Celebration Time

Prayer

What do we celebrate?

One of my favorite words is “schadenfreude”, good German word, I love the sound of it. It’s a compound word, schaden equals sorrow, while freude means joy. It’s phrase that captures the idea of taking delight, joy, in the sorrow of others, their misery, their suffering.

While you may not be familiar with the term, you know the experience, because I think it’s fair to say that we’ve all engaged in it, in one way or another.

When the rival of your favorite sports team suffers an embarrassing loss, you can’t help but smile over that, finally those obnoxious fans are getting their comeuppance. That’s schadenfreude.

When someone speeds past you on the interstate, weaving in and out of traffic - and as you make your way down the interstate and he’s been pulled over by the state police, and you’re enjoying it a little too much - that’s schadenfreude.

It’s one of those guilty little pleasures we indulge in - and guilty is a very appropriate word here - because schadenfreude, the taking delight in the sorrow of others - can reveal something about our hearts. Because what we delight in, what we take joy in, what we celebrate - it a hugely important question.

And you may think I’m overstating the case, making a big deal about it. After all, those fans are jerks! And that guy driving recklessly should get a ticket for speeding, that was dangerous. Those things may well be true. But the question is not only one of just consequences, it’s about what’s going on in our hearts and what that reveals about us.

Though we may not like others’ actions, their attitudes - they may have even wronged us - we shouldn’t rejoice in their suffering (as good as it may feel - and let’s be honest, it does feel good).

Last week I referenced 1 Corinthians 13 as a great passage to see how we, our priestly role of representing God to others - do people see Jesus in us? Great passage to reflect on how we love others. And that’s true here. Consider 1 Corinthians 13:6, Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices with the truth. Or another passage, from Romans 12 - Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn. We’re not commanded to do the opposite - to rejoice over those who mourn, mourn when they rejoice!

To love is to be for the good of others, to be for them, their good. That’s what it means to love our neighbor, even if our neighbor is an enemy.

How can we be for their good, how can we love them, if we are rejoicing in the bad that’s happening to them? If we’re happy about their misery? That really is much more about our pride or our taste for revenge, getting back at others.

St. Augustine, one of the great Christian thinkers, understood this. In negotiating through the moral morass of war, Augustine wrote on the circumstances of a just way, a war which would actually be a moral good - or at least the moral better. The idea being that to not defend the weak or oppressed when you have the capability to do so would be the greater evil.

For Augustine, this wasn’t just the circumstances of when you could engage in war, when it was just to do so, but how you engaged in that war that matters - whether you engaged justly, your attitude toward it.

Much of this has to do with our hearts - it must be with the right intentions, to advance the good and stand against the evil. According to Augustine, war must be waged with a love of violence or a desire for revenge. And this is especially germane for what we’re talking about here today - Augustine believed that the proper attitude in warfare should be regret and remorse.

In other words, Augustine recognized how essential our heart attitude is - that we should never engage in war gleefully or eagerly - but rather with regret and remorse. He recognized that our own hearts could become twisted and contorted if we move towards celebrating when suffering happens to our enemy, when we “get them.”

And if you ever wanted to see a clear example of this, go watch images of the Palestinian terrorist attack on Israel. There are images of the Palestinians gleefully celebrating over the corpses of Israeli soldiers - one of whom was a woman -that they had transported away from the battle sight. That is delighting in evil. That’s the extreme of what schadenfreude moves our hearts toward.

Augustine here is just following God’s lead here. God deemed this question of what we celebrate serious enough for his people that part of his instructions for them in the book of Leviticus are the celebrations, the Feasts and Festivals, that they are to engage in an a regular basis. He lists them all out in Leviticus 23.

Which, on the one hand, seems a little strange - God is literally telling them, here are your holidays! Here’s your New Year’s Day, your 4th of July, your Halloween, etc. Here’s why: What a culture celebrates, how it celebrates, reveals the heart of that culture, what it values, what it deems important.

Consider our celebration of Christmas, even the secular version in our country: it lifts up the values of generosity, of family, of sharing love with others (some would argue it’s also a huge affirmation of our consumerism). The 4th of July, in celebrating our nation’s birth, is a recognition of the values that have been at the core of our nation - freedom (especially recognizing the sovereignty of the individual, basic rights every person has), justice.

And because there’s so much division of what values we should emphasize in our culture right now, we’re seeing that being played out in battles over what holidays to recognize, what holidays we should - and shouldn’t - be celebrating.

A perfect example is tomorrow, which is Columbus Day, a holiday recognizing Christopher Columbus, the great explorer who led the European discovery of the New World. There’s a push to see this day instead celebrated as Indigenous Peoples’ Day - to remember the native populations rather than the Europeans who eventually conquered the land.

