18.10 | Interrupted Religion
John 7:1-24
‘About the middle of the feast Jesus went up into the temple and began teaching.’
John 7:14
A good test of religion is how it handles interruption.
When the prophetic word challenges the status quo.
When a newcomer asks the awkward question.
When a pandemic stops usual rhythms of worship.
When your seven-year-old wakes with a bad dream halfway through your quiet time.
When Jesus walks into your festival.
Such moments can be awkward, comedic, frustrating, confusing. And yet, preeminently, they are also revealing — for they reveal the heart of our religion. Was our religious activity preparing us for the things of God, or of protecting human traditions? Was it forming us into a people of love, or sanitised control? Was it softening us toward a hurting world, or closing us down to bunker down with an agreeable clique? Do we respond with greater love, or greater frustration?
The Feast of Booths (or ‘Tabernacles’) was one of three major annual festivals, where the Jews would gather to Jerusalem.1 The Feast of Booths followed on from the Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur). It celebrated the harvest, sought God’s provision for the year to come, and recalled the forty years that the Israelites lived in the wilderness. Residents in the city would live in tents on their roofs during this feast, to inhabit afresh this part of their story. It was a feast of joy, celebration, gratitude, abundance and storytelling.
It is fascinating how Jesus arrives in the middle of the festival.
He could have gone at the start — that’s when His family left. He could have just not gone. But He holds back deliberately, and then arrives in the middle. In the middle of the sacrifices and feasting, the tent-dwelling and storytelling.
Jesus interrupts their religion.
In the midst of all the feasting and celebrations, the tent-dwelling and sacrifices and ceremonies, in walks the One who to who every element of this festival more truly points.
How will they receive Him?
I often wonder how we would respond if Jesus walked into our church gatherings in such bodily form. How would we handle His disruptive power? How would we feel about His uncomfortable inclusion of broken lives? How would we engage with His cryptic teaching? How would we stomach His exclusive claims?
For as Jesus arrives at the festival, He immediately unsettles things. And He begins to teach them that their response to Him reveals the ultimate condition of their hearts — and thus the condition of their religion. If they desire the will of the Father, He says, they will know that this teaching is from God. Put another way, how they handle His presence reveals whether all their religious activity had become an end in itself, or if it held a true seeking of the One who would interrupt and fulfil it all.
We must be careful, my friends, for true religion awaits the interruptions of the true God. Every worship service. Every spiritual practice. Every quiet time. Every act of prayer and devotion and study. And the God that we meet here may not fit neatly into our boxes. Far from it. He comes wild and untameable, for us and yet greatly beyond us, there to heal us and also to expand the horizons of our imaginations vaster than we could have imagined.
Reflect:
What practices make up my ‘religion’?
How do I handle it when Jesus comes and interrupts?
Pray:
Lord Jesus,
Interrupt me.
Guard this soul
From the emptiness of unexpectant religion.
Lord Jesus,
Interrupt me:
Deliver me from religious activity that becomes
Showy and dramatic on the outside,
But intolerant of divine presence within.
Lord Jesus,
Interrupt me.
Soften my will to the heart of the Father,
That as your words meet this soul,
I may recognise that which is heavenly,
And tread the divine paths.
Lord Jesus,
Interrupt me.
Take my every practice and form of devotion,
And let them lead me
To an enlarged heart—
That flows upwards in wondering joy,
And outwards in lavish compassion,
That I may engage the ways of heaven
And you may be the middle
Of my religion.
Lord Jesus,
Interrupt me today.
In Your Name,
Amen
Old Testament:
For those also reading the Old Testament this year, your additional readings are here:
Ezra 6:19-8:36 | Proverbs 26:1-12
The other two were Passover and Pentecost. Contemporary Judaism is currently celebrating the Feast of Booths, or Sukkot, at the time of you reading this.