[Oe List ...] 9/04/14, Spong: Part XXVI Matthew: Sukkoth - The Harvest Festival

Thu Sep 4 10:58:41 PDT 2014

Thank you, Ellie,  for your faithful sharing of John Spong¹s newsletters.
As often is the case, I was drawn to his Q & A section, today¹s  is about
funeral liturgies.  Spong¹s response directed us to the Liturgy Project as
part of Progressive Christianity.  A couple of the suggested references are
by Mark Dove.  
Some good reading as we look toward our senior years and making plans for
our final liturgies.  Good also for our children to read so they are clear
about our wishes.  

We aren¹t hearing much about Ferguson this week, so hope lots of good behind
the scenes work of reconciliation and future planning is going on.
Blessings on the work you folks are doing.   Lynda

From:  Ellie Stock via OE <oe at lists.wedgeblade.net>
Reply-To:  Carl & Ellie Stock <Elliestock at aol.com>
Date:  Thursday, September 4, 2014 at 12:31 PM
To:  <dialogue at lists.wedgeblade.net>, <oe at lists.wedgeblade.net>
Subject:  [Oe List ...] 9/04/14, Spong: Part XXVI Matthew: Sukkoth - The
Harvest Festival

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Part XXVI Matthew 
Sukkoth - The Harvest Festival
Labor Day is over. Little children, carrying new book satchels and wearing
new clothes, have found their way back to their schools. University students
have returned to their campuses and the football season is well underway.
Summer¹s vacation time is over. So it is time for this column to return to
its theme for the year, a week by week study of the gospel of Matthew. We
study Matthew through this column, however, from a very different
perspective than the way we once did in our childhood Sunday school classes.
We read it through Jewish eyes with the recognition that it is a Jewish
book. This gospel is a product of the synagogue and was written before
Christianity separated itself from Judaism. Matthew¹s organizing principle
is not the life of Jesus, as we have assumed through the ages, but is the
liturgical calendar followed in the synagogue. Week by week I have sought to
illustrate how the memories of Jesus have been related to the holy days in
the Jewish calendar. That is why the story of Jesus¹ crucifixion has been
attached to the Passover. That is why Matthew¹s ³Sermon on the Mount² has
been shaped by the liturgy of Shavuot, which remembers the time when Moses
received the Torah on Mt. Sinai. That is why the story of John the Baptist
and the signs of the in-breaking Kingdom of God have been attached to Rosh
Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, when prayers for God¹s kingdom to come are
recited. We have examined each of these connections in great detail. Today
we come in our study to the next holy day of the Jewish calendar. It is
called Sukkoth and it is the harvest festival of the Jewish people. Thus we
re-enter our study of Matthew¹s gospel at this point.
This Jewish version of Thanksgiving Day was probably the most anticipated,
happiest celebration of the liturgical year. It came when the agricultural
cycle was complete and the harvested food was stored for the winter. The
Jewish people called it not just Sukkoth, but Tabernacles and Booths as
well. It was an eight day observance and was the third holy season to be
observed in the Jewish fall month of Tishri. Strangely enough, however,
despite its clear popularity, which exceeded that of both Passover and
Shavuot, this festival was only mentioned by name once in the entire New
Testament (John 7).
Mark, as we have earlier observed in this series, began his gospel with the
Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah, on the first day of the month of Tishri, and
he concluded it with Passover in the spring month of Nisan. Mark then added
the single story of Jesus¹ resurrection to the first Sabbath after Passover
to conclude his story. That is why the original text of Mark¹s gospel comes
to an end rather abruptly with verse 8 of chapter 16.
Major Jewish festivals, like Sukkoth and Dedication (Hanukkah), however,
later took on an octave of eight days to enhance their meaning. So it was
not long before an octave came to be wrapped around Easter by the
Christians. This meant that a second Easter story had to be developed to
provide a proper lesson for the second Sabbath that would fall within the
octave. So someone added to Mark¹s final chapter verses 9-20, which are
still carried in some versions of the Bible as part of Mark¹s original text.
This second resurrection story, written well after the original publication
of Mark, thus gave some early Christians a chance to flesh out Mark¹s rather
spare story of Easter. They did just that. Recall that in the original
Marcan Easter story there was no recorded resurrection appearance of Jesus
made to anyone, so by adding verses 9-20 more spectacular details could be
included. When we move to the later gospels, we discover that each of them
has two distinct resurrection stories to cover the two Sabbaths that would
be included within the octave. In Matthew one of these stories is set at the
tomb near Jerusalem while the other takes place in Galilee on top of a
mountain. Luke¹s two Easter stories are set with one at the tomb near
Jerusalem and the other in a village called Emmaus. Finally, John also gives
us two resurrection stories, the first revolving around the tomb and
featuring Magdalene, Peter and the ³Beloved Disciple.² The second was set in
the upper room involving appearances to the disciples, once without Thomas
and once with Thomas.
The harvest festival, called Sukkoth, became the best known of the octave
celebrations in the Jewish liturgical year. While Mark, Matthew and Luke do
not mention Sukkoth by name, they each, however, have included a cluster of
harvest stories located at exactly the right time in the Jewish calendar to
