Over these past few weeks, Genesis has been shedding some light on a few mighty good questions. Like, who did God intend for us human beings to be? What's our purpose for living? We began to unravel what it means to be made in God's image: to be the physical way he makes his living presence manifest in his temple which is the world, especially in the garden. At heart, you and I are here to worship. Last week, as we explored praise and prayer, adoration and oblation, instruction and benediction, we found that these priestly works of worship can combine together in regular patterns we call liturgy, “an ordered means of engaging with God.”1
But now we've got a loose end to tie up in the Bible's opening chapter, something we passed over before. God didn't just make linear time – past and present and future – but God also makes cyclical time, time with patterns and repetitions, so that the present can match something from the past or the future.2 A Tuesday can match other Tuesdays, a July can match other Julys. As St. Augustine put it, “were time to run on without being distinguished by any precise moments... marked by the course of the heavenly bodies, time could indeed run on and pass by, but it could not be grasped and articulated by human beings.”3 So humans have been watching since the Stone Age, learning how to conform our time to what patterns we track in the skies above.4
Sun and moon “rule over the day and over the night” (Genesis 1:18). God put them in the sky “for days and years” (Genesis 1:16). A day is made by earth's rotation against the sun, while a year is how long it takes the earth to orbit the sun and get back to the same relative position as before. That takes slightly less than 365¼ days. But Israel's years were focused on natural months – which is to say, moons. The moon doesn't look the same from night to night. Hebrew months start at a new moon, where the side facing earth is dark. But slowly the crescent waxes fatter until, at mid-month, it becomes a full moon, a circle of light. From there, it can wane 'til the next new moon. All these measures were governed naturally by the skies, “created by the one true God when he commanded that the stars he had set in the heavens should be the signs of seasons, days, and years.”5
So Genesis also says the sun, moon, and stars are up there “for signs and seasons” (Genesis 1:14). Or, at least, your Bible probably says 'seasons' here. But that might be misleading, because the word here in Hebrew never refers to something like spring or fall.6 It comes from a verb meaning 'to appoint,' as in the Tent of Meeting, the appointed place to gather with God. But it also refers to God's recurring appointments with his people, times he wanted set apart with him as holy time – holidays. That here is “the primary purpose of the host of heaven,”7 for “to follow the celestial calendar was to live on earth with the cadence of heaven.”8
Since these signs let them coordinate their schedules with their gods, it was vital for people to do the right rituals on the right days.9 The trouble was, every pagan nation dedicated their calendars to false gods with whom one oughtn't keep appointments. So when God called Israel out of Egypt, he taught them the dates he actually wanted to make with them: “These are the appointed feasts of the LORD that you shall proclaim as holy convocations” (Leviticus 23:2). These would sanctify Israel's experience of time to their God of Love; and these dates each combined sacrifices, celebrations, and rituals into a beautiful liturgy special to that time.10
Every day, of course, the rising and setting of the sun established times for morning and evening daily offerings (Exodus 29:38-42), each an 'appointed time' for Israel to meet her LORD over a sacrificial lamb (Numbers 28:2). Beyond that daily rhythm, there was a holy day every seventh day, the sabbath, which defined the course of a week (Leviticus 23:3). Not linked to any particular sign in the sky, it itself was “a sign between me and you throughout your generations, that you may know that I, the LORD, sanctify you” (Exodus 31:13). The sabbath, a day mandatorily free of work, was a weekly celebration of God's enthronement in his world, their privilege to join him in his righteous rest, a sign “to eat and drink and bless the One who created all things” (Jubilees 2:21).
After daily offerings and the weekly sabbath, the third-most-frequent appointment was the start of each month, which by definition was the sighting of the new moon, that first sliver of a new crescent of light after the dark. Nobody back then had a calendar hanging on the wall, with a fixed number of days in the month. The only way to tell when the next month would start was to watch the night sky. Once the priests had verified the moon was new, then they'd announce it with gladsome trumpets so all Israel could hear the verdict (Numbers 10:10).
Then, throughout the year, came other appointed feasts, likewise each heralded by trumpets and observed in a liturgy of sacrifice. The first holiday was Passover, at the first full moon of spring (Leviticus 23:5), recalling how God had judged Israel's oppressors but mercifully spared them by the blood of a lamb (Exodus 12:27). By this time of year, Israel's barley crop was just barely ready to harvest, so they brought the firstfruits of the barley to a priest to present to God in thanksgiving (Leviticus 23:9-11).11 Not until giving God their barley firstfruits could they eat from it themselves (Leviticus 23:12-14), kicking off a week of making unleavened bread. After Passover, these were seven days of special offerings to God, bracketed by holy convocations, community days when work was banned (Leviticus 23:6-9). And during this time, not only would they have brought the barley firstfruits, but also the firstborn of all their livestock were given as a gift to God (Exodus 34:19-20).
