Short Address at the Robin Chapel – 26 August 2018

Introduction

Edinburgh is a beautiful city in which to live at any time of the year, but there is a special atmosphere about the place when the Festival is taking place in August. Tens of thousands of people from across the globe come to visit especially for this cultural extravaganza, making it truly a Cosmopolis. Turn a corner in the old town and you never know what you will find. Children are agog at women and men on unicycles, fire-eaters, street theatre and statues that suddenly move.

We have been to a few performances. With other people of a certain age we queued to watch Maureen Lipman, aged 72 (as she complained how she is always referred to in the papers), and, while we were waiting, there were the usual folks trawling for paying customers for their own shows. One girl tried to offer me a leaflet: stand-up comedy, she said. No thanks, I replied, I prefer to have a seat. Instead, we listened to Misha Glenny tell the stories of international crime, which accounts for 15% of global GDP, and we were entertained and inspired at the King’s Theatre, watching a play called ‘Home’ with its portrayal of the phases and faces of a house over the course of its lifetime.

Round the corner from where we live, there is a campsite, which is mainly static caravans, but at this time of year the section that is usually empty fills up with tents of various shapes and sizes and motor homes. For some, the Festival is like a pilgrimage.

As the weeks go bye, there is a sense of mounting excitement in anticipation of the closing concert and firework display – tomorrow evening as it happens. Each year it seems to become more sophisticated and adventurous, with Princes Street and the Gardens jam packed with people, and on the hills across the city others are standing with their binoculars to their eyes and their smartphones blasting out the concert music, out of synch with what they are seeing.

Then the last rockets explode, and as the colour fades from the sky and the smoke and smells dissipate, we turn to go home saying, ‘Well that’s it for another year!’ The highs of excitement become the lows of weariness, and the climax of the final evening gives way to the anti-climax of the following morning. We are left saying, ‘Thank goodness we can get back to normal life for a while,’ and at the same time we are left thirsting for more.
We have been entertained, felt happy, been challenged, made angry, laughed, cried, shared life with strangers, celebrated with friends, and now we only have the memories and feelings.

Jerusalem – the Feast of Tabernacles/tents

While the specifics of festivals in other places and in other times may be very different – like the Notting Hill Carnival in London, or the Feast of Tabernacles/tents in Jerusalem in the time of Jesus – the generalities of festivals are much the same. People flock to them from all over, the city becomes a buzz of excitement for a time, a wide variety of special events take place and then they finish.

Sukkot, the feast of tents or huts we read of in John’s Gospel, is probably the most joyful and fun of the feasts celebrated by those who are of the Jewish faith. In Jesus’ day, groups of people from families and villages travelled together up to Jerusalem, telling their stories, catching up with news, singing their Psalms – the songs of ascents, the ‘going-up’ songs, with their children playing together, then asking if we’re nearly there yet.

And what fun it was for them to live in tents or little hut shelters for a week, remembering what life was like for their ancestors as they journeyed through the desert under God’s protecting pillar of cloud by day and fire by night. Just as Edinburgh’s castle is on a hill that can be seen from near and far, so Jerusalem’s Temple and its courtyard could be seen from a distance and from all across the city. They had their equivalent of our fireworks, with four giant menorahs, or menorot as we should say, which were lit every evening in the temple courtyard and the glow of their light could be seen right across the city, reminding the people of the protecting presence of God with his pilgrim people.

Like George Fredrick Handel, they not only had the fireworks, they had the waterworks! Every day there was a ritual procession as priests walked from the Temple, drew water from the Pool of Siloam and returned to the Temple to pour it out as a libation at the base of the altar, and on the seventh day, they did this seven times, symbolising the vision of Ezekiel the prophet who saw God’s river of the water of life flowing from the temple, and as it flowed on, grew deeper and wider – deep enough to swim in, flowing out bringing life wherever it flowed.

One can imagine the sense of joy and happiness as people watched and joined in this procession, waving their palm branches, singing their Psalms, celebrating God’s actions in the past in the desert, his bounty in the present as grain and grape harvests had just been gather in, and his promises for the future – the vision and hope that God would renew his people and bring them fullness of life.

Jesus at the feast

And then they were getting ready to go home, to return to the humdrum of normality, when Jesus stepped up and started shouting out an invitation: ‘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.’ John tells us that he was speaking of the Holy Spirit, who would indwell Jesus’ followers.

Jesus was aware that, however exciting, joyful, challenging or pious our festivals are, however much we feel fulfilled by them at the time, ultimately, they pass. They become a distant memory and leave us thirsting for more. This thirsting, the yearning for an experience of what is beyond us, is a signpost to our deep need for God. It was the great Augustine who said that our hearts are restless until they find their rest in God.

Jesus is telling us that it is only through him that this thirst can be slaked, this yearning satisfied. But more than that, he is inviting all Festival goers to come and receive this free gift of God’s water of life – God’s Holy, life-giving, life-enhancing Spirit, living within us.

It is not a life that is free from suffering and sorrow, as Jesus’ experience of the cross and our own experiences of life teach us. But it is a life whose orientation is towards the coming fulness of the Kingdom of God – the New Creation brought about by the life-giving Spirit. This life lives in the present by the power of the future, and that orientation enables us to walk forward on this pilgrim journey in joyful hope.

Conclusion

Reading this passage from the Gospel of John, I can imagine on the last day of this Edinburgh Festival Jesus standing in George Square, or at the Tron Kirk, or on the Ross Bandstand, shouting his invitation, ‘Come to me and drink.’

And in his mysterious book of Revelation, John the Theologian places on the lips of the Risen Christ a renewed invitation that is not only for Festival goers but for all: The Spirit and the Bride say, ‘Come!’ And let the one who hears say, ‘Come!’ Let the one who is thirsty come; and let the one who wishes take the free gift of the water of life.
Amen!