allow the followers of Jesus to celebrate this eight day festival with
appropriate Jesus¹ narratives.
In Mark, the whole of chapter 4 is dedicated to harvest stories, most
particularly including that long and elaborate ³parable of the sower,² who
sowed his seed on four different kinds of soil and thereby produced four
different kinds of harvest. It is clear in Mark¹s gospel that Sukkoth has
arrived in the synagogue. Matthew will follow Mark¹s lead very closely.
Before we begin to look at Matthews¹s version of the Sukkoth celebration,
however, let me first flesh out our knowledge of all the aspects that the
observance of Sukkoth contained. A major element was a liturgical procession
through the streets of Jerusalem and into the Temple. For this procession,
the worshipers carried a bundle of leafy branches called a ³lulab.² These
branches were made up, according to a prescription set forth in the book of
Leviticus, from the trees of willow, myrtle and palm. They were bound
together and carried in the right hand of those in the procession, where
they were waved during the march as the worshippers recited the words of the
118th psalm, the psalm most associated with Sukkoth. Among the words of this
psalm are these: ³Hosanna in the highest, blessed is the one who comes in
the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest.² Waving leafy branches and
reciting these words are immediately recognized by Christians as reminiscent
of the Palm Sunday procession, which makes it appear that they might have
originally been borrowed from Sukkoth and moved to Palm Sunday. This is just
one of the reasons why some scholars suggest that Passover was not the
original context of the crucifixion, and that historically the crucifixion
was an event that occurred in the fall of the year rather than in the
spring. Perhaps the movement of the crucifixion from Sukkoth in the fall to
Passover in the spring came primarily from the interpretive process of
identifying Jesus as the new paschal lamb of Passover. Paul had originally
made this connection about the year 54, long before any of the gospels were
written, when he wrote the letters to the church in Corinth and proclaimed
that Christ is ³our new paschal lamb who has been sacrificed for us,
therefore,² he continued, ³let us keep the feast.²
The next thing that marked the Sukkoth celebration was that, in addition to
waving leafy branches in the air as they walked around the Temple reciting
the words of Psalm 118, they also carried in their left hand something
called an ethrog (pronounced e-trog) into which was placed the sweet
smelling fruit, perhaps even the zest, as well as the leaves and the flowers
of the citron tree. There is some speculation that this ethrog custom was
represented in the gospel story by the account of the women bringing sweet
smelling spices to Jesus¹ tomb on Easter morning.
The final distinguishing mark of the Sukkoth celebration was that the people
were encouraged to erect a temporary booth outside their homes in which, on
one of the eight days of the Sukkoth celebration, they were required to eat
a ceremonial meal. From these temporary structures this celebration acquired
³Booths² as one of its traditional names. These booths were said to remind
the people of that historical time spent in the wilderness between Egypt and
what they believed was their ³promised land,² when, as a people, they lived
without housing that had any permanency.
These symbols were all brought together in the Sukkoth celebration, when the
leafy branches were laid across the top of the temporary booth to provide a
covering; the ethrog was placed inside the booth to provide it with a
special fragrance, while they observed the ritual of eating a ceremonial
meal inside that temporary dwelling.
Are there any echoes of this ³booth² tradition in the gospel story? We
speculate, once we develop Jewish eyes, that the tomb of Jesus might have
been originally conceived of as a ³temporary dwelling.² It was said to have
been the gift of one named Joseph of Arimathea, described in Mark as ³a
ruler of the Jews² and in Matthew as ³a rich man.² The story of Joseph of
Arimathea appears in all four gospels, but no mention of him ever appears
except in this final episode in Jesus¹ life. Most scholars believe that this
Joseph tradition has its origins, not in historical memory so much as in the
task of making the story of Jesus conform to the messianic expectations
found in the prophets. II Isaiah (chapters 40-55) does say in chapter 53
that the ³suffering servant,² the hero of this 6th century BCE passage,
whose story was so often applied to Jesus, was himself ³with a rich man in
his death² (Isa.53:9).
Perhaps a more specific identification between the temporary dwelling of
Sukkoth and the Easter story appears in Luke¹s Emmaus Road story. Luke is
the only gospel to record this account of Cleopas and his companion,
stopping at a temporary place to share a ceremonial meal with the stranger,
who had accompanied them from Jerusalem after the crucifixion. In this
unique episode, the stranger was said to have presided over that ceremony by
³taking, blessing, breaking and giving² the bread in order to start that
meal with the traditional blessing. In this action, Luke said, the stranger
was recognized as Jesus and then vanished out of their sight.
For those who have the eyes to see, Jewish symbols are constantly woven into
the gospel narratives. Now with the symbols of Sukkoth raised to our
consciousness, we will return to Matthew¹s narrative and watch how he weaves
his story of Jesus around the observance of Sukkoth, the harvest festival of
the Jews.
~John Shelby Spong
Read the essay online here
<http://johnshelbyspong.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb23
2418480&id=099a52055b&e=db34daa597> .

