LIFE MATTERS-5
Deuteronomy 16
February 2, 2014
In preparation for the Sochi Winter Olympics, you should be aware of one of the many differences between the people of Russia and the people of the United States. Alina Simone wrote an article for the New York Times last week titled, The ‘How are you?’ Culture Clash. Simone claims that Russian/American relations are immediately off on the wrong foot when our two countries hear and respond to the phrase, “How are you?” Simone writes:
The answer Americans give, of course is, “Fine.” But when Russians hear this they think one of two things: (1) you’ve been granted a heavenly reprieve from the wearisome grind that all but defines the human condition and as a result are experiencing a rare and sublime moment of fineness or (2) you are lying.Ask a Russian, “How are you?” and you will hear, for better or worse, the truth: A blunt pronouncement of dissatisfaction punctuated by, say, the details of any recent digestive troubles. I have endured many painful minutes of elevator silence after my grandmother (who lived in the Soviet Union until moving to the United States in her 60s.) delivered her stock response: “Terrible,” to which she might add, “Why? Because being old is terrible.” Beat. “And I am very old.”But if the American “fine” can come off as plastic and insincere, the speed with which Russians unload intimate details is just as disturbing.”
If we are honest today, some of us are more Russian and some of us are more American. Not geographically or ethnically but personally…spiritually. Some of us are exceptionally private and quiet about the state of our soul. Others among us are open books, willing to share the depths of our depravity and the extremes of our anguish at a moments notice. You could call this extrovert versus introvert but there is more to it than that. Some of us are sharers and some are not. The American souls among us might keep to themselves by pointing to the words of Jesus not to cast your pearls before swine. While the Russian souls among us might bring everything to the table and say, “Confession is good for the soul.”
And they are both right. Sometimes you should be an open book and sometimes you should be careful about what you share and with whom. Unfortunately, we live in a world that has little use for holding tensions and we usually rush to one end of the discussion or the other. There is room for both. And sometimes the open books need to show some restraint and sometimes the closed books need to open up and share.
This is a big part of what makes Life with Others difficult. Many of you in this room have tried a small group before and it was a huge flop. You found yourself as a lone spiritual Russian among a table of spiritual Americans or vice versa. Or maybe you have had other issues with small groups. Maybe you didn’t fit in. Maybe they were doing a study you didn’t like. Maybe they did too much talking and not enough Bible study. Maybe it felt like a solemn assembly in a convent and you were hoping for more friendship and life sharing. There are a thousand reasons small groups can go wrong. But the possibility that they could go right supersedes all of that.
Small groups are confusing. With different personalities and different traditions, it can be hard to experience spiritual growth. I want to show you a passage today, where communal practices are commanded. In our passage today, three festivals are required of the Israelites. Keep in mind that seven festivals are given to the Israelites. They are listed and described in depth in Leviticus 23. And yet today, three of them are elevated.
Deuteronomy 16: 16
While all of God’s feasts and communal events are important,these are apparently more important. I want to briefly explain three of these feasts to you, which will give you three things to focus on throughout the year in your small group. Also I want to give you one practice to try every week.
We are in the fifth week of our Life Matters series. We are laying out as clearly as possible our vision for discipleship at SFC. We think that you should practice three things in your life if you want to be follower of Jesus. If you want to get in a regular rhythm of following Jesus, you should be doing these three things in and through the life of our church: Life in God, Life with Others and Life for Others. We are spending two weeks on each of these life goals. Keep in mind that these are not exhaustive explanations of each life goal. But hopefully, they are meaningful teachings that explain each life goal from a book of the Bible and encourage you to practice each life goal in the coming year.
Standing back from this week specifically, I want to zoom out and show you my plan for the foreseeable future when it comes to preaching. At the beginning of each year, I will preach a sermon series called Life Matters. Last year I used the book of John to tell you that life matters and this year I am using Deuteronomy. I do this for one main reason, if we are truly called to make disciples at SFC and if we truly believe you are growing in your faith, and becoming a better disciple by doing these three things, then they are worthy of repetition. Not only that, if these three things are essential for discipleship and not something we plucked out of one passage that we liked, then these three life goals should be embedded in every book of the Bible and I think they are.
