, it was time to move and the cloud led them to the next spot to camp.

It would sure be nice to have something like that cloud telling us when to stop and when to go as we make various decisions. But it feels like much of the time the Lord leaves us to our own devices and freedom of choice. Sometimes we choose well and sometimes we don’t.

In the New Testament, guidance often appears in the form of the Holy Spirit, as in the Gospel reading for Sunday, the first in Lent, Mark 1:9-15. In verse 12, Jesus is guided, “driven,” by the Spirit out into the wilderness, where He was tempted. But that’s not how it usually is for us, it seems. Most of the time we feel like we’re doing the driving and, if He’s doing anything, the Spirit is making vague suggestions from the back seat.

So I’m honestly not sure yet what this passage from Numbers has to teach us yet, except for the obvious point that the Israelites obeyed the clear direction sent them in the pillars of cloud and fire. Maybe our problem is not that we don’t have enough plain guidance, but that we are not willing to follow it when we get it.

I’ve been puzzling over how to connect a text from our Immerse reading of the book of Leviticus this week with the upcoming Transfiguration Sunday text from Mark 9:2-9. It finally struck me that the connection is there in those “tabernacles” Peter wished to construct for Jesus, Moses and Elijah on the mountain. The Feast of Tabernacles has its first clear designation in Leviticus 23:33-43. And both biblical scholarship and church tradition see a connection.

The traditional date for the Feast of the Transfiguration is not this coming last Sunday of Epiphany. It’s August 6, which Catholics, Orthodox and Anglicans all still celebrate as the Feast of Transfiguration. Celebration at the end of Epiphany just before Lent is a more recent Protestant innovation. The August date makes it closer to the fall, September or October, date of the Feast of Sukkot, the contemporary Jewish Feast of Tabernacles.

Eastern Orthodox Christians specifically connect the feasts of Transfiguration and Tabernacles, seeing Tabernacles as “the feast of the coming kingdom,” which is fulfilled by the coming of Christ and manifest in the Transfiguration.

In Matthew, Mark and Luke, the account of the Transfiguration begins by saying it occurs at the end of an approximately week-long period (6 days in Matthew and Mark, 8 days in Luke). That leads some Bible scholars to believe that it in fact occurred at the end of the Feast of Tabernacles. Which could be the reason the notion of those temporary shelters was at the top of Peter’s mind when he did not know what else to say, as Mark 9:6 tells us.

In any case, I’ve got my connection to Leviticus and a text from that book to start from for my sermon. In Leviticus, the Feast of Tabernacles is largely agricultural, celebrating the conclusion of the harvest. It’s a time of joy bookended by two days of complete rest, a celebration of work completed and abundance of provision. That reminds us of the gifts of new life we enjoy and celebrate in Christ.

At the end of the directions for Feast of Tabernacles in Leviticus 23:42 and 43, the festival is specifically connected with Israel’s life in the wilderness. It’s a week of living in temporary shelters which recalls that is how it was when they came out of Egypt. They lived in “tabernacles,” in tents. And God met them there in the Tabernacle which they built and carried with them. As Leviticus also recalls, the glory and presence of God was there in that Tabernacle, in the midst of the smaller tabernacles in which they lived.

So the presence and glory of Jesus, shown to Peter, James and John on the mountain, is a sign that God continues to come and meet us where we live. As I suggested in last week’s sermon, Jesus Himself is the new tabernacle of God’s presence. On the mountain we see that plainly through the apostles’ eyes.

One other thought occurs to me. For Jews, Sukkot, the Feast of Tabernacles, includes a strong mandate to welcome guests, ushpizin in Hebrew. So inviting guests to celebrate a meal with you in your booth is a blessed act. Perhaps that’s one reason Peter’s plan for tabernacles on the mountain failed. It would have kept the blessing of Jesus for the three disciples alone. But the ultimately the tabernacled presence of God is meant to be for everyone through Christ. His glory could not be closed up and kept on the mountain. He went back down into the world to give that glory to us all.

Who is the first person in the Bible said to be filled with the Spirit? One of the patriarchs, David the king, a prophet? No, it is a little remembered artist whose name, Bezalel, appears in Exodus 31 and again in Exodus 35-36. Along with Oholiab, who may be his assistant, Bezalel is the craftsman charged with carrying out the design of the Tabernacle given to Moses. In Exodus 35:30 we read that “The Lord has called by name Bezalel… he has filled him with the Spirit of God, with skill, intelligence, and knowledge of in every kind of craft.” The full text for the sermon Sunday will be Exodus 35:30 – 36:7.

This week our congregation is reading together the second half of Exodus. While that section includes the dramatic incident of the golden calf, most of it is a rather monotonous and repetitive account of the giving of the design for the Tabernacle and then the actual implementation of that design. There are lists of materials and of various parts to be constructed as well as a long account of the construction in simple terms. For example, Exodus 36:31-33: “He made bars of acacia wood, five for the frames of the one side of the tabernacle, and five bars for the frames of the other side of the tabernacle, and five bars for the frames of the tabernacle at the rear westward. He made the middle bar to pass through from end to end halfway up the frames.” One’s eyes glaze over reading much of such prose.

However, verse 34 goes on from the above, “And he overlaid the frames with gold, and made rings of gold for them to hold the bars, and overlaid the bars with gold.” Throughout the tedious description of the parts of the structure, we find the ornamentation also described, blue, crimson and purple needlework decorating the curtains, gold overlaying wood, golden cherubim and gold ornaments shaped like almond blossoms. The priests’ garments are decorated with precious stones and with golden bells and pomegranates fashioned from the same blue, crimson and purple yarns that decorate the curtains. This structure is designed, by God, to be beautiful to the eye.

So as dull as it might be, this is good reading for 21st century Protestant Christians who have been misled since the Reformation and especially in the last fifty to sixty years to imagine that it’s O.K. for our worship spaces to be bare, plain and even ugly, to offer nothing to the eye except, perhaps, some images on a screen.

Some commentators have seen a message in the Tabernacle’s wood and gold, golden almond blossoms and pomegranates, lamps giving light and basin filled with water. It’s a miniature of creation in which God’s presence comes to dwell, showing us that is what God means to do, to fill and dwell within the actual creation itself, to fill and live in our world, in us. Which of course is what He did in fact come to do in Jesus Christ and through the gift of the Holy Spirit who filled that ancient artist Bezalel.

So let’s not have our senses dulled to what we are reading. Let us see it with our hearts and minds and have our imaginations kindled toward making our own worship, the space, the music, the banners, the candles, all of it a bit of beautiful creation by which we remember that God wants to live here with us and among us and in us. Our God, our Lord Jesus Christ, is beauty Himself. Let us celebrate His beauty in beautiful ways.