Holidays are Tabernacles

Scripture Focus: Leviticus 23:2
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.

Reflection: Holidays are Tabernacles
By Erin Newton

Imagine you are far from home, perhaps forced away or maybe you’ve never found a place to call home. It is easy to become discouraged and lonely. You begin to wonder, “Who am I?”

Israel wandered the wilderness for forty years waiting for the place they would call home. In the exile, they watched their livelihood burn to the ground as they were forced into another wilderness.

The book of Leviticus has painstakingly detailed Israel’s religious identity. From the foods to eat to the clothes to wear, this book has covered seemingly every nook and cranny of their lives. Leviticus has brought order to their worship, cleanliness, relationships, and physical bodies. Now God will remind them of the order of time.

Israel participated in seven festivals a year and every seventh day was set aside as holy. The festivals were a periodic means of organizing time, making the calendar something that could define the people even when they were not in their land and felt far from God’s presence.

Richard Boyce summarizes the purpose of the festivals, “Every week, every month, every year now becomes a ‘camp’ wherein God’s holy presence might be manifest, through the observance of festivals.”

Even when they are far from home, God has created a temporal map to routinely bring them into his presence.

As Christians, we mark our calendar with different holy days. We focus on Christmas and Easter with some attention to Good Friday. Some churches also include celebrations for Epiphany, Pentecost, All Saints Day, and others.

We celebrate our holidays, but so do our neighbors. We are not distinguished because of our festivals.

The question becomes: Do we need more holidays to regain our religious identity, or do we need to reclaim our focus on the days already marked out for us?

We may feel lost, homesick, or unsure about where we fit in. We either can’t find our home or it’s out of our reach. It could be strained relationships or spiritual abuse that has created the distance. No matter the reason, at home or in exile, we can remember that our time is marked out for God.

At home or in pursuit of a new community, taking periodic days to focus on our relationship with God will help us gain a sense of identity. There is peace when we take the time to rest, remember, and reunite with God’s presence.

Divine Hours Prayer: The Small Verse
Let me seek the Lord while he may still be found. I will call upon his name while he is near.

– From The Divine Hours: Prayers for Springtime by Phyllis Tickle.

Today’s Reading
Leviticus 23 (Listen 6:31)
Acts 19 (Listen 5:47)

Read more about What Time is It?
Today, let us pray that we will understand the times and seasons that we find ourselves in.

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A Taste of Eternity

Scripture Focus: Leviticus 23.3
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. 

From John: Later this week, we will look at the expanded Sabbath applied to years and how it applies to the concept of Jubilee. Today we look back at Rabbi Heschel’s perspective on the weekly Sabbath.

Reflection: A Taste of Eternity
By Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907-1972)

It must always be remembered that the Sabbath is not an occasion for diversion or frivolity; not a day to shoot fireworks or to turn somersaults, but an opportunity to mend our tattered lives; to collect rather than to dissipate time.

He who wants to enter the holiness of the day must first lay down the profanity of clattering commerce, of being yoked to toil. He must go away from the screech of dissonant days, from the nervousness and fury of acquisitiveness and the betrayal in embezzling his own life. He must say farewell to manual work and learn to understand that the world has already been created and will survive without the help of man.

Six days a week we wrestle with the world, wringing profit from the earth; on the Sabbath we especially care for the seed of eternity planted in the soul. The world has our hands, but our soul belongs to Someone Else. Six days a week we seek to dominate the world, on the seventh day we try to dominate the self.

The Sabbath is a day for the sake of life. Man is not a beast of burden, and the Sabbath is not for the purpose of enhancing the efficiency of his work. “Last in creation, first in intention,” the Sabbath is “the end of the creation of heaven and earth.”

The Sabbath is not for the sake of the weekdays; the weekdays are for the sake of Sabbath. It is not an interlude but the climax of living.

Three acts of God denoted the seventh day: He rested, He blessed, and He hallowed the seventh day. To the prohibition of labor is, therefore, added the blessing of delight and the accent of sanctity. Not only the hands of man celebrate the day; the tongue and the soul keep the Sabbath.

