The Holiness of Time

Leviticus 23-25

            In Psalm 90, Moses prays that the Lord would “teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom” (Psalm 90:12). What a great prayer! Time is a precious commodity. Most everyone wishes they had more time—whether in a day or in a lifetime. We stress when we can’t get done what we need to get done day to day and we mourn a life cut short in a different way than we mourn a long life well-lived.

            In Leviticus 23-25, the Lord makes even the passing of time an aspect of Israel’s holiness. Week to week, He commands a rhythm of work and rest, reminding us that we all have the same amount of time, that our time is a gift from Him, and that rest in His presence is important. One of the things I notice about the Sabbath commandment here that I didn’t see in previous iterations is that the Sabbath is to involve a sacred assembly (23:3). That is, it’s not just a day of physical rest (although it is that, too), but a day of spiritual rest, letting the matters that occupy our minds most of the week rest, while we rejoice in the goodness of the Lord. It’s this aspect of the Sabbath that Martin Luther picks up on in his explanation of the 3^rd Commandment.

 

Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy.

What does this mean?

We should fear and love God so that we do not despise preaching and His Word,

but hold it sacred and gladly hear and learn it.

 

            The year is also sacred to the Lord and Leviticus reiterates the holidays commanded in other places. The Passover in the spring marks the deliverance from Egypt, and the celebration of the barley harvest occurs in the same timeframe. The festival of Weeks, also called Pentecost, in the early summer was originally a celebration of the wheat harvest, but it became associated with the arrival at Sinai and the giving of the Law. The festival of trumpets began a series of fall observations, including the day of atonement and the feast of tabernacles (or booths), in which the Israelites slept in tents for the week to remember that the Lord had brought them through the wilderness to the land of promise. Originally (Exodus 23:16) the feast of booths coincided with the fruit harvest was gathered. I note how the Lord took the ordinary facts of life—planting and harvesting—and gave them sacred significance, a reminder both that He was the provider of the harvest and more importantly the God who saves. I tried to count up how many days off that came to. I was successful, but it was a lot. Every Sabbath was a day of religious significance and maybe about 20 other days through the year were days of rest and sacred assembly. (Just a little reminder that our holy days are coming up; if it hasn’t been your practice to attend all of the Holy Week services—Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter—maybe make this your year. The full effect is quite extraordinary.)

            The holiness of the years—the Sabbath year and the Jubilee year—also reminds of the sacredness of time but also shades over into the holiness of Israel’s whole society. The Sabbath year called for a fallow year for the land, both an agriculturally sound practice and a true test of faith in the God who provides. That Sabbath year also reminds us of the limitation on the enslavement of a fellow Israelite (Exodus 21). In the Jubilee year, property also reverted to its original owner—the tribe and clan whose inheritance it was (see Joshua 13-21 for the details). The Lord specifies that this happens because the land is the Lord’s (25:23), and He grants it to the Israelites for the food it produces. I’m reminded of Psalm 24:1, “The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it.” So, built into Israel’s marking of time was justice and hope: justice because every 50 years society “reset” and it became impossible for the rich to get continually richer and the poor continually poorer, and hope because your failures didn’t dog you all your life and new beginnings were built into time itself.