Sermons

Sukkot begins on the 15th day of Tishrei and runs for seven days. It is a holiday of happiness, in part due to the celebration surrounding the harvest.

READING Hebrew Scriptures
Exodus 23
The Annual Festivals

¹⁴ Three times in the year you shall hold a festival for me. ¹⁵ You shall observe the festival of unleavened bread; as I commanded you, you shall eat unleavened bread for seven days at the appointed time in the month of Abib, for in it you came out of Egypt.

No one shall appear before me empty-handed.

¹⁶ You shall observe the festival of harvest, of the first fruits of your labor, of what you sow in the field. You shall observe the festival of ingathering at the end of the year, when you gather in from the field the fruit of your labor.

Deuteronomy 16
The Festival of Booths Reviewed

¹³ You shall keep the festival of booths^[b] for seven days, when you have gathered in the produce from your threshing floor and your wine press. ¹⁴ Rejoice during your festival, you and your sons and your daughters, your male and female slaves, as well as the Levites, the strangers, the orphans, and the widows resident in your towns. ¹⁵ Seven days you shall keep the festival to the Lord your God at the place that the Lord will choose; for the Lord your God will bless you in all your produce and in all your undertakings, and you shall surely celebrate.

Nehemiah 8
The Festival of Booths Celebrated

¹³ On the second day the heads of ancestral houses of all the people, with the priests and the Levites, came together to the scribe Ezra in order to study the words of the law. ¹⁴ And they found it written in the law, which the Lord had commanded by Moses, that the people of Israel should live in booths^[b] during the festival of the seventh month, ¹⁵ and that they should publish and proclaim in all their towns and in Jerusalem as follows, “Go out to the hills and bring branches of olive, wild olive, myrtle, palm, and other leafy trees to make booths,^[c] as it is written.” ¹⁶ So the people went out and brought them, and made booths^[d] for themselves, each on the roofs of their houses, and in their courts and in the courts of the house of God, and in the square at the Water Gate and in the square at the Gate of Ephraim. ¹⁷ And all the assembly of those who had returned from the captivity made booths^[e] and lived in them; for from the days of Jeshua son of Nun to that day the people of Israel had not done so. And there was very great rejoicing.

READING The Skkah Still Stands by Rabbi Avi Shafran
Despite the dangers and tragedies of our world, we can take comfort in the divine protection symbolized by the Sukkah.

A sukkaleh, quite small,
Wooden planks for each wall;
Lovingly I stood them upright.
I laid thatch as a ceiling
And now, filled with deep feeling,
I sit in my sukkaleh at night.
A chill wind attacks,
Blowing through the cracks;
The candles, they flicker and yearn.
It’s so strange a thing
That as the Kiddush I sing,
The flames, calmed, now quietly burn.
In comes my daughter,
Bearing hot food and water;
Worry on her face like a pall.
She just stands there shaking
And, her voice nearly breaking,
Says "Tattenyu, the sukkah’s going to fall!"
Dear daughter, don’t fret;
It hasn’t fallen yet.
The sukkah will be fine, understand.
There have been many such fears,
For nigh two thousand years;
Yet the sukkahleh continues to stand.

SERMON
Sukkot is a Biblical Festival of Joy, it’s even called zman simchateinu – “the season of our joy”. The Scripture commands us explicitly to be joyful during Sukkot:

¹³ Celebrate the Festival of Tabernacles for seven days after you have gathered the produce of your threshing floor and your winepress. ¹⁴ Be joyful at your festival—you, your sons and daughters, your male and female servants, and the Levites, the foreigners, the fatherless and the widows who live in your towns. ¹⁵ For seven days celebrate the festival to the Lord your God at the place the Lord will choose. For the Lord your God will bless you in all your harvest and in all the work of your hands, and your joy will be complete. (Deut. 16:13-15)

About Sukkot
Sukkot is a Jewish holiday that Gentiles don’t know very well. The festival of booths or tabernacles follows Rosh Hashanah and the High Holy Days and Yom Kippur. Some scholars regard Sukkot as the primary holiday in the Jewish year. Why? What is this all about? And what is with the booth thing anyway? Let me give you a brief description of Sukkot and the booth – or Sukkah in some sort of context.

Sukkot is a time of celebration, of thanksgiving and gratitude. Like other Jewish holidays, it includes song, food and dance. Unlike other Jewish holidays, it is not the typical story of persecution and redemption… you know, the one that describes Jewish holidays as “We are G—d’s chosen people. Others don’t like us. They try to kill us off. We survive. Let’s eat.”

This holiday is more like - “We are G—d’s chosen people. Be grateful. Remember from where our strength and protection come. We must be joyful.” It works.

This is the harvest festival – so gratitude seems appropriate. Nearly all agrarian cultures have a harvest festival, even if we’ve moved far away from our agrarian roots. Sukkot comes at the very end of the agricultural year. In this part of the Middle East, the crops are mostly finished earlier in the year, so now, it is truly the end of the harvest. Bringing in the last of the crops and tearing down the sheaves and stalks and getting ready for the winter rest. All is safely gathered in. Time to celebrate and be joyful.

Ok. But what about the booths? This wouldn’t be a Jewish custom without many interpretations and origin stories among the Jewish scholars and story tellers. Here is what I gather from all that. The booth is intentionally temporary. There is nothing permanent about it. There are, naturally, lots of stipulations about how to build your booth and how big it must be and how big it is allowed to be. The walls are sturdy enough to withstand the wind and rain – so often now made of wood or canvas. Typically, three walls, but four is ok. No door. An opening in the 4^th wall. The roof is thatched. This seems very important. It can be gathered together and thrown up over the walls, or more likely, it can be loosely woven and sort of tied to the top of the walls, but not in any elaborate way. Remember – this is a temporary structure and will be dismantled at the end of the week-long festival. Here’s something about the roof … it must be loose enough that one can see the night stars through the roof – not the whole sky all at once, but the weave needs to be loose enough so one can look out and see the sky from within the booth.