So today, we are exploring Life with Others. Last week I showed you the broad strokes of this concept. Today, I want to zoom in on a particular practice of Life with Others. Our church uses small groups to help us practice Life with Others. But as I told you in the beginning, small groups are sometimes difficult to be in. Between personality types, traditions and struggles with past experiences, sometimes we don’t want to join or we don’t want to show up. So today, I want us to turn to Deuteronomy 16. While this passage was not given as a blueprint for small groups specifically, it was given as a blueprint for communal life. I want to show you a few themes that emerge and a few practices to try.
Deuteronomy 16: 1-8
Passover is a part of the Feast of Unleavened Bread. They are sometimes separated but I believe they are one in the same. Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread are really a call to do one thing: Remember your liberation. The original Passover happened 40 years prior to this moment and Moses was there. I am sure it was still visceral and on the forefront of his brain. The liberation of God’s people from slavery was loaded with miracles. The feast of Unleavened Bread/Passover was there to help them remember their liberation.
The Israelites were enslaved for 400 years, living in subjugation and living at the whim and the will of their captors. And God set them free. As a reminder, God sent nine plagues upon the people of Egypt because their King would not relinquish his slave labor force. The tenth plague would be the straw that broke the Pharaoh’s back. A plague of death came on the nation of Israel and the only way you could be saved was by killing a lamb and spreading its blood on your doorpost. If you actively put your faith in the sacrifice of the lamb, death would pass over your house.
In this passage, the community is called to recreate this moment, to kill a lamb and eat its flesh. This was meant to be a re-creation. Imagine the sights and sound of this event being recreated. There would be the bleating of the lamb tied up outside of the door. There would be the yelps from the lamb as it was slain. Then there would be aroma of the meal being prepared. The visual, olfactory and auditory senses would be engaged in recreating this moment. All of these things were meant to remind them that they had been set free, that they had been liberated.
This past September marked the 40th anniversary of the release of the final American soldiers from the Hanoi Hilton. The Hanoi Hilton was a prisoner of war (POW) camp during the Vietnam War that was famous for it’s brutality and inhumanity in the treatment of its POWs. Orson Swindle was a guest in the Hanoi Hilton for years. He described how he and his fellow POW’s were feeling some 40 years later:
“Pretty much all of us have very restricted shoulder movement. Raising our hands above our head is rather difficult. We suffer a lot of arthritis, mostly skeletal type and nerve-ending damage,” Swindle said. “I have spinal stenosis and numbness in my hands and my feet, but all in all I’m probably one of the luckiest people you’ve probably ever talked to.”
How could he say such a thing? Because he remembers what it was like to be imprisoned. He now knows the sweet taste of freedom. Forty years later, it still amazes him. Christians should have a similar practice and awe in our communal life. The phrase “I once was lost but now I am found” should blow you away every day. Remember your liberation. I think every small group should know the stories of liberation in their group, be they big or small, near or far, decades old or recent. We should remember our liberation on a regular basis.
For every Christian, the story of Passover has a deeper and richer meaning, because a carpenter went to the cross for you. He was the sacrificial lamb whose blood was shed so that you may live. His blood was shed so that you could be set free. That is a miracle. That is a story worth retelling.
Deuteronomy 16:9-12
The Feast of Weeks was to take place during the harvest season. Fifty days after Passover, the Feast of Weeks was supposed to begin. This feast was to be observed every year. Now, this is one of the three main feasts that God required his people to observe yearly. Upon an initial inspection, this one seems a bit mundane. It is really just a harvest festival. It doesn’t seem particularly loaded with theological meaning like Passover. It’s just a mundane yearly feast that commemorates the harvest. Wouldn’t it have been better to have a feast commemorating walking through the Red Sea? Or maybe go way back and have a feast commemorating Noah and how God saved him through the flood. Or maybe even something about Abraham and all of his exciting stories. Instead, it is kind of a simple and mundane yearly festival to celebrate the harvest. Don’t miss this today:
Remember your provision.
Because the harvest is mundane and regular, it can be easy to miss this one. I forget who said it but it rings so true, “Life is just so daily.” Because we get ina rhythm of get up, eat, work, eat, go home, eat, sleep, repeat, we can forget God’s provision. But God has provided, he does provide and he will provide. That is a story worth telling. But it is easy to forget that having a job, a house or your health is not guaranteed. But God provides them. Our mind often forgets this, minimizes it or just takes too much credit for it. But God provides. We should share that in our small groups. We should take time and praise him communally for where he has provided and ask for prayer where you still need his provision.