After allowing seven weeks to finish the barley harvest, there came the next big appointment, the Feast of Weeks (Leviticus 23:15-16). This was early in their third month, the late-spring wheat harvest. Here there was another holy convocation and, freed from regular work, each Israelite would bring two loaves of leavened wheat bread to the priest as firstfruits (Leviticus 23:15-22). Since this also roughly marked the anniversary of when God gave the Law to Moses, later Jews used the feast as a time to “renew the covenant in all respects, year after year” (Jubilees 6:17). Since it was fifty days from Passover, Greek Jews called this feast 'Pentecost.'
The Law left the summer months without holidays besides sabbaths and new moons. But the new moon of the seventh month was special, kicking off the fall season with the Feast of Trumpets, “a day of solemn rest, a memorial proclaimed with the blast of trumpets, a holy convocation” (Leviticus 23:24). Most new moons were rung in with glad trumpets, but this was a trumpet of alarm, reminding Israel of the crisis of her sins. This opened nine days of solemn reflection until an intense day of sorrow and penance called Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement (Leviticus 23:26-32), which was three weeks ago. Among the many offerings were two goats. One was chosen by chance to be slain as a sin offering, after which the high priest entered the Holy of Holies – the only time he did – and, as he used the blood to cover all impurity, he called God by name. After exiting, he laid all Israel's sins on the live 'scapegoat' and expelled it into the desert (Leviticus 16:1-28). In this way, “atonement may be made for the people of Israel once in the year because of all their sins” (Leviticus 16:34).
Five days later – just past the full moon, if all went right – began the last and biggest feast in the Law. The full moon heralded an intense week bracketed by holy convocations, with over seventy bulls sacrificed, one for each of the Gentile nations (Numbers 29:12-38). This was the close of the fruit and vegetable harvest after the summer growing season and before the onset of rainy winter (Leviticus 23:39). So it was another harvest festival, “the Feast of Ingathering at the year's end, when you gather in from the field the fruit of your labor” (Exodus 23:16). They'd go to present “the firstfruits of our ground and the firstfruits of all fruit of every tree, year by year, to the House of the LORD” (Nehemiah 10:35).12 But it was also the Feast of Booths or Tabernacles, because, recalling their life in the desert, they'd build open-roof huts to eat and sleep in, where they could look up at the stars and see how God had led them all their way (Leviticus 23:42-43). It's inspired by this Feast of Ingathering, which for our Jewish neighbors ended a week ago, that we today have our Harvest Home.
“Thus Moses declared to the people of Israel the appointed feasts of the LORD” (Leviticus 23:44). After these came plowing and planting, and the early and late rains in the eighth and twelfth months prepared the growth for the next year. But to this cultic calendar, Israel could later add extra days of fasting in memory of the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem, as mentioned in Zechariah (8:19); Purim, in memory of God's rescue of exiled Jews from Persian genocide, as told in Esther (9:20-28); Hanukkah, in memory of the rededication of the Second Temple after its defilement by Greeks – Jesus celebrates it in the Gospel of John (10:22).13
But for all this, still they emphasized that it was always God who “designates the seasons and feasts,” so out of a year's days, “some he exalts and sanctifies, and others he lists as ordinary days” (Sirach 33:8-9). Israel aimed to be careful to celebrate the right rituals on the right days, “neither to advance their holy times nor to postpone any of their prescribed festivals.”14 And the prophets bore witness that these holy rhythms would always matter, for “from new moon to new moon, and from sabbath to sabbath, all flesh shall come to worship me, declares the LORD” (Isaiah 66:23). But it's only in Jesus Christ that this prophecy can find its truth.
When the gospel first caused Israel's faith to burst beyond the bounds of the Law, there was a lot of confusion of what to make of the rhythms of time. There were Jewish Christians who, having been raised that way, insisted on still observing the same festivals as before. There were Gentile Christians who saw that keeping all Israel's festivals literally would mean becoming Jewish to be Christian. In that context, St. Paul cautioned: “Let no one pass judgment on you,” either way, “with regard to a festival or a new moon or a sabbath” (Colossians 2:16).
