Eucharistic Meditation, October 3

1 Kings 8:2

Like the Christian calendar, Israel�s festival calendar did not cover the whole of the year. It began with Passover in the first month of the liturgical year, went through Pentecost in the third month, and climaxed with a series of feasts in the seventh month: the feast of trumpets on the first day of the month, the Day of Atonement on the tenth day, and the week-long Feast of Booths that followed the Day of Atonement. The seventh month, the Sabbatical month, was THE festive month in Israel�s calendar.

1 Kings 8:2 tells us that the temple dedication took place in the seventh month at the time of �the feast,�Edoubtless a reference to the Feast of Booths. The Feast of Booths commemorated Israel�s forty years of wandering in the wilderness; for a week, Israelites built huts and lived in them, remembering how their fathers had lived in tents for a generation. This Feast of Booths has a new dimension, and at the end of the chapter we learn that it is a double feast, lasting two weeks instead of one. At this Feast of Booths, the wandering comes finally and fully to an end. God�s throne, the ark, which has been moving from place to place since it was constructed in the wilderness, finds a resting place beneath the wings of the cherubim.

The Lord�s Supper fulfills all of these festivals and events. It is our Passover, our Pentecost, a celebration of the final Day of Atonement, our Feast of Booths. And like the Feast of Booths celebrated by Solomon, it is a Feast of Booths that celebrates the end of wandering. From the perspective of the new, the entire Old Covenant is a covenant of wandering, of wandering without rest. Even after the temple was built, the priests never rested, and ultimately Israel herself was taken from her place of rest into exile. But we have come to a final rest. Our king is permanently enthroned above the cherubim in a heavenly sanctuary.

So, let us keep the feast, and go to our tents joyful and glad of heart for all the goodness that the Lord has shown to David his servant and to Israel his people.

posted by Peter J. Leithart on Sunday, October 03, 2004 at 08:25 AM

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