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The LORD said to Moses on Mount Sinai, "Say to the people of Israel, when you come into the land which I give you, the land shall keep a sabbath to the LORD. Six years you shall sow your field, and six years you shall prune your vineyard, and gather in its fruits; but in the seventh year there shall be a sabbath of solemn rest for the land, a sabbath to the LORD; you shall not sow your field or prune your vineyard. What grows of itself in your harvest you shall not reap, and the grapes of your undressed vine you shall not gather; it shall be a year of solemn rest for the land. The sabbath of the land shall provide food for you, for yourself and for your male and female slaves and for your hired servant and the sojourner who lives with you; for your cattle also and for the beasts that are in your land all its yield shall be for food. "And you shall count seven weeks of years, seven times seven years, so that the time of the seven weeks of years shall be to you forty-nine years. Then you shall send abroad the loud trumpet on the tenth day of the seventh month; on the day of atonement you shall send abroad the trumpet throughout all your land. And you shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants; it shall be a jubilee for you, when each of you shall return to his property and each of you shall return to his family. A jubilee shall that fiftieth year be to you; in it you shall neither sow, nor reap what grows of itself, nor gather the grapes from the undressed vines. (RSV)

 

CELEBRATING WITH A PURPOSE

Many years ago, when I first joined a fraternity on the university campus, an initiation ritual purported to promote pledges to a new status in life. Certain truths were repeated at stages in the ritual, all of which had some basic moral value. Then neophytes from farm and city alike were feted with a party theoretically unlike any they had experienced before to help them reach new levels of celebration. In reality, it was a beer party which didn't have much purpose other than getting people drunk. Later that evening, some fraternity brothers got in a car and smashed into a tree. One was killed and we all drove in procession to his funeral in a distant city. A soloist sang "Jerusalem the Golden." As an 18 year old, who didn't even really know the "brother" who had died, there were many mixed feelings about all of this. One of them surely was, however, that some celebrations can be pointless, and some might perhaps be designed to have a greater meaning.

It's worth asking, when you think of the celebrations in which we are at times involved today, what purpose they serve. Some of the local bars in our city periodically advertise parties which have no point other than to get inebriated and lose restraint. Some Thanksgiving parties are basically stuffing feasts to see how much you can really eat. Some Halloween parties exist to learn who comes up with the most creative costume. There are Christmas parties which exist primarily to show the guests how masterfully your exterior and interior decorations have exceeded those of last year. All of these celebrations have a type of purpose, but at least occasionally we probably ask ourselves whether the stated purpose is motive enough to keep us coming back year after year? At least once in a while we might like to ask ourselves whether our celebrations have value and really take us to new levels of understanding or joy?

 

A Party with Good News for the Celebrants

Our text proposes a new kind of celebration, but encourages us to reflect on what the alternatives might have been. Every culture seems to have had reasons to celebrate and has often exulted with singing, dancing, eating and drinking at a birth or puberty ritual, a marriage or harvest, a victory or coronation. The Hebrews in our story had recently left Egypt where they had experienced many festivals, replete with beer (a common drink in Egypt) and excesses of many kinds. The question was what kind of celebration might be called for when after generations of journey finally these pilgrims entered the Promised Land. This might call for a blast unlike any ever celebrated before.

Although there must have been a lot of suspense as to what the party was going to look like, this is how it came out: rest for the land and rest for the people. That surely raised some eyebrows, and it might surprise some environmentalists who like to tout the Native American respect for the land as unparalleled among cultures. This celebration called for allowing the land to lie fallow every seventh year, and at the end of 7 x 7 years, another time of consecration for the land would take place in the 50^th year. Both events, a Sabbath for the land, would not only give respite to the soil, but also to the owners and to their servants who worked the land-even to the animals who helped to till the soil. And in the 50^th year, debts were to be forgiven. They were to be calculated from the 50^th year or year of Jubilee, as if it were a real time of beginning again.

This is good news and it's difficult to grasp. Many of us have wished that because of things we have done in life, there could be a time of beginning again. If only we could start all over! We typically understand forgiveness fairly well-or at least we claim to. But although we know that we are forgiven for things done or left undone, we know all too well that there are people who remember and may not forgive as easily as God does. For such a reason, we sometimes wish that some things had never happened, or that we could replay certain scenes in our lives to remove the pain we inflicted or the burdens we imposed.

