After Pentecost Devotional - Day 15

“But if any of you refuse to celebrate Passover when you are not away on a journey, you will no longer belong to my people. You will be punished because you did not offer sacrifices to me at the proper time. Anyone, including foreigners who live among you, can celebrate Passover, if they follow all the regulations.” Numbers 9:13-14

Passover is an essential Jewish celebration of belonging. It was and is a celebration as essential to Jewish faith and identity as Easter is for Christians. Passover is more than simply a celebration, as it is a reenactment of the seminal event in the formation of the nation with its exit from bondage in Egypt.

The celebration was designed to involve the entire family with a focus on teaching the children about their origins and helping them to assume their identity with redemption form Egyptian bondage. Various streams of Jewish celebration yet today focus on the individual finding a sense of belonging, meaning, and participation in the exodus and event of God's redemption.

This is the only festival for which there is an established make-up date. If one were unable to celebrate Passover on the proper day, the option was given to celebrate a month later. The reason for this was that one could not belong to the nation of Yahweh without going through the Passover festival celebration. To fail to celebrate Passover would mean for the people that they were no longer the people of Yahweh.

The centrality and significance given to Passover, then, makes verse 14 all that much more exceptional. While this was a celebration of belonging to the nation as the people of Yahweh, foreigners are allowed to join in the festivities. They would only need to follow the regulations.

While the passage here does not stipulate this outright, the meaning of such participation is that those foreigners who joined the celebration were becoming part of the nation as they participated in Passover. That is because the celebration of the festival calls on the participants to identify themselves individually with the Exodus story and find themselves redeemed by Yahweh along with Moses' band.

Should the Israelites fail to celebrate Passover, they would be effectively removing themselves from the rolls of Yahweh's people. The flip side is that as foreigners did participate, they would gain entrance, becoming full participants in the nation of Yahweh.

For all the Jewish traditions excluding foreigners as unwanted, unclean, and undeserving, this passage in Numbers opens the door wide for their inclusion in the life of Israel. It paves a path of belonging, of being grafted into the nation, just as other passages speak to the children of immigrants participating in the redivision of the land every Jubilee.

Rather than a message of exclusion, we find here God's desire for redemptive inclusion. All are welcome to participate. All are welcome to belong. All are welcome to God's table.

Who are those you would exclude from God's family? God desires to include all.


"Lord, make your desire to redeem flow unhindered in my life, that I might fully accept all those you have chosen to accept."

—©Copyright 2016, Christopher B. Harbin
http://www.sermonsearch.com/contributors/104427/ 
My latest books can be found here on amazon

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

You Made Me Choose, but Why?

Image
Did you really think I would give you more importance than my own daughter? Did you really think you could use our father’s memory as a weapon to bend me to your will? Did you really think pulling rank would force me to adapt to your definitions of propriety, when you have never once interrupted your life on my behalf? Did you really think protecting a relationship that has always depended on my initiative would have greater weight than maintaining, caring for, and supporting the family I’ve made and lived with more than twice the time I ever lived with you? Did you really think I would refashion my life and character after your expectations for me? Did you really think I would hand over my autonomy to you, simply because you refused to listen or learn anything about me and my family? Did you really think I would interpret your attempts to control me and my family as love? Did you really think I don’t understand love enough to recognize your prote...
Read more

Self-Righteous Oppression

Image
Beware being taken in by the hypocrisy of the self-righteous. We try to hide the reality of our inner lives, but all secrets will come to light. What is whispered in the dark will be heard in full daylight, widely broadcast and published. Do we really think that those who died in the collapse of the Twin Towers were any worse offenders than everyone else in New York City? Do we think the four girls killed at 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham were more sinful than those who set the bombs? Are the oppressed less worthy than their oppressors? We applaud civil rights heroes of the past, yet retain policies which actively oppose them. We join parades and erect monuments in their honor, bearing witness to their cause as just. Then we push new policies to keep the same minorities in subjection! How were diversity, equity, and inclusion just and righteous then, but now suddenly a threat? We pray before a meal, giving thanks for God’s provision. Meanwhile, greed direct...
Read more

What Is Love?

Image
“Some say love, it is a river that drowns the tender reed. Some say love it is a razor that leaves your soul to bleed. Some say love, it is a hunger, and endless aching need. I say love, it is a flower and you, its only seed.” — Amanda McBroom We spill a lot of ink talking and singing about love, but we rarely stop to question or discuss what love actually is or isn’t. For that matter, there are several definitions, categories, or uses of the term. Sometimes they confuse our conversations as we fail to grasp how another is using the term. At heart, this is largely due to uncertainty over defining love, understanding what it is, or what we even mean by it. Our poetry makes attempts to describe it, but often in conflicting ways. “Oh, love to some is like a cloud, to some as strong as steel, for some a way of living, for some a way to feel, and some say love is holding on and some say letting go, and some say love is everything, and some say they don't know.” — John De...
Read more