Saturday. March 26
Jeremiah 5:20-31
Psalms 23, 27, 75, 76
Romans 3:19-31
John 7:1-13
John 7:1-13
I imagine Jesus walking around at the festival of Booths, observing the people living in tents decorated with bamboo shoots or tree branches, following God’s command of them years and years before: “You shall live in booths seven days; all citizens in Israel shall live in booths, in order that future generations may know that I made the Israelite people live in booths when I brought them out of the land of Egypt” (Lev. 23:42-43).
During Lent, like the Jewish people during the festival of Booths, we too choose to remind ourselves of the impermanence of our lives. By practicing Lenten disciplines we are reminded of life’s fragility. When we fast, we remember how much we depend on food in our daily lives. When we pray, we realize how difficult it is to hear God’s voice amidst the din of our busy lives. We begin to understand that while we have a roof over our head, food, entertainment, loved ones, all of us are in exile. We all are estranged from our eternal home in God. We feel disconnected, lost, confused - even when it seems as though, on the surface, God has granted us all we ever asked for.
Yet – we have good news. Jesus offers us a new way of being. When he tells the disciples, “the world hates me because I testify against it that its works are evil,” what he is saying is that the world hates him because he is proclaiming the coming of God’s new Kingdom. In God’s Kingdom, exile is no more because Jesus himself has born the burden of exile and sin on the cross.
Our challenge is to discover what it means to live as though God’s Kingdom is available to us – because it is! – while we are still living in tents, in an impermanent and ever-changing world. What would it mean for us to live into the notion that God will fulfill his promises and is already doing so in our lives? Jesus is walking among us, offering us a life free from the things we feel dependent on. Are we following Him to freedom?
Sarah Taylor