Two thoughts about the temporary, always impermanent nature of the sukkah. The sukkah is a reminder of the temporary dwelling places of the Hebrew people after they left slavery in Egypt and wandered the desert for 40 years. Then, they would have had tents of some kind, but the tents of a wandering people that are put up and taken down from day to day. Remembering the time of wandering in the desert is important in keeping cultural and religious connections with the Jewish people. The roof is open enough to see the sky, the night stars, the heavens, the essence of G-d who watches over G-d’s people.

And that’s the second explanation for the temporary structure. We must know and understand that our strength and protection do not come from our own efforts, mighty and wonderful as they might be. We are tempted to rely on our own cleverness and determination in creating and maintaining our safety and comfort. We build big strong things – buildings, organizations, governments, families and clans and tribes, financial institutions – all these we make so that we are protected and happy. These things of which we are so proud can crumble like dust under sufficient stress and assault. Like the ancient Hebrew people who wandered the desert with practically nothing, we will find, sooner or later, that our only real and lasting strength and protection come not from our own hands but from the Love that creates and holds all of us in its embrace. For Jews, this Love is experienced in the thousands of years of their relationship with YHWH, the G-d of all. We must know that everything we build is temporary. Love, or G-d, is the only real and lasting protection we have. Sleeping in the sukkah for a week, looking through the roof to see the night sky and the stars above is a beautiful ritual reminder of this simple yet life-affirming truth.

Why are we commanded to celebrate, to dance, to sing, and to be joyful? So many Jewish holidays are stark remembrances of the suffering endured by the Jewish people throughout their history. Not this holiday.

Sukkot follows Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. The time for inner spiritual reflection and the mending of relationships has come and gone. During the High Holy Days, Jews contemplate their life for the last year. They are expected to get real about all the ways that they have fallen short of their best intentions and highest aspirations. They acknowledge their wrongdoing – sin if you will. They make amends where they can. They repair relationships that have been broken or damaged when they can. They repent and begin again in love. They seek forgiveness after they have made amends. They offer forgiveness to those who have harmed them and who come asking to do what is necessary to restore the relationship.

All this is solemn and often gut-wrenching hard work. At the end of this time of contemplation and restoring right relationships lies Yom Kippur – the Day of Atonement. On Yom Kippur, the High Priest enters the Holy of Holies in the Jerusalem Temple and presents to the divine all the sins and all the forgiveness and all the hard work of the people in order that all may be right with YHWH. Names are entered into the Book of Life and a new year begins.

Then, a few days later – hallelujah, Sukkot arrives. The physical work of growing and harvesting food for the year is finally finished. The solemn spiritual work is done. Contemplation, restitution, forgiveness, a new beginning – all set for another year. So – the commandment now is: Be Joyful. Build your booth. Go there for seven days of joyous living. Eat, sleep, hang out with your friends and family, engage in your spiritual practices. And … BE JOYFUL. You are reminded once again that your strength, your protection, your very life, come from the great and everlasting Love that surrounds you and will not let you go – ever. Even when bad things happen, as they will, this Love holds you and keeps you as you go through the stuff that life brings you - - right to the ending of your life.

Whew! I don’t know why Gentiles haven’t taken this holiday and re-made it into something generic that all of us can celebrate in our own ways. We’ve done that with so many festivals and holidays of ancient religions and spiritual practices. How or why we missed this one, I don’t know, but it seems like there are things we can learn from Sukkot, the Season of Our Joy.

Take-Aways
There are precious nuggets of wisdom contained within Sukkot that we might gather up and use in our own lives.

• Remember our ancestors whose courage and determination to make a new life in a strange land has come down to us through the generations as a gift of spirit and resilience
• First, do the hard work
  • Growing and harvesting food for our lives
  • Contemplation, Making Amends, Asking for Forgiveness, Granting Forgiveness, Beginning again in Love
• Then, celebrate - and our Season of Joy is real and sustainable
  • It is good to sing and dance and be joyful
• All of our human constructs are temporary
  • Strength and Protection come from Love
  • Blessings will follow when we open ourselves to that Love
• Gratitude is the appropriate response to the blessings and challenges of our lives

Blessings for a Joyous Year
The final Sukkot blessing in the Jewish tradition

Baruch atah, Adonai Eloheinu, Melech haolam,
shehechehyanu, v'kiy'manu, v'higianu laz'man hazeh.

Blessed are You, Adonai our God, Sovereign of all who, has kept us alive, sustained us, and brought us to this season.

I leave you with these words of John O’Donohue – A blessing for celebration and joy.

FOR AN OCCASION OF CELEBRATION

Now is the time to free the heart,
Let all intentions and worries stop,
Free the joy inside the self,
Awaken to the wonder of your life.

Open your eyes and see the friends,
Whose hearts recognize your face as kin,
Those whose kindness watchful and near,
Encouraging you to live everything here.

See the gifts the years have given,
Things your effort could never earn,
The health to enjoy who you want to be
And the mind to mirror mystery.
- John O'Donohue
"To Bless The Space Between Us" ("Benedictus" in the U.K. and Europe)

Blessed Be.   I Love You.   Amen.