Only 348 days until Christmas

Better start making your lists and checking them twice if you want to get in before the rush starts!

No? Well there’s always Easter – crossed buns are already for sale at most supermarkets and bakeries. And if you can’t wait that long, there’s always Chinese New Year which kicks off a 2 week festival in only 12 days!

These festivals, regardless of your level of excitement about their approach are the way that we mark time. Our calendars, work cycles, school year and family get together’s revolve around key dates in the year when we consider it important to spend time together for whatever reason.

For us, it might simply be a case of a long weekend and a bit of a breather or an excuse to go to the beach or snow for a quick getaway. For others it is a major time to celebrate and instil traditions that will carry over to future generations.

In Israel, life revolved around the harvest year. This is connected back to the promise God made to Noah when he came off the ark:

While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.” ~ Genesis 8:22

While Israel was being prepared to enter the promised land, this cycle was expanded to 7 festivals or celebrations that measured time on a weekly and annual basis. The 7 festivals are summarised in Leviticus 23.

The cycle begins with the weekly Sabbath and follows through with the grain harvest feasts of Passover, First Fruits, and Pentecost. These are followed later in the year by the festivals of Trumpets, Atonement and Booths in the later half of the year.

The festivals involved eating and drinking. We are reminded that the Son of Man came eating and drinking (Matt 11:18-19, Luke 7:33-35) and each of these not only point us to Jesus, but call us to celebrate God’s work of redemption. When we observe communion today, with bread and wine (eating and drinking!) we are celebrating Christ and anticipating the feast at the end of history (1 Cor 5:6-8, 11:23-26, Rev 19:9).

This Sunday at Kogarah I will teach on the 7 festivals in more detail, focusing on how God marks time in fulfilling his covenant promise.

 

So many public holidays

This is an extra long weekend in Australia due to ANZAC Day falling immediately after Easter Sunday and the long Aussie tradition of having an extra day off after Easter. This means both Monday and Tuesday have been declared in most States and Territories as Public Holidays.

Do we need more time off? Phillip Jensen makes some comments on the value of public holidays and tolerance and how they mark our identity as Australians:

Christian nations do not seek to impose Christianity upon people by force of arms. We welcome strangers and protect people of different beliefs, cultures and practices. We have developed what is called tolerance. By which we mean “a willingness to allow things that we do not necessarily agree with or even like without interference”. Tolerance does not mean relativism – “the acceptance that all views are equally valid” – nor does it mean abandonment of your own position in favour of others. Rather it is the refusal to impose your beliefs on other people as necessary for membership in society.

…

It is part of our tolerant society that not everybody has to observe or like public holidays. We are not dragooned out for compulsory celebrations. People can stay in bed or go fishing. They can even complain about it. Not everybody likes to celebrate our involvement in war on Anzac day, nor the European invasion on Australia day. But these events were foundational to who we are as a nation. In the same way there are Australians who do not like Christianity, but celebrating Easter and Christmas is an appropriate and Australian way to commemorate the foundational role that Christianity plays in our culture and nation.

 

Greater Things still to be done

What are you waiting for?

 

He is not here

Now after the Sabbath, toward the dawn of the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb. And behold, there was a great earthquake, for an angel of the Lord descended from heaven and came and rolled back the stone and sat on it. His appearance was like lightning, and his clothing white as snow. And for fear of him the guards trembled and became like dead men. But the angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid, for I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified. He is not here, for he has risen, as he said.

Matthew 28

 

The man of sorrows who purchased our joy on Good Friday

The prophet Isaiah spoke of the suffering servant that will deliver his people:

1 Who has believed what he has heard from us?
And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?
2 For he grew up before him like a young plant,
and like a root out of dry ground;
he had no form or majesty that we should look at him,
and no beauty that we should desire him.
3 He was despised and rejected by men;
a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief;
and as one from whom men hide their faces
he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

4 Surely he has borne our griefs
and carried our sorrows;
yet we esteemed him stricken,
smitten by God, and afflicted.
5 But he was wounded for our transgressions;
he was crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,
and with his stripes we are healed.
6 All we like sheep have gone astray;
we have turned—every one—to his own way;
and the Lord has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.

7 He was oppressed, and he was afflicted,
yet he opened not his mouth;
like a lamb that is led to the slaughter,
and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent,
so he opened not his mouth.
8 By oppression and judgment he was taken away;
and as for his generation, who considered
that he was cut off out of the land of the living,
stricken for the transgression of my people?
9 And they made his grave with the wicked
and with a rich man in his death,
although he had done no violence,
and there was no deceit in his mouth.

10 Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him;
he has put him to grief;
when his soul makes an offering for guilt,
he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days;
the will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand.
11 Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied;
by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant,
make many to be accounted righteous,
and he shall bear their iniquities.
12 Therefore I will divide him a portion with the many,
and he shall divide the spoil with the strong,
because he poured out his soul to death
and was numbered with the transgressors;
yet he bore the sin of many,
and makes intercession for the transgressors.

~ an excerpt of Isaiah 53

 

Forsaken that I might be found

To the choirmaster: according to The Doe of the Dawn. A Psalm of David.

1 My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Why are you so far from saving me, from the words of my groaning?
2 O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer,
and by night, but I find no rest.

3 Yet you are holy,
enthroned on the praises of Israel.
4 In you our fathers trusted;
they trusted, and you delivered them.
5 To you they cried and were rescued;
in you they trusted and were not put to shame.

6 But I am a worm and not a man,
scorned by mankind and despised by the people.
7 All who see me mock me;
they make mouths at me; they wag their heads;
8 “He trusts in the Lord; let him deliver him;
let him rescue him, for he delights in him!”

…

14 I am poured out like water,
and all my bones are out of joint;
my heart is like wax;
it is melted within my breast;
15 my strength is dried up like a potsherd,
and my tongue sticks to my jaws;
you lay me in the dust of death.

16 For dogs encompass me;
a company of evildoers encircles me;
they have pierced my hands and feet —
17 I can count all my bones—
they stare and gloat over me;
18 they divide my garments among them,
and for my clothing they cast lots.

…

24 For he has not despised or abhorred
the affliction of the afflicted,
and he has not hidden his face from him,
but has heard, when he cried to him.

…

An excerpt from Psalm 22