The Meaning and Experience of Creation, Revelation, and Redemption

Introduction

Last session we talked about the nature and purpose of sacred time as well as some of its key characteristics. Today we will dwell mostly on the ways in which sacred time helps us better understand and experience the Divine blessings of creation, revelation, and redemption. Further, we will reflect on the difference these blessings can make in our lives and how the experience of them in sacred time helps us serve God and others in the world.

A. First, though, I want to continue for a moment our discussion from last week about the Sabbath to see how and why certain mitzvot extend its principles and purposes through time.

XXXI-XL. Leviticus 25:4-5; Exodus 23:11; Deuteronomy 15:2-3, 9; Deuteronomy 31:12. These mitzvot teach about the sabbatical year, a period of resting and a refraining from activity such as working, cultivating, and reaping every seventh year. Further, there is guidance to focus instead in that time on God’s word - to listen to it, to hearken to it, to learn it, and to observe it - all in awe of God.

1. The surface requirements of these mitzvot are no longer followed in any significant way. But what lessons might we learn from such rest and refraining in a seventh year (or other such extended period) that might be of value to us in our own lives?

(Might it be of value to “shut the machine down” on a periodic basis? Just as with the Sabbath in the week, should there be an extended break over the course of years for rest and restoration? Otherwise, we may hold to the view that life is to be lived without break, virtually exclusively in our work of others and the earth’s resources. To the contrary, we are guided to understand that we have broader purposes in life and that the land and our fellow living beings are God’s possessions, not ours. They’re not to be made subject to our complete and perpetual dominion.

After our redemption from Egypt, we can never create Egypt for any part of God’s creation. These rules slow us down; they break the pattern of our acquisitiveness and inclination to own and to control. They force us to respect the land, the environment, and, as well, our fellows for their intrinsic and permanent value, not just what we can extract out of them for our own use and gain.

These rules turn us back to our souls - the deepest parts of our spirit and the call of our ethics. And, so, we occupy ourselves there in periodic sacred time, with our most profound values, and we hope to come back into regular time in the next cycle with our priorities better in sync with God’s expectations of us.)

2. How would we do this?

(Would we take a sabbatical, literally? Or would we, at least every so often, slow it down, physically and materially, and cease the relentless work and reaping? Or would we pause the climb up the corporate ladder? Or soften our pursuit of the extra edge in our deals with others, perhaps allowing the claims and burdens we impose on others to ease or cease?

It’s interesting the Bible warns that the lands that are not given their proper rest will get it one day and that violators will be scattered to the lands of their enemies. Could it be that loss through mental or physical disease, disrupted relationships, or even economic setbacks occasioned by greed and overreaching are modern-day equivalents of such consequences?)

B. XLI-XLIX. Leviticus 25:8-13, 23-24, 29. These mitzvot relate to living true to the requirements of the sabbath of sabbatical years, the Jubilee Year, which, for various reasons, is no longer explicitly followed now. We won’t delve into the specific elements of this year, but suffice to say that its release goes even beyond that of the sabbatical year. In this time, there is to be a more profound re-structuring of our lives and what we’ve built. We are to make sure we understand and live truer to the fundamental principle that God is the owner and that we are mere stewards to the Divine in what we have, including our power in personal relationships with other human beings.

The Jubilee Year was intended to achieve a fundamental alignment back to God’s ways. At its end, people may yet return to ordinary time and get out of balance again. But this period’s demand of a radical adjustment is likely to push us always to be mindful, as well as ever-seeking, of an Original Purpose, an intended ultimate fulfillment of God’s plan. Perhaps it is there at least notionally to give us an ongoing feel of the sacred, one we hope to

have always in the messianic era when all will live in accordance with God’s ways, blessed with shalom. Perhaps, too, the idea is one of a foretaste on earth of everlasting life with God.

C. L-LIII. Exodus 12:2, 23:14, Deuteronomy 16:16, 12:5-6. These mitzvot command us, first, to mark the new moon. Being in sync with sacred time is an essential part of experiencing sacred time, so the time of marking is sacred itself.

This guidance further leads us to journey to sacred space, appear before God, and bring appropriate offerings to God at specific sacred times designed to commemorate the three pilgrimage festivals of Passover, Shavuot, and Sukkot. We’ll turn our attention to them now.

I. Passover

There is so much guidance in the Torah on Passover. I’m going to list the many mitzvot that inform our understanding. Those who want to may dig more deeply. We’ll focus only on a few of them today.