Paul Kalanithi is a chief resident in neurological surgery at Stanford. He is 36 years old and has lung cancer. He wrote a brilliant piece for the New York Times last week called “How Much Time Do I Have Left?” In this article he is explaining the fact that nailing down life expectancies for sick patients is difficult. But more than that, he is writing about the limbo of life with the possibility of death around the corner. He said this:
The path forward would seem obvious, if only I knew how many months or years I had left. Tell me three months, I’d just spend time with family. Tell me one year, I’d have a plan (write that book). Give me 10 years, I’d get back to treating diseases. The pedestrian truth that you live one day at a time didn’t help: What was I supposed to do with that day?
The problem with life is that it is so daily, until it is not. Dr. Paul Kanaithi now understands this. God called the Israelites to practice the Feast of Weeks to be reminded that his provision is miraculous even in the midst of the mundane. Sometimes it takes disease or disaster for this truth to permeate our souls. But a healthy practice for any small group is to remember his provision. To take time and cast off the mundane goggles that obfuscate our view of God’s miraculous provision. Every breath. Every dollar. Every morsel. Every day. They are all gifts. Celebrate God’s gifts to you and your community. Share your gifts with those that need them. We serve a God who provides. It is easy to forget that.
Fifty days after the death of Jesus, a wall of wind swooped through the city of Jerusalem. Fisherman began to speak in foreign languages. The Spirit of God descended and 3000 people came to faith through the carpenter on the cross who had been resurrected. That day was the beginning of the Feast of Weeks, also called Pentecost. And on that day, God made a grand provision. He gifted each of his children, from that point forward, with his Holy Spirit, to reside in them, to guide them, to comfort them and to explode out of them to bless a hurting world. Unfortunately, that provision too can become mundane. The miracle of God’s active presence in our lives is easily missed. Remember God’s provision, not only for the physical but the spiritual. Let people know how the provision of God’s Spirit has changed your week.
Deuteronomy 16:13-15
Every year at the Autumnal Equinox, the day when the time of day and evening, lightness and darkness were even, which was a time of harvest, the people of God would celebrate the Feast of Booths. The Feast of Booths was a time to celebrate not the harvest but the end of the harvest season when they were gathering up and storing away the things that had grown. Each family would build a simple sukkah and reside in it for a week culminating on the Sabbath. As they usually did, the Jews were remembering God’s faithfulness in their lives by living out, re-creating and acting out the story of their deliverance out from slavery. While this was a celebration, you have to realize that acting out the story like many other Jewish traditionswas re-creating a dark time in their history, an uncomfortable time in their history in order to learn from it. While the deliverance of God’s people was glorious, they also disobeyed God and were sentenced to wander the darkness of the desert for 40 years. All the while, they resided in temporary sukkahs. They weren’t large and luxurious motor homes, but confined residences, almost prison-like in the middle of the desert. Without the glow of the city, they were utterly in the dark. Being confined and in darkness was the reminder that came from the sukkah.
This final required feast is also an odd choice upon first inspection. Why would their wandering in the desert be a key thing to remember? We already have Passover to remind us that we are slaves set free. Why would God command people to a yearly journey to Jerusalem to build a temporary structure? Why would he ask them to leave the comforts of home and stay in an uncomfortable box that doesn’t feel like home? Why would he remind them of the 40 years wandering in the desert when the Promised Land was not far away?
Because he wanted them to remember you aren’t yet home, neither are we. Jesus promised to go and prepare a place for us, an eternal home beyond this world. No matter how much time you have left on this planet, ultimately we are all heading in the same direction. For those who have put their faith in Jesus, we are promised not only abundant life here on earth but abundant life beyond it. With that in mind, we need to constantly remember that this world is not our home. That fact is easy to forget. If we aren’t careful, we can quickly be neck deep in the rat race of this valley, struggling for things we don’t need and living a life we don’t enjoy all for the sake of a world that is not our home.
These three feasts have three easy principles: Remember your liberation, remember your provision and remember you aren’t yet home.You do this by sharing stories. I don’t know if you noticed but I went out of my way to share stories today, Alina Simone’s story, Orson Swindle’s story and Paul Kalanithi’s story. Share stories this week. Ask to hear conversion stories in your small group, get to know how others have been set free. Ask to hear stories about celebrations of God’s provision or how they are seeking God’s provision this week. Finally, affirm and encourage one another with Jesus’s story of our eternal hope. Remind one another that the story doesn’t end when you shed this mortal coil.