The apostle added that all the appointed times of Israel had been “a shadow of the things to come, but the body belongs to Christ” (Colossians 2:17). For Jesus fulfills all those feasts: he's the Lamb whose blood shields us at Passover; he's the Firstfruits of the resurrection harvest, lifting himself to God as a promise of more to follow; he's the Lawgiver who pours down his fiery Spirit at Pentecost; he's the Prophet whose trumpeting voice warns of a coming judgment; he's the High Priest pleading his completed work in an eternal Day of Atonement; he's our Tabernacle we shelter in through all this earthly journey; he's the Harvester who'll gather us in and present us to his Father at last; he's the Heavenly Rest of our everlasting sabbath when all life's work is done. Like Paul said, the true meaning of Israel's appointed times “belongs to Christ” (Colossians 2:17).
Now, there are some Christian groups today who leave it there, and think that any holy rhythm of time belongs to the mere shadow. Some early Christians sadly went there when they mocked Jewish neighbors about “their constant observation of the stars and moon to keep track of months and days, and the distinctions they make in the divine orderings of the world..., setting aside some times for feasts and others for mourning.”15 But despite that rhetoric, the Church as a whole was already discovering how Jesus was revealing a new holy rhythm.
The sabbath itself was eclipsed by a new weekly day of worship. With respect to our Seventh-Day Adventist neighbors or to the Seventh-Day Baptists who founded Ephrata, the New Testament shows that Jewish and Gentile Christians joined together on a holy feast appointed under the new covenant. This was “the first day of the week,” beginning from the resurrection and continued by the apostles (John 20:19; Acts 20:7). They also called this “the Lord's Day” (Revelation 1:10; Didache 14.1), explaining that Christ would “make a beginning on the eighth day, which is the beginning of another world; thus, we also observe the eighth day in gladness.”16
In time, Christians came to begin their year with a feast celebrating the birth and the baptism of Jesus, which they later split into two separate feasts twelve days apart: Christmas and Epiphany – Christmas being preceded by an extended time of fasting in preparation, which we call Advent. And Passover continued to be observed as Easter, itself preceded by a penitential season called Lent. Easter, the New Passover, they called “the brightest festival of all.”17 But even in the new covenant, its date – which took a while to reach agreement on, and was a messy process we don't have time to explore more deeply today, much as I'd love to – is still fixed by sun and moon: it's the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox when the sun moves north across the celestial equator.18
Closing a seven-week season after Easter, we still celebrate the Feast of Weeks, or Pentecost, to mark the giving of the Holy Spirit and the firstfruits of the harvest of the world for the gospel. And although we characterize the time after Pentecost as 'ordinary time' or by counting out dozens of 'Sundays after Pentecost,' actually the whole Christian calendar has come to be littered with observances relating to the life of Jesus and those close to him. Early on, when a Christian died for Jesus, those left behind would annually “commemorate the birthday of his martyrdom, both in memory of those who have already engaged in the struggle and as a training and preparation for those who are about to do so.”19 It wasn't controversial: Christians “celebrate the passions and days of the martyrs with an annual commemoration.”20 Later, this was extended to others worth remembering not just locally but globally.
Today, for instance, is the feast of the missionary nun St. Thecla, who helped nurture communities of faith in Bavaria; the missionary bishop St. Bruno, lynched in Lithuania by those he came to save; and the Spanish mystic St. Theresa, whose visions bore fruit in profound precepts on prayer. Tomorrow will be the feast of the French abbot St. Bercharius, who, when fatally stabbed by a disciple he'd corrected, used his last breath to advise his killer how to get right with God; the French bishop St. Bertrand, who spent his days reforming a corrupted local church; and the Polish duchess St. Hedwig, who gave her fortune to serve the poor, sick, and alone, and who died 780 years ago today. The Church scattered people like these around the calendar so that, as their legacy seeps into us year after year, their example and influence can help us learn how to be holy too.
And that's the gift of holy rhythms. The Lord's Day, the great feasts of salvation history like Christmas and Easter and Ascension and Pentecost, the penitential seasons like Advent and Lent, and even lesser-known commemorations like the Circumcision and the Transfiguration and the upcoming Feast of All Saints – and, any day we care to think about it, days honoring just a few of the holy forerunners who made it to heaven ahead of us and are eagerly cheering for us to join them in due time. These are all special appointments we can keep with God, letting us dive into a deep vault of holiness to haul up treasures week after week, month after month, year after year. “Over the centuries, the Church has fittingly sacralized time by means of the liturgical calendar with its practices and celebrations, and we can fruitfully appropriate this pattern in our personal discipleship and devotion.”21 God's holy rhythms refuse now to let any day be merely generic. Some are higher, some are lower, but all are occasions to meet Christ who works in history, who directs the flow of time, who writes the calendar.