There are increasing number of people pushing against the holiday of Thanksgiving for some of the same reasons, think it shouldn’t be celebrated.

Push of our culture to celebrate Pride Month, celebrate of acceptance of identity and lifestyle of LGBTQ+ community. In our travels this summer, we visited towns that had transgender / LGBTQ+ flags lining the streets of their downtown areas.

Point I’ve been trying to make is - what we celebrate, what we rejoice over, matters - including what holiday we celebrate and how we celebrate them. These things shape and form our hearts.

God, of course knows all this! Remember, God is all about shaping and forming the Israelites to be his people, his royal priesthood, his holy nation. And celebrations are clearly a part of that. In that sense, they are very much in the vein of what we talk about on a regular basis, that is, soul-training exercises, spiritual disciplines - the habits we seek to inculcate in our lives as part of our spiritual formation (which is what God is doing here).

So, this morning, as we continue our journey through the story of the Old Testament, we’re going to look at what God is seeking to teach the Israelites, what he’s trying to instill in them, through the celebration of these holidays, their holy days. By the way, this is our final Sunday in Leviticus, next Sunday we’ll move in to the 4th book of the Bible, Numbers, which will take us up to the end of November and the season of Advent.

Leviticus 23 - Feasts and Festivals

Just like we see throughout the book of Leviticus, we see God giving the instructions for the Israelites through Moses, v. 1-2, The Lord said to Moses, 2 “Speak to the Israelites and say to them: ‘These are my appointed festivals, the appointed festivals of the Lord, which you are to proclaim as sacred assemblies. Let me walk us through the seven festivals, and then make some comments about what God is doing here.

Very first thing that God commands is the Sabbath, Leviticus 23:3: There are six days when you may work, but the seventh day is a day of sabbath rest, a day of sacred assembly. You are not to do any work; wherever you live, it is a sabbath to the Lord.

This is the only festival that takes place weekly, everything else is on an annual basis. And it indicates how essential this practice is - that one day every week the people are to gather together (sacred assembly, these are not individual practices), you are to stop working, rest, and orient your attention to the Lord.

The second festival is an eight day celebration, beginning with the Passover and continuing with the Festival of Unleavened Bread, a seven day festival where only unleavened bread must be eaten. We talked about the Passover and the Festival of Unleavened Bread when we covered the book of Exodus. It was a feast to commemorate the final plague that resulted in the Egyptians freeing the Israelites from slavery (sacrificing the Passover Lamb, smearing the blood over the doorposts, as a sign that the angel of death would pass over that household).

Next is the Offering of Firstfruits, which was to be celebrated after they entered the land God had promised them (several of these festivals involve the harvest, but remember, they are still wandering in the wilderness). But with this festival, as soon as the very first fruits of their harvest emerged, they were to take the produce to the priest as an offering to God, along with a burnt offering and a grain and drink offering.

Following the Offering of the Firstfruits would be the Festival of Weeks, a celebration when it was time to begin the harvest. It’s called the Festival of Weeks since the dates of when it was held was determined by counting off seven full weeks. Leviticus 23:15-15, From the day after the Sabbath, the day you brought the sheaf of the wave offering, count off seven full weeks. Count off fifty days up to the day after the seventh Sabbath, and then present an offering of new grain to the Lord. (We would know this festival as Pentecost, 50 days). Again, burnt and grains and drink offerings would be brought forward.

The instructions here include a reminder to engage in the practice of gleaning, of not reaping to the very edge of your field and or go over it a second time. Rather, leave it for the poor and for the foreigner.

The fifth feast that God instructs is the Festival of Trumpets. Honestly, there’s not much given here, rather than it was a remembrance of the trumpet blast (the shofar, ram’s horn). Why it was to be celebrated, not really sure. Like all of the other ones, the instructions included doing no work, as well as presenting a food offering to the Lord. Later, this celebration marked Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year.

The sixth is the Day of Atonement, which we covered earlier in this series, the solemn sacred assembly where atonement was made for the sins of the people of Israel.

Finally, the seventh festival is the Festival of Tabernacles, also known as Sukkot. This holiday was a festive celebration, following on the heals of the somber Day of Atonement. This festival marked the end of the final gathering of the crops, but its focus was on building temporary shelters and living in them for seven days. It was a reminder to the Israelites of their time in the wilderness, wandering, and God’s faithful provision for them (even as they enjoyed the abundant fruitfulness of the Promised Land God had given them and his faithfulness in keeping the covenant).