LIV-LXXXI. Exodus 12:6, 8-10, 15, 18-20, 43, 45-46, 48; 13:3, 7-8; 23:18; Leviticus 23:10, 14; Numbers 9:11-12; Deuteronomy 16:3-4.

A. You know the plot of the Exodus, so we won’t repeat it today. But let me reveal a key fact, and then I want to ask you a question.

The fact is this: Jews celebrate four New Year’s Days! One is indeed Rosh Hashanah, which we’ll talk about briefly a bit later. But it takes place on the first day of the 7th month of the Hebrew calendar. Guess which holiday falls on the first day of the 1st month. Passover. It, too, is a New Year’s event, which, as you know, falls in the spring.

What do you think is significant about the spring festival of Passover being a New Year’s?

(It could be that it commemorates the earth being born again.

It could be that the people are born as a community after enslavement in Egypt, and the rituals experienced in sacred time re-enact the birth of that community.

It could be because of the emphasis on the young in the celebration, as well as the importance of differences of each and every celebrant. This could be in the spirit that each newborn child is different.

Or it could be that the miracles associated with this holy time point us back to the Creation, which as Rosenzweig teaches, leads us then forward to revelation and redemption. (Indeed the purpose of the Exodus is not freedom per se; it is freedom from narrowness, a freedom from being bound to the material. Instead, in freedom, we become bound to God. We are freed to become bound in love and service to the God Who reveals the

Divine Self to us, beginning at Sinai, and drives us to a more profound redemption for others and for ourselves.)

(Of course, it is notable that Easter occurs in this same season.))

B. Read Exodus 13:8, Deuteronomy 16:3, and Exodus 12:6. Knowing the plot as you do, what do you think is the purpose of these mitzvot?

(They teach us again of the miracle of God’s Creation and of the miracles associated with Divine redemption and their saving power. We re-experience the redemption from Egypt in order continually to re-learn that we have been redeemed in order to serve God. We are redeemed, first, to receive the Revelation - God’s nearness, guidance, and love. And, then, as Rosenzweig teaches most crucially, we are to be redeemers of others in the world and, with God, redeemers of the world. Do you see how all the motifs that we studied as features of sacred time - creation, revelation, and redemption - are wrapped together in the celebration of Passover?Ramban: “Through recalling and acknowledging the great, manifest miracles of the Exodus, a person ultimately acknowledges the hidden miracles of everyday life, which are the foundation of the entire Torah.”)

II. Shavuot

A. LXXXII-LXXXIII. Leviticus 23:15, 17. These verses relate to the very important pilgrimage festival in the early summer associated with the offering of the first fruits of the wheat harvest. There is a counting of seven weeks from the second day of Passover that brings to the sacred time of Shavuot. (Note the presence again of “seven,” the idea of a complete and enduring cycle.)

Over time, this period of weeks between Passover and Shavuot has been invested with additional rich, spiritual meaning that teaches of the purposes of our journey from Egypt to Mt. Sinai where we received God’s Revelation. We reap of this harvest at so many levels, as God, in covenant with us, reaps of the harvest of us. We acknowledge these miracles and their effects through the counting, through the growth over the weeks, and the special offering of the loaves from the fresh wheat at the conclusion.

(Keep in mind that our next extended study together will take place during this Counting of the Omer next spring-summer. Then we will take a sort of spiritual/ethical journey of our own “from redemption to revelation” to experience some of the possibilities of what this period of sacred time offers people of faith.)

B. What does Revelation mean to you?

(For Rosenzweig, it is the “moment of the present,” sandwiched between “the long everlasting way of the past and the eternal coming of the future.” It is the intense moment of God’s disclosure of Himself and His Torah to the people, which focuses the people’s hearts and minds on God, God’s presence, God’s word, God’s love, and God’s expectations of us.

Rosenzweig: “the people is completely engulfed in its solitude of two with its God.” Through Shavuot, all of the three festivals become festivals of revelation, and Israel becomes a people of revelation, with God, and with a mission toward others and in the world.)

III. The Fall Holy Season - The “high holidays” have the feel of a sacred symphony. Let’s look at them as if each is a movement.

A. Rosh Hashanah - Numbers 29:1 (LXXXIV). The beginning of the “music” hearkens back to the beginning of the world, the Creation. This is one of the New Year’s Days; indeed it is the “head of the year.” Let’s recall that this season begins as, for many, the productive period of the earth’s year begins to “die.” Worried about what one sees in the natural world, people of faith are inclined to turn to God, our Sovereign, in hope that the Creator of the world will continue the flow of miracles that extend the process of birth and re-birth by which life is sustained.

