Ordinary Work

We are a culture that is not good at resting, and if you want to talk about a Sabbath, forget it. Our world is on the go 24/7/365 and we have to keep up. 

Don't we? 

The idea of a day of rest seems old-fashioned, antiquated, out of touch with present reality. Nobody can rest for an entire day per week, can they? 

That depends, I guess, on your definition of rest. 

I have been observing a weekly Sabbath for 14 years or so, consistently. Not perfectly, but consistently. A big part of this is that I spend my Sundays disconnected (a little hiccup has been streaming online church, but that is an exception I'm willing to make). I don't turn on my desktop computer, and without social media on my phone, I am unplugged on Sundays. Period. I also try to limit my going out, my shopping, etc. Anything that can wait, does. If I am taking a day off of work, it is only right that I should not make others work on my day of rest. 

The Bible has plenty to say about the Sabbath, and most of us read it as a day of rest. Period. We have read the stories of the Law, and we have read Jesus push back. "If your livestock fell into a ditch on the Sabbath, wouldn't you pull it out?" So we have some inkling that the Sabbath is not about not doing any work. It's a little more nuanced than that. 

And indeed, when we read certain translations in English, we see that a distinction has been made. The Sabbath rest, we see, is not from work, but from ordinary work - the kind of work you do the other 6 days of the week. 

Actually, it's really interesting. In the same place in Leviticus where Moses is giving the Israelites commands about days of rest, he is also telling them about festivals, which start and end with days of rest. Sabbaths. And he says they are to do no ordinary work, but they are to go out and gather palm fronds and things. 

So here we are with an OT example right off the bat, right in the instructions about rest, that it means no ordinary work. But you can definitely do un-ordinary work. Like gathering palm fronds. 

Or pulling your livestock out of a ditch. There's something you wouldn't do every day. You'd only do that on a non-ordinary day when your livestock happens to get itself caught in a ditch. (Unless of course, you have extraordinarily dumb livestock and this actually is a regular occurrence for you.) 

The point is - your Sabbath day of rest sets the day apart in a special, meaningful way. It separates it from the other days by separating it from the things you would normally do on a regular day. Like spend several hours scrolling social media. It's not a prohibition against ordinary things as much as it is a creation of space for the extraordinary. 

So how are you creating space today?  

Lamb of God

Every year, I read through the Bible in its entirety. I keep a journal every day as I read, and my rule is that I'm not allowed to write down something that I wrote down previously, whether that was 1 year or 15 years ago. So I am always looking for something new. 

Sometimes, I find something so obvious, I can't figure out how I've read the Bible through that many times and still missed it. 

Sometimes, it makes me have to come back to this space and correct myself. 

Today is one of those days. 

I have previously been known to talk about the sacrifice of Jesus as the lamb of God and connect it to the sacrifices in the Old Testament, specifically in Leviticus. When you read through the prescribed sacrifices in Leviticus - the burnt offering, the guilt offering, the sin offering, the thankfulness offering, etc. - the only time you see a male lamb as an acceptable offering is in the fellowship offering. 

I think this is important when we talk about Jesus, the Lamb of God. I still think it is important. 

But there's something else I've been missing. 

Because when you keep reading in Leviticus and you get into the nitty gritty of offenses against God and others, of cleanness and uncleanness, of boils and mildews and bodily emissions, we see the lamb again. The lamb was required, even of the poorest Israelites, as a purification offering after a period of uncleanness. 

When the boil healed, the mildew cleared, the bodily emissions ceased, the Israelite was to bring a male lamb to the priest to serve as a purification offering, to make him- or her-self clean with God again. To become ceremonially pure. To be restored to participation in the community, fellowship with others, and fellowship with God. 

And I think this is more important. 

It's closely related to the fellowship offering, as both have to do with our relationship with God, but it is in this sense, in the matter of purification, that we truly understand how it is that Jesus takes away the sins of the world. That we understand what God was doing on the Cross in full - at least, as full as our finite, limited minds can fathom of it. 

It's strange to me that I never really caught this before. I have always gone to the prescribed sacrifices to try to understand the Lamb, not to the sins. Not to the failures. Not to the uncleanness. But of course, I should most definitely have gone there, since that is where Jesus went.

So I hereby correct myself and expand on my previous reflections to embrace this more full meaning of the Lamb of God. 

(But can I also just say that as many times as I have talked about the fellowship offering, not a single person has stepped forth to correct me on this point, either. So perhaps I'm not the only one who has been missing it. Anywho, now you know.)