As we come to the end of Israel’s September 30 to October 8 Sukkot holiday, I’ve been thinking again about the significance of a harvest festival (Exod 23:16).
Israel’s annual cycle of seven harvest festivals gave a nation an opportunity to remember that no matter how much human effort goes into the agricultural enterprise, it is God who gives the increase.
What makes the harvest festivals of Israel distinct from any other nations’ thanksgiving holidays is that they were linked to an epic drama of historically rooted acts of God.
Until Jesus, the cycle of harvest festivals pointed back to events that began with God’s deliverance from Egypt on the night of the Passover sacrifice. Even the “great ingathering festival” of Sukkot/Tabernacles was celebrated with symbolic “camping out” shelters that reminded a nation of how God had then shown his ability to provide even in a barren wilderness.
In the beginning, the annual cycle was given as a reminder to those who would be inclined to think that it was by their own hard work (or by relying on other gods) that they brought in the harvest and made their own daily bread.
From our point in history we see something else that we’ve talked about before.
After Israel had been in the land for hundreds of years, Jesus of Nazareth, combined his love for the poor, his miracles, and his wisdom, with a plan of rescue that took place during the week of his people’s Spring Festivals:
- The Feast of Passover
- The Feast (week) of Unleavened Bread,
- The Feast of Firstfruits (for the barley crop)
Looking back, these first three feasts gave a rich historical and spiritual backdrop for the greater “Exodus” events of Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection.
It was on the night of Jesus’ own Passover sacrifice that Jesus said, “I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.” (John 12:24)…
Seven weeks (fifty days) later, the Spirit that Jesus had promised to send in his absence (Acts 1:8) came during the feast of weeks (also called Pentecost). It was a holiday that was used not only to thanks for the first fruits of the wheat harvest, but traditionally to remember and celebrate the giving of the Law to Moses.
By the giving of his Spirit, the resurrected Lord showed how the harvest would grow. In the end, the greatest of all ingatherings will not be celebrated in honor of the law of Moses, but with overwhelming thanksgiving for the Spirit, mercy, grace, and love of the God who literally planted himself in the ground– for us.
In a political season that is obsessed with differences over which side is right, more moral, and better for our country, this might be a good time to remember that the joy of the harvest is not found in Moses– but in the mercy of the One whose story the great lawgiver of Israel helped to tell.
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