How do you feel about camping?
Let’s do a fist to five. Hold up 5 fingers if you love the kind of camping I call out. Fist if you hate it, and something in the middle if you could live with it.
Let’s start high end, which some of you might think doesn’t really count as camping. Caravanning or Camper Van Living? Fist to five – go.
How about Eurocamp kind of camping – where you turn up and the tent’s already set up and good to go, and you don’t need to worry about putting it up or packing it away? Fist to five – go.
Let’s go down the scale a bit. Camping where you have to carry your tent and put it up and down yourself – maybe even wild camping? Fist to five – go.
Last one. No tent. Just a bivvy bag and whatever branches, leaves, ferns, you can find to make a shelter. Anyone for that? Fist to five – go.
Over the last month or so, we’ve been meeting with Jesus in different places, and seeing what he does in those places, and exploring what that might mean for our encounter with him. We started at the Pool of Bethesda, in Jerusalem, and have been north with him to the beach on the shore of Lake Galilee, and across the lake to the Decapolis. This morning we are back in Jerusalem, this time at the Temple.
What is Jesus doing there, and why is it significant that it is at the Temple?
At the beginning of verse 37 we read this “On the last and greatest Day of the Feast….” Which for me prompts the question – what Feast?
So, we look back to the beginning of chapter 7 to see that this is the Feast of the Tabernacles. Initially Jesus had told his brothers that he wasn’t too keen on going to Jerusalem for this feast, but he changed his mind, and by verse 7, half way through the Feast, he’s arrived at the Temple in Jerusalem and is dividing the crowd by claiming to speak on God’s behalf.
So, it’s the Feast of the Tabernacles, very good. But what’s a tabernacle, and why are they having a feast of them? To find that out, we have to go back to the Old Testament, and the calendar of feasts and festivals that God gave to Moses to help the people remember what God had done in freeing them from Egypt. Last week we touched briefly on the passover festival, and this week, we read in Deuteronomy about the setting up of the Feast of the Tabernacles.
And I mean Feast. This was a seven or eight day holiday. In Numbers we are told how many animals were roasted over the course of the week to feed people – if you want a bit of homework you can go and total it all up from Numbers 29.
We find out more about this feast in Leviticus 23, where we read:
“Live in temporary shelters for seven days: All native-born Israelites are to live in such shelters so your descendants will know that I had the Israelites live in temporary shelters when I brought them out of Egypt. I am the Lord your God.’”
Are you beginning to get the picture. Thousands of pilgrims, living in temporary shelters made from branches and leaves, in Jerusalem for a huge party. Sounds a bit like New Wine or Limitless to me.
One other piece of background information is helpful for us to understand why Jesus said what he said in this place and at this festival.
Although it isn’t mentioned in the Bible, we know from Jewish sources that every day of the festival, water was brought from the Pool of Siloam into the temple by the priests, as the people sang songs and Psalms of praise. It was processed around the temple altar twice before being poured into a bowl on the altar, and then poured over the altar. This was partly about them remembering the water that God provided in the desert, and partly about asking for the blessing of rain for the fields. That happened on every day, apart from the last day. On the last day the water that had been brought from Siloam was processed around the altar seven times before being poured out. It was the culmination of all the water ceremonies of the week, a high point of the greatest day of the festival.
And across all this Jesus lifts his voice and declares:
“Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.”
Just try and imagine it from the point of view of someone in the crowd. You’ve travelled for days to be here. You’re living in a tent. You’ve been attending temple worship every day. It’s one of the greatest religious experiences of your life as you witness and are part of ceremonies that go back centuries – connecting you to God, to the land, to your history and ancestors.
And then Jesus.
“Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.”
With this interruption Jesus declares himself to be the fulfilment of all the prayers that have been made over the years in this festival. He is the one who was the provider of water in the past. He is the fulfilment of Ezekiel’s prophecy about the Temple, and the living water that would flow from it. He is the one who gives the Spirit who flows out of his people to the world around.
This is the second time that Jesus has talked about water.
In John 4, Jesus is at a well, talking with a Samaritan women and says,
“Those who drink the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed the water I give them will become in them a spring of water, welling up to eternal life.”
As we put these two complimentary declarations together, we get this:
“Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. Those who drink the water I give them will never thirst. Whoever believes in me will have a spring of water in them, welling up to eternal life and rivers of living water will flow from them.”
That is some offer.
But more that that, as John goes on to explain, “By this he meant the Spirit”
So, putting it all together.
The Holy Spirit is a gift of Jesus to those who believe in him, who come to Jesus saying they are thirsty. The Holy Spirit quenches our thirst, and is like a spring welling up in us, refreshing us and flowing out with life to those around us.
One of God’s prophets in the Old Testament, Ezekiel, had a vision of the Temple, which he wrote down for us, and we can read it in Ezekiel 47. It’s all about a river that rises in the Temple and flows out to the land about it in rivers, bringing life and healing to the land.
Bear with me a moment as we chase this through a bit. We know that the Temple in Old Testament times and in Jesus’ time was a building. But what is it now? The Temple in Jerusalem has been destroyed. What is it now?
As Paul writes in his first letter to the church in Corinth, in chapter 3, v 16
“Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in your midst? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy that person; for God’s temple is sacred, and you together are that temple.”
And then in the same letter, in chapter 6, v 19
“Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God?”
So what is the temple now? We are the temple, as individuals and as a community. We are the temple that the river of the Holy Spirit, giving by Jesus flows out of.
This is the Biblical background of our vision image of the river that bubbles up at the front of this building and flows out into the community. It’s not that there’s something particularly special about this place, it’s just the front here is the place of baptism and communion, the outward signs of the inward grace that bind us together, and this building is a physical representation of our unity in faith and discipleship.
Jesus stood in one Temple at a celebration of the gift of physical water, and announced a new gift of spiritual water that would flow in and through those who believe in him, people he would make into a new, spiritual temple that would go to the world, rather than need the world to come to it.
And all the people rejoiced? No.
There was division. Some people were excited by this new vision, and believed Jesus was the Chosen Rescuer sent by God, the Messiah. Others dismissed him. They were divided.
What about us? What is God teaching us, inviting us into?
Three thoughts to consider.
Tents and tabernacles are temporary. They help us to remember that everything is temporary – our houses, our lives, our jobs, everything – except our relationship with God. I wonder if there’s anything that we hold on to as permanent that isn’t, and whether God might be inviting us to let go.
What are we thirsty for? Will we accept Jesus’ gift of the Holy Spirit to quench our thirst?
How do we react to Jesus’ claims about himself and what he wants to give us. Will we believe and trust him, or do we doubt and dismiss him, if not by our words, then in our actions?
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