“A lasting remembrance”

By Rev. Michael Stonhouse

Meditation – Saturday, May 4, 2024

Leviticus 23: 23-44 (Forward, p. 6) CEV p. 119

One of my clergy colleagues—from what might be called an evangelical church—once asked me out for coffee with a particular purpose in mind. He wanted to find out about our church year, particularly about the seasons of Advent, Lent, and Easter. He related to me how his church tradition mandates nothing by way of preparation for either Christmas or Easter, and then once Easter Sunday is over, forget the whole business. In fact, after Easter Sunday morning services many of his people retreat home for their meal of ham and scalloped potatoes (or whatever festive meal they have laid on) and forgive entirely about Easter and its implications for their lives.

He felt that our Anglican practice of celebrating Easter right up to the Day of Pentecost has much to commend itself.

And that, indeed, underlies the importance of our church calendar: it reminds us not only of the saving events of God in times past but also forces us—or tries to—to look at the consequences and resulting of those saving events. And indeed, Christmas, Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost—and many more celebrations besides—have something to teach us in terms of how we live our daily lives.

This is exactly the rationale of the various religious festivals enjoined upon the Jewish people, as delineated in Leviticus 23. Passover was a reminder of God’s epic deliverance of them from their bondage in Egypt. The Festival of Weeks (Shavuoth in the Hebrew) or Pentecost was a harvest festival, meant to celebrate God’s goodness in bringing them into the Promised Land, and the Festival of Shelters/ Tabernacles/ Booths (Sukkoth in the Hebrew) to remember God’s provisions for them during their long sojourn in the Sinai wilderness. Each of these celebrated some specific event in God’s saving history.

And even the feasts of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, which were not tied to particular events, told something of God’s doings in their collective history, doings which were not, on any account, to be forgotten or glossed over.

In fact, constantly throughout this chapter we read things like ‘This law will never change” (verses 3 and 14), ‘you and your descendants’ (verses 21 and 41), and ‘future generations’ (verse 43). Verse 43 is most explicit on the reasons for this observance of the festivals: so that they may know what God had done for their ancestors, that they might keep it in remembrance.

And isn’t this a constant danger in our times, especially as people drift away from regular church attendance and Christmas and Easter become ‘mere holidays’ stripped of much of their spiritual and life-giving significance. This is where the liturgical church has a great gift that it can give to the world, in telling the story and recalling to people’s thinking an awareness of what God has done in history. May we, you and I, ponder how we might make use of this heritage in sharing it with others and telling our great and wonderful story.

Forward notes: “Thus Moses declared to the people of Israel the appointed festivals of the Lord (verse 44).

“As a Christian who follows the liturgical calendar, I love how it gives a rhythm to my years, seasons, weeks, and days, and I find that there is always another layer to discover. The seasons of the church year might be the most familiar, but there is even more depth if we drill down into feast days, commemorations, and even the cycles of the Daily Office. During the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic, I relied on these seasonal and liturgical shifts to help orient me to time. When many of the other external markers of time around me had ceased, the liturgical calendar marked the passage of time even outside of in-person worship.

“Through Moses, the Lord gives to the people of Israel their own liturgical calendar—times for observing rest, atonement, remembrance, and celebration. Leviticus is one of the more difficult books of the Bible for finding relevance to our contemporary lives, but in the giving of these festivals, I recognize the same sanctification of time as our liturgical calendar.

Moving Forward: “We are in the midst of the 50 days of Easter, a season for celebrating the risen Christ. How are you marking this season in your life?”