So, those are the seven festivals God instructs his people to celebrate. So here’s the important question - what does this teach us? Why does God go to the trouble of instructing his people to celebrate these feasts and festivals? What are they to celebrate and how are they to celebrate, and how does this shape and form them? Let me just offer some thoughts about what I see here.

Like all holiday celebrations, there’s lots going on here - you see phrase “sacred assembly” over and over. Clearly these festivals cultivated community, a shared sense of what it meant to be God’s people, his nation.

But one of the things that really jumps out to me is how vitally important it is to have dedicated time centered on the Lord. Very first celebration is the Sabbath. Work six days, then stop. Rest. Not just about rest, which it certainly is, but the primary reason to stop working is to have leisurely, unhurried time to center on God. The Sabbath instruction include, You are not to do any work; wherever you live, it is a sabbath to the Lord. That’s the essential qualifier, “To the Lord.”

God knows we have lots to do, the work never ends (he made us for that purpose, to engage in work, to share in his work). But even more so, he made us for himself. to know him, to delight in him, to be with him. To love him and to be loved by him. To celebrate him.

What do we do on our holidays - we take the time to get together with family and friends. We quit working, we travel, just to dedicate time together. Did you notice that several of these holidays were a week long! God was serious about this stopping work stuff to be with him!

John Ortberg tells the story of when his children were quite young, and he was giving them baths one evening. And his daughter, Mallory, instead of getting into the bath, was standing there in bathroom doing what they called her Doo-Dah-Day dance, where she would dance around sing her Doo-Dah-Dee dance. John is finding himself irritated by this, he’s trying to get them to the bath, ready for bed, so he yells at her to stop dancing and get in the bath. And she asks him, “Why?”. And he realizes in that moment he has no good answer. There was no need to rush - even though, internally, he was feeling that. She was just celebrating the way kids do, simple joy. So John decided instead of rushing her to get into the bath, that he would join her and they sang the Doo-Dah-Dee dance together.

This is the central to the festivals is we stop, we take the time to celebrate - to celebrate God. To delight in him.

The other aspect that seems central to me is not simply taking time to center on the Lord, but to celebrate who God is and what he’s done. These feasts and festivals all had some aspect of God’s goodness that they were celebrating (except the Festival of Trumpets, don’t really know what that was about) - either what God was doing right then and there (First Fruits, Festival of Weeks, Day of Atonement) or remembering how good and faithful God had been in the past (Passover, Sukkot - time in the wilderness).

Every year they were getting together, remember how great God is - his mighty saving works (the Passover), his faithful provision (First Fruits, Festival of Weeks - notice it happens at the beginning of the harvest), his mercy and forgiveness (Day of Atonement), how faithful God is in keeping his promises (Festival of Tabernacles - look, we have this land he promised to give us!).

So, over and over again, every year, this festivals are to keep them centered in the Lord, to help them remember, this is who our God is, gracious and compassionate, faithful and trustworthy, good. Let’s rejoice in our God, he is who we should be celebrating!

One other thought I want to offer about these feasts and festivals - because there’s another thing they teach us about who God is that I think is amazing to consider - it reflects God’s desire for us to experience joy. To know the fullness of joy. Isn’t that what celebration, rejoicing, delighting, invite us into?! What an amazing thing to consider, that this is who our God is, his heart for us.

But that of course, requires that we celebrate the right things. Rejoice in what is good and right, true. Delighting in evil, the suffering of others, that schadenfreude, constricts our hearts, sets us in opposition toward others. But delighting in God, in his goodness, expands our joy, it’s a joy that demands to be shared with others. Joy God wants for us - which is why he tells us to celebrate!

So, let’s do what God instructs! John Ortberg calls this the discipline of celebration. That we intentional take time to celebrate, to delight in God, his goodness, his faithfulness, his mercy.

One obvious way to do that is the practice of Sabbath, to take time to be centered in the Lord. For most of you, Sunday is the best day for Sabbath, a day of rest, and the day we hold our sacred assembly, we gather for worship. I hope as you come here to worship, that you’re doing so with the intention of delighting in God, celebrating him. It’s not Doo-Dah-Dee, but we do sing our own songs in celebration of God - sing them with a rejoicing heart!

Take time this week, throughout your day to engage in the discipline of celebration by delighting in the gifts of God, as you’re enjoying them. Instead of mindlessly eating or shoveling it down, savor your food. Take a few moments to enjoy the scenic beauty (yesterday evening the sky was gorgeous, double rainbow). Delight in your family members. Your pets. Thank God in your heart. As you spend money, Lord, thank you for your faithful provision. There’s so many ways to delight in God and his goodness. Let’s be those people who celebrate well.