All the Israelites came together to King Solomon at the time of the festival in the month of Ethanim, the seventh month. – 1 Kings 8:2

Today’s Scripture Reading (May 6, 2013): 1 Kings 8

Walter E. Deming was a statistician of the 20^th century. He is probably best known for his “Plan-Do-Check- Act” cycle of management that has been named after him. His basic philosophy is that “you can expect what you inspect.” Or maybe more popularly you can change what it is that you measure. The effects of Deming’s philosophy is maybe most evident within the Japanese auto industry. He believed that if we lessened the standard deviation of the individual parts of a car, which in North America was set at 1/8^th of an inch, that the car would run better. It became the idea behind the practice of Japanese Automakers to reduce the tolerance in parts to 1/16^th of an inch, and Demings philosophy was proved correct – cars built with the smaller tolerances did run more efficiently. But the reality remains that if we are not measuring it, then it must not be important.

In life, what we celebrate follows the same principal. What we celebrate we will allow to shape our life. And the less deviation there is in the celebration – or the more mandatory that it is, the more important it must be. For the contemporary Christian Church we have reduced ourselves to two such celebrations with minimal deviation and they are Christmas and Easter. For Israel there was three, Passover, Pentecost and the Feast of Tabernacles (Sukkot). Sukkot was a remembrance of the wandering in the desert. For one week every year the people lived in temporary shelters remembering the years that they spent wandering and these temporary shelters were all that they had. Sukkot was celebrated during the seventh month.

At the time of the building of the Temple, the tent of the Tabernacle was the last remnant to that way of life. So it should not surprise us that the celebration for the temple was set for the seventh month to coincide with, or possibly just before, the Feast of Tabernacles. The temple was actually completed in the eighth month of the year before, and part of the reason for the celebration might have been that on this feast day all of the men had to come to Jerusalem anyway – this was a celebration that was measured. But the reality is that there had already been two other mandatory and measured feast days – Passover and Pentecost – that had passed before they got to this celebration. The choice of the Feast of Tabernacles seems to be very deliberate – and measured.

This was a time of transition – but it was measured transition. In choosing the Feast of Tabernacles, Solomon was telling the people how important the temple would be – it was to be more than just a building – it was the home on earth for their God.     

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: 1 Kings 9