Question & Answer
John Nelson  from Canada, via the Internet, writes:
Question:
>From time to time, my wife and I update our papers and documentation that
will be needed when we die. The standard liturgies, readings, etc. as found
in the Anglican Book of Alternate Services (or the Book of Common Prayer) do
not fit very well with where we are in our spiritual journey. Do you have in
your library a liturgy or liturgies that would fit more closely with many of
the ideas and thoughts that we have come to know and love in your books and
speeches? 
We want to have a funeral service that is based on contemporary biblical and
theological scholarship. We do not want to listen to pious talk about
everlasting life or to be told that in heaven there is a mansion with many
rooms. We do not want to listen to nostalgic visions of a place where we
will once again be reunited with our loved ones and friends who have gone
before us. It would be of far greater meaning to us to be related in that
service of the thought of Paul Tillich and to the understanding of God as
the Ground of Being in whom all life is rooted.

Answer:
Dear John, 
Thank you for your letter. It is very unusual. Few people write with this
kind of request and I regret to say that few people in the church have given
much time or thought to such a request. The first prerequisite would be to
have a minister who understands what you are requesting and one who is
willing to work with you to create such a liturgy.
Most of the liturgies of the church reflect the historic compromises with
literalism. They do not bother me as much as they seem to bother you, for I
view them as a kind of poetic attempt to penetrate life¹s deepest mystery.
Most people need rather concrete images. The shock of loss is sometimes so
intense that we grasp for images on which to cling. The Church has always
been willing to provide them. I do not think, however, that funeral services
are the time or place to work out new theological understandings. The beauty
of your letter is that you want to work these things out in advance.
I suggest that you examine the proposed scripture readings as the first
step. Many of the suggested ones come from the Fourth Gospel and they are
generally understood to be literal. ³I am the Resurrection and the life² for
example, is from John. So is ³In my father¹s house are many mansions.² If
John is properly understood, these are poetic words used to describe
mystical oneness, but that is not what most people hear. I suggest that you
look at a reading from Ecclesiastes on the meaning of life. There is also
nothing to prevent you from reading a selection from Paul Tillich. I urge
you to read from one of the three books of sermons and not from his
Systematic Theology volumes. Tillich connected with the common mind when he
preached in the chapel of Union Theological Seminary in New York City or in
the chapel at Harvard Divinity School. When he wrote theology, he seems to
have only his fellow academics in mind. The titles of his best known books
of sermons are, The Shaking of the Foundation, The New Being and The Eternal
Now.
I find that the funeral prayers that mean the most to me are prayers of
thanksgiving in which we recall the things about the deceased that so deeply
enriched our lives. When we are in grief, it is important to remember that
grief is always an expression of the fact that something of great meaning
has been taken from our lives, so there is comfort in rejoicing over the
privilege each us of had had being the recipient of those gifts.
How one speaks about hope in the presence of death is not easy, but I think
it can be done. I attempted to do just that when I wrote the book entitled:
Eternal Life: A New Vision Beyond Religion, Beyond Theism and Beyond Heaven
and Hell. It is still the best I can do. I do not believe that death is the
end of life, but I do not know how to talk about that in words I have to use
that are bound by both time and space. I also believe deeply in the reality
of God, but I also do not know how to articulate that belief in my human
vocabulary. That is why mysticism appeals to me so much. Ultimately, the
mystic must abandon words and learn to worship in wordless wonder.
I suspect that many people share your concern. I invite them to share their
insights with you by responding to this column. I will pass their comments
on to you. 
My best, 
John Shelby Spong

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