These days, we remember the big feasts that are hardest to ignore, and maybe we change the colors of the altar cloths – just token gestures, really. But American culture has calendars all its own, full of federal holidays and observances dedicated to this or that theme or cause. Our hearts were made to be discipled by a calendar, and for generations we've so emptied out the church year that we can't help but be discipled by calendars of the world more than the calendar of Christ. If we want to turn it around, we're going to have to relearn time itself.
All this is about what some call 'living liturgically,' living in such a way that our whole lives are bound up with Christ's calendar of worship, that all our days and all our hours become his in the special ways he wants, and so we become conformed to “the cadence of heaven.”22 As one convert testified, “I want the Christian story to shape everything I do, even how I reckon time. … Almost more than anything else, living inside church time has formed me in Jesus' story.”23 And I hope that's what you want, too. May the holy rhythms of the rich, rich church year, what the very heavens above are written for, guide you deeper into the holiness of Christ. Amen.
1 Bobby Gross, Living the Christian Year: Time to Inhabit the Story of God (InterVarsity Press, 2009), 19.
2 Zvi Grumet, Genesis: From Creation to Covenant (Maggid, 2017), 10-11.
3 Augustine of Hippo, On Genesis Against the Manichees 1.14 §21, in Works of Saint Augustine I/13:52.
4 Andrea D. Lobel, “Diviners in High Places: On Interpreting the Night Skies of the Ancient Near East,” in Jaqueline S. du Toit, Jason Kalman, Vanessa R. Sasson, and Hartley Lachter, eds., To Fix Torah in Their Hearts: Essays in Biblical Interpretation and Jewish Studies in Honor of B. Barry Levy (Hebrew Union College Press, 2018), 24.
5 Bede, On the Reckoning of Time 2, in Translated Texts for Historians 29:14.
6 Walter Vogels, “The Cultic and Civil Calendars of the Fourth Day of Creation (Gen. 1:14b),” Scandinavian Journal of the Old Testament: An International Journal of Nordic Theology 11/2 (1997): 165.
7 Jeffrey L. Cooley, Poetic Astronomy in the Ancient Near East: The Reflexes of Celestia Science in Ancient Mesopotamian, Ugaritic, and Israelite Narrative (Eisenbrauns, 2013), 316.
8 Michael LeFebvre, The Liturgy of Creation: Understanding Calendars in Old Testament Context (IVP Academic, 2019), 24.
9 Eibert Tigchelaar, “'Lights Serving as Signs for Festivals' (Genesis 1:14b) in Enuma Elish and Early Judaism,” in George H. van Kooten, ed., The Creation of Heaven and Earth: Reinterpretations of Genesis 1 in the Context of Judaism, Ancient Philosophy, Christianity, and Modern Physics, Themes in Biblical Narrative 8 (Brill, 2005), 35.
10 Bryan C. Babcock, Sacred Ritual: A Study of the West Semitic Ritual Calendars in Leviticus 23 and the Akkadian Text Emar 446 (Eisenbrauns, 2014), 117.
11 Michael LeFebvre, The Liturgy of Creation: Understanding Calendars in Old Testament Context (IVP Academic, 2019), 40-44.
12 Michael LeFebvre, The Liturgy of Creation: Understanding Calendars in Old Testament Context (IVP Academic, 2019), 49-50.
13 John Goldingay, Genesis, Baker Commentary on the Old Testament: Pentateuch (Baker Academic, 2020), 32.
14 1QS 1.14-15, in Donald W. Parry and Emanuel Tov, eds., The Dead Sea Scrolls Reader, 6 vols. (Brill, 2004-2005), 1:3.
15 Epistle to Diognetus 4.5, in Loeb Classical Library 25:139.
16 Barnabas 15.8-9, in Popular Patristics Series 41:80.
17 Dionysius of Alexandria, letter quoted in Eusebius of Caesarea, Ecclesiastical History 7.22.4, in Jeremy M. Schott, tr., Eusebius of Caesarea: The History of the Church: A New Translation (University of California Press, 2019), 363.
18 Alden A. Mosshammer, The Easter Computus and the Origins of the Christian Era (Oxford University Press, 2008), 52.
19 Martyrdom of Polycarp 18.3, in Loeb Classical Library 24:393.
20 Cyprian of Carthage, Letter 39.3, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 51:100.
21 Bobby Gross, Living the Christian Year: Time to Inhabit the Story of God (InterVarsity Press, 2009), 21.
22 Michael LeFebvre, The Liturgy of Creation: Understanding Calendars in Old Testament Context (IVP Academic, 2019), 24.
23 Lauren F. Winner, foreword to Bobby Gross, Living the Christian Year: Time to Inhabit the Story of God (InterVarsity, 2009), 9-10.
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