Labor is a craft, but perfect rest is an art. It is the result of an accord of body, mind, and imagination. To attain a degree of excellence in art, one must accept its discipline, one must adjure slothfulness. The seventh day is a palace in time which we build. It is made of soul, of joy and reticence. In its atmosphere, a discipline is a reminder of adjacency to eternity.

Divine Hours Prayer: The Request for Presence
For the sake of your Name, lead me and guide me. — Psalm 31.3

– Divine Hours prayers from The Divine Hours: Prayers for Springtime by Phyllis Tickle


Today’s Readings
Leviticus 23 (Listen – 6:31)
Psalms 30– (Listen – 1:32)

Read more about Keeping the Sabbath by Action
Keeping the Sabbath holy, maintaining God’s justice, and establishing righteousness are not passive, actionless, states of spiritual attainment.

Read more about A Restoring Sabbath
Weekly sabbaths teach us that the sabbath doesn’t condemn the week of work, but it blesses it and redeems it.


The Prayer From the Cross

Psalm 30.11-12
You turned my wailing into dancing;
   you removed my sackcloth and clothed me with joy,
that my heart may sing your praises and not be silent.
   Lord my God, I will praise you forever.

Reflection: The Prayer From the Cross
By John Tillman

On the day the Church now calls Good Friday, when Jesus hung on the cross and cried out, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani,” people were confused about what he meant. Some even thought he was crying out to Elijah.

Truthfully, we don’t know exactly what was in Christ’s mind, and we also don’t know that he wasn’t thinking multiple things all at the same time, as most humans do in stressful and painful situations.

The clearest, simplest explanation that I lean toward is that Jesus was intentionally quoting Psalm 22, which appeared in our reading plan on Palm Sunday. Jesus knew that most of his audience would recognize the quote and understand that he was referencing the entire psalm. If I said, “To be or not to be,” many people would recognize that I was referencing Hamlet’s entire monologue and its meaning. People less familiar with Hamlet might be confused. Some might think it was from some other source, such as an Arnold Schwarzenegger film.

So, on this Good Friday, we will join Christ in his suffering, praying excerpts from this psalm prayed on the cross, ending with excerpts from Psalm 30 from our reading for today.

Make these psalms our prayer, today and over Holy Saturday as we await the joy of resurrection morn.

Praying with Christ, from the Cross (Psalm 22):
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
   Why are you so far from saving me,
   so far from my cries of anguish?

All who see me mock me;
   they hurl insults, shaking their heads.
“He trusts in the Lord,” they say,
   “let the Lord rescue him.
Let him deliver him,
   since he delights in him.”

Yet you brought me out of the womb;
   you made me trust in you, even at my mother’s breast.
From birth I was cast on you;
   from my mother’s womb you have been my God.

You who fear the Lord, praise him!
  For he has not despised or scorned
   the suffering of the afflicted one;
he has not hidden his face from him
   but has listened to his cry for help.

Future generations will be told about the Lord.
They will proclaim his righteousness,
   declaring to a people yet unborn:
   He has done it!

Weeping may stay for the night,
   but rejoicing comes in the morning.

You turned my wailing into dancing;
   you removed my sackcloth and clothed me with joy.


Prayer: The Refrain for the Morning Lessons
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And are so far from my cry and from the words of my distress?  — Psalm 22.1

– From The Divine Hours: Prayers for Springtime by Phyllis Tickle.

Today’s Readings
Leviticus 23 (Listen – 6:31) 
Psalm 30 (Listen – 2:41)

Today’s Readings
Leviticus 24 (Listen – 2:58) Psalm 31 (Listen – 3:11)
Leviticus 25 (Listen – 7:41) Psalm 32 (Listen – 1:34)

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Read more about Joy in The Way of the Cross :: Throwback Thursday
You will find the joy of the Lord comes as you go on in the way of the Cross. It was one who had nobody all his own on earth who said, “If I am offered upon the sacrifice and service of your faith, I joy, and rejoice.” (Philippians 2.17)

Read more about Where Martyrdom Begins Part 1
It’s easy to think that when Jesus referred to laying his life down for his friends, he was referring to his imminent death on the cross. But stopping there simplifies what Jesus did — and what he said — into one single act.