Our text tells us that God understands this need and desire very well. He provides Good News not only by allowing all to have a year of freedom from work every seventh year, but a year in which to start all over in the 50^th year. The details of this arrangement for these ancient people may sound quaint to us today, but there is a deeper message underlying it of which we should not lose sight: God is good and gracious, and has the best interests of his people at heart! While the people in that day may not have thought beyond a big party with dancing, food and drink, God had more profound issues in mind, and a deeper kind of joy. God is good and gracious and he wants our celebrations to have purpose and meaning which meet not only our needs but the needs of others as well.

Of course, we New Testament Christians understand this very well. We may occasionally in our limited perspectives think about a party to help us forget, or a party to bring everybody together or even a party to end all parties. But God, in his infinite wisdom, resolves the suspense about what real celebration should entail by giving us not only freedom from our past sins through Jesus' death, but also assurance of life which lasts with him forever through Jesus' resurrection. In these two proclamations about the end of death's power and the beginning of life's promise we have cause for celebration with a purpose greater than we could have imagined. This is how our God is, pressing us beyond what we think we would like, to help us to embrace what is good and blessed and filled with promise.

Seeking Positive Ways to Celebrate Good News

There are a great many things that we can learn not only from the message of this text but also from the Good News we have come to understand about God's love in Jesus Christ. Our lives ought to be filled with celebration because of what God has done for us in Christ. However, the joy which surrounds such celebration seeks to express itself in ways that are not selfish or self-centered, but rather loving and serving. Just as the Sabbath of the land was not only for the owner, but for all those who worked it, servants and animals alike, so our celebrations should demonstrate a purpose which meets broad needs and goals.

An example for such a celebration is the current tenth anniversary remembrance of the founding of Sermons from Goettingen. The underlying idea for this ministry was to place current, cutting-edge electronically-delivered sermons in the hands of contemporaries, much like Luther placed printed volumes (Postille) in the hands of parishioners over 500 years ago. Millions of people (clergy and lay alike) have been blessed by this venture initiated by Dr. Ulrich Nembach, and now readers can look forward to a second decade of production. What kind of celebration does this call for? Perhaps a party of some kind is appropriate. What we learn from our text and from the good news of the Gospel, however, is that God blesses us so that we can be a blessing to others. How Sermons from Goettingen might do this in its second decade of life is interesting to consider.

In order to reach more people, especially those who are open to new technologies, would be worth adding audio transcription to the current written sermons? Would it be worth developing an interactive, threaded-discussion format for each text under consideration? Perhaps sermons could be emailed directly to participants each week, as is currently done with certain devotional series? Sermon contests or collections of meaningful sermons might be developed for closer study and reflection? There are many possibilities, but the primary consideration is celebrating with a purpose, celebrating so that the Good News is implicit in our joy.

The 10^th Anniversary of Sermons from Goettingen gives us a chance to think about the many ways in which we might consider giving purpose and meaning to our regular celebrations-many of which are hollow because we give too little thought to who we are in Christ and what we could be about as his loving fellow servants and friends.

A 1984 film, Places in the Heart, shows us how this can happen. In the film, Sallie Field's husband, the local sheriff is accidentally killed by a drunken teenager waving a loaded pistol. The teenager is black and the sheriff white, so the local KKK (this is 1935) takes revenge and kills the boy. What should now happen? This is a time of testing as is true for many of us who are confronted with similar questions after some problematic experience. In the film, a kind black man helps the white sheriff's widow raise a prize-winning cotton crop. The family takes in a blind boarder. A tornado and falling cotton prices almost ruin the family. Greedy bankers and merchants stake their claims on the family. But the film ends at church with people gathered around the communion table, white and black together. Gathered are those who have been kind to one another and those who have done their neighbors wrong. All are invited to Christ's celebration. What will result from this celebration of new life in Christ-available to all? What should happen now?

It is the question to all of us who regularly gather at the Lord's Table-who are one body in Christ. What will result from the new life in Christ which is ours to experiment with daily? What impact will this new life have upon our celebrations? How can we put purpose into our gatherings and family events in ways that we have never done before? How can we demonstrate that Good News, for us and for all we know and don't know, is seeking to empower people?

Perhaps a family Thanksgiving celebration could result in a commitment to helping those who are hungry? Perhaps a Church Anniversary Celebration could take on a service project which will help parishioners remember this event? Perhaps a 4^th of July Picnic could develop a regular visitation to disabled veterans in a VA Hospital? Perhaps in one year a family might use the money typically spent on Christmas presents to serve a local family in need?

The possibilities are endless, but the reason is simple. Celebrations need a purpose grander than our designs too often allow. They need to allow us to be the people we have been called to be in Christ, celebrants who know that joy presses us beyond ourselves to the hopes and dreams of God's people's everywhere.

Celebrations are worth having, because we are worth something to God. And that gives us pause to think. What should happen now?

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