What purpose might you see in the mitzvah calling for a day of blowing and hearing the shofar, the ram’s horn?

(We are awakened, nay, startled and aroused by the sharp sound to re-affirm our faith and covenant. We are both joyful and solemn. Perhaps, more important, our soul is stirred to begin to reflect through the broken sounds of this horn on how we have fallen short and must begin the journey back, of turning again to God. We recall the shofar was sounded at Sinai, drawing our attention to the motif of revelation. Indeed all this may

involve the essence of the covenant: God renews life with us, and we renew life with the Divine.)

B. Yom Kippur - Leviticus 16:1-34, 23:29 (LXXXV-LXXXVII).

We spend the first ten days of the month re-centering and re-orienting ourselves to the way that God has given us. This turning, the teshuvah, begins. Critically, it involves our getting right with those we have wronged. The teaching is clear: God is not pleased with our approach to Him if we have failed to try to repair and restore what we’ve broken with others.

This interim period, thus, has a touch of the sacred in it. Perhaps that’s because we recall that part of Revelation in which God’s love spills out to us with the intention that we help spill it forward to others. More particularly, if we are to be redeemed, we must play a redeeming role in the world - all of which requires that the cloth of our human relations be stitched together (and often re-stitched) to the best of our effort.

Why and how do we afflict ourselves?

(The “music” becomes somber, sober as we approach the Day of Awe. All is at stake. There is an awareness of death, as well as of eternity. It’s principally about getting right with others and God, and being forgiven. But it’s also about a readiness for eternity, even through death, to an ultimate redemption.

We offer up a personal sacrifice of sorts through fasting. We are sensitive and attuned to spiritual and ethical challenges and opportunities. The material side of our selves is neglected, in favor of the spiritual - the wise soul - that serves God and relies on Divine direction (Chinuch).

Whatever our physical fate might be in the world, generally and specifically in the coming year, we reach out to God, in prayer and turning, and in righteousness and with love for others. In doing so, we seek to avert whatever may be stern in the decree as to the physical dimension of our lives, and find shalom in and for our soul. This has a deeply and pervasively redemptive effect, first, in promoting our role in furthering the redemption of others through our making things right in our world and, second, in our own redemption through being right, ultimately, with God.)

C. Sukkot, and the Closing Movement of the “Fall Symphony” - Leviticus 23:40, 42 (LXXXVIII-LXXXIX).

As was the case with the counting of the omer, the related “music” in the “Spring Symphony,” there is wilderness “music” in the fall sacred period, too. Here it is less contemplative in a way, less anticipatory. Rather, it is simpler, more festive, more, I think, full of faith. It is the holiday of Sukkot.

What would it mean to dwell in booths that open to the sky during the fall harvest? What might this be all about? What might it teach us?

(We experience nature, and we are open to it and God’s protection. We have vulnerability, to be sure, but also faith. There is a sense of being near the harvest, and very grateful to God and joyful for it. There’s also a touch of the nomadic in our lives. We celebrate with the fruits of the earth, the so-called Four Species, hearkening back to the Creation. The booth may be as frail as a cloud, but, as with the clouds of glory, we are sheltered by it and by God as we stay before wandering forward.

There is a sense that the “sacred music” of the fall is nearing its end here. We have experienced the Revelation and very much feel God’s transcendent presence and love. We feel redemption and know it lies ahead, though it is, as of now, still incomplete. Though our existence has a frailty to it, we feel the great power of our Sheltering Force, which is forever present with us.)

The music of this season proceeds quickly through the mysterious time of Shemini Atzeret, which feels both joyous and serious, when we “close out the party” by focusing really solely on God and contemplating in awe the revelation of God’s way. And then the “Fall Symphony” ends with the joyous festival of Simchat Torah. On this day, we rejoice in Torah, completing one year’s cycle and starting up the next on the same day. It’s as if we are now readying ourselves to go back to life from sacred time in joy and in service, as God has called us to.

Conclusion.

Creation, revelation, and redemption - the experience of these three Divine blessings is at the core of what we do in sacred time, especially the holy days we’ve discussed today. I hope we come away from our study with a deeper appreciation of how such experiences strengthen us and enable us to understand and to fulfill God’s hope that we grow closer to the holy and bring more of it out from sacred time and into more of the ordinary time in our lives.

Further, I hope we leave with a better sense of how God’s word guides us to appreciate each of these blessings - the power of miracle in Creation, the presence and love of God in Revelation, and the glorious purpose and goal in this world and eternity of redemption.