Feasting Around the World

First published by the
  Jerusalem Post Christian Edition-October 2009

Feasting Around the World

-by Kasey Barr

Across the globe – in Chatsworth, England; Panajachel, Guatemala; Devenport, Tasmania; Hyderabad, India; Melbourne, Florida, and hundreds of other locations – Christians are gearing up to celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles in a town near you.
 

Jerusalem is of course the most coveted location for celebrating the Feast of Tabernacles, also known as Sukkot, and the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem has been sponsoring a week-long spectacular there each year since its inception in September 1980. That ground-breaking celebration quickly grew into Israel’s largest annual tourist event, with more than 5,000 Christian regularly attending, coming from over 100 nations of the globe.

The success of that event appears to have spawned a growing number of Feast gatherings worldwide that today involve tens of thousands of Christian celebrants, some of whom may never have the privilege of pilgrimage to the Holy Land.

“Being in the body of Christ... enables us to experience the Feast of Tabernacles in unity, harmony and joy as if we were all at one site,” said Ryan Denee of the Restored Church of God, which will be holding a Sukkot gathering again this year.

“Due to the socio-political situation in Honduras, we are not going to be able to attend this year’s Feast in Jerusalem,” said Fabiola Radriguez de Vieytez of Honduras, who has missed only two Feasts in Jerusalem since 1984. “But we think that is it important to never forget the faithfulness of our God, through every situation that we pass in our lives and we will be celebrating the Feast locally with Pastor Evelio Reyes of Vida Abundante [Abundant Life] in Tegucigalpa,” she recently told The Christian Edition.

How many feasts will there be this year? According the Web site www.feastgoer.org, there are at least 200 public Christian celebrations of the Feast in nearly 100 different countries spanning the breadth of the globe. This statistic represents only organized events that have been widely advertised. The number of locations is likely much greater when one includes informal celebrations and unpublicized observances by churches and ministries throughout the world.

FeastGoer is a Web venture dedicated to connecting Christians with biblical Feast celebrations in their respective areas. They state that they “believe the God-given feasts are entirely relevant to the Christian today and teach so much about God and Jesus Christ that they cannot be overlooked and relegated to the past.”

But for centuries of Christian history, that is exactly what happened. Both the Old and New Testaments reveal the Feast of Tabernacles as a corporate celebration. However, in the Fourth Century, when Constantine became emperor of Rome, he forced both Jewish and Gentile followers of Jesus to give up any ties with Judaism, Jewish practices and the Hebrew calendar under the threat of imprisonment or death. All of the biblical holidays and feasts were either replaced by separate holidays or rejected entirely.

Over the ensuing centuries, Christians drifted further and further from their Hebraic roots to the point that contemporary Christianity had lost touch with the Biblical feasts that Jesus himself had faithfully observed.

It was in the 19^th century that certain Christian leaders were moved by a deep desire to reconnect to Israel and in fact they had a great impact upon Zionism. In the US, Protestant minister William E. Blackstone circulated a petition in 1892 to urge the US to reestablish a Jewish state in Palestine. Meanwhile in Europe, Rev. William Hechler, chaplain of the British Embassy in Vienna, became a close friend of Theodore Herzl, the father of the modern Zionist movement. With the establishment of the state of Israel, Christians began looking at Biblical references to Israel more practically, including the Divine call to keep the appointed feasts “forever, throughout the generations” (Leviticus 23:41).

For example, noted writer Basilea Schlink, co-founder of the Evangelical order of the Sisters of Mary, arranged to celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles in 1946 with local Jewish survivors of the Holocaust in her hometown of Darmstadt, Germany. But the practice did not become a mainstream Christian event until the early 1980s when the Christian Embassy began hosting their international Feast of Tabernacles in Jerusalem.

Since its inception in 1980, the ICEJ has faithfully encouraged pilgrims from all nations to join them in Jerusalem to celebrate the biblical feast of the Ingathering. This is in anticipation of the prophecy spoken of in Zechariah 14:16 that all the nations will one day come up to Jerusalem to worship the Lord and to keep the Feast of Tabernacles.

This event has become the signal Christian Zionist gathering in Israel each year, and what began in Jerusalem 30 years ago has now spread throughout the world. The ICEJ’s Feasts have always featured not only strong biblical messages on Israel and the Church, but also Hebraic worship, Davidic dance, artistic banners and other innovations that have now been duplicated far and wide.

“It's really not a tourist event. It is indeed a celebration of God's love, an expression of the diverse and united Kingdom of God, and a statement of God's faithfulness to Israel,” said Rev. Malcolm Hedding, Executive Director of the ICEJ.

It is true that there is no other site like Jerusalem, yet the message of Sukkot reverberates across borders and continents, demonstrating that no matter where Christians are located, they indeed share the same inspirations.

Vieytez says what she enjoys most is the Communion services conducted at the Feast celebrations in Jerusalem and now in her native Honduras. “We have the opportunity to share in unity no matter our language, or race, or anything else,” she said.

“A corporate celebration of the Feast of Tabernacles is an acknowledgment that all of us together represent the 'tabernacle of God' among men,” said Pastor Bob Summerville of Hunstville, Alabama, who has a long-time teaching ministry on the Hebraic roots of Christianity and conducts observances of  Jewish festivals for Christians.

“God gave the holidays for His purpose, to both Jews and Gentiles, to help us see God and understand His plan of redemption,” said Joan Lipis, author of the new book, Celebrate Jesus: A Christian Perspective of the Biblical Feasts (www.celebratejesusthebook.com). She will be touring the US over the High Holy Days to encourage people to celebrate the festivals of Israel in order to better understand Jesus and the Kingdom of God.

Lipis told The Christian Edition that in the past, she tried to spend every Feast in Israel, but now wishes to share the message of the feasts with the world in their own area and with respect to their own cultures and traditions. This year she will be observing the Feast of Tabernacles in Portland, Oregon.

“When we come together to celebrate the Feast in our different cultures and different traditions but according to God’s calendar, we are demonstrating to the world, and the powers and the principalities, our diversity yet unity in the one new man, Christ Jesus,” said Lipis, just as the prophet Nehemiah wrote that “all the people assembled as one man” at Sukkot. Thus for Christians around the world, it should be a natural step to assemble as one body in observance of the Feast, she said.

In her book Lipis explains, “The Kingdom community consists of people of every tribe, nation, and language. Like the Word of God itself, the Kingdom transcends any one culture. We are enriched as we share our various styles of worship and celebration.”

Sukkot, Tabernacles, Booths – the very name of the celebration represents the command to the ancient Israelites to build “temporary dwellings” to commemorate their times of wandering in the Wilderness, dependent on God for their daily sustenance and waiting to enter the Promised Land. For Christians today this expectation has again become very relevant, as they come together in anticipation of the day prophesied by Zechariah when all the nations will come up to Jerusalem and worship the Lord.

Even as thousands of Christians attend the Feast celebrations in Jerusalem this year, tens of thousands more will be gathering in locations throughout the world to join in this time of rejoicing in God’s faithfulness. They will be dancing to their own rhythms and singing and teaching in their own languages, but also worshiping with one heart and thereby demonstrating that the message of Sukkot is not lost in translation, but rather proven by it.

Photos
# 1 by ICEJ
# 2 from the cover of the Celebrate Jesus