lenten blog | March 31, 2025

God is not locked into "religious" times

Throughout the year, the Southern New England Conference of the United Church of Christ reproduces the Daily Lectionary for use by churches.  These are the suggested readings for March 31st:  Leviticus 23:26-41; Psalm 53; and Revelation 19:1-8.  I would encourage you to read these short selections as part of your Lenten practice.

The month of March ends today.  It’s easy to lose track of the dates.  Not so much the farmers among us, but most of us are mainly isolated from the seasons.  We stay warm in winter, cool in summer.  Lights brighten the longer nights.  We can lose track of where we are.  It was different in ancient Israel.  Their religious feasts were linked to the seasons. 

The Day of Atonement fell on the tenth day of the seventh month.  On this day, all work ceased.  The people were ordered to practice self-denial for 24 hours.  To break this commitment meant exclusion from the community, which was tantamount to death.  The purpose of this religious observance was “to make atonement on your behalf before the Lord your God.”  Atonement is to seek forgiveness for the sins that offended God in order to repair the breach in the religious covenant. 

Five days later, after the people had atoned, they gathered for a week’s celebration.  They held a festival in Yahweh’s presence.  They celebrated the harvest and the promise God made through the order of nature to provide for God’s people. 

One of the truly inspiring aspects of these Jewish rituals is that God is not cordoned off in specifically “religious” rooms.  God is obviously present on the Day of Atonement, the day the faithful seek God’s forgiveness.  But God is equally present in the harvest festival, the Festival of Booths.  The booths were the shelters in the fields that the people stayed in as they worked the long hours of the harvest.  God was acknowledged in these rooms, as well.  God and faith lived together through every season, every day, every act.  Religion was not relegated to the typically religious.  It weaved itself into the rhythms of life.

The lesson offered to us is that there are to be times devoted specifically to “religious” purpose, but God is also to be seen and acknowledged in the ordinary.  The judgment against ignoring God in the ordinary is told to us graphically in the Revelation selection.  Revelation 18 tells us of the symbolic city of Babylon, “the whore” we read about today in chapter 19.  Babylon was a long past empire at the time of Revelation.  Babylon stands in for the city of Rome and its empire, and subsequently Rome stands in for any power that corrupts the earth.  Read chapter 18 to see what is condemned.  Babylon is a source of riches for merchants since she revels in luxuries and excesses.  This is why others are deprived of bare necessities so that they rejoice and shout “Hallelujah” upon Babylon’s destruction.  Babylon forgot that God abides among the ordinary aspects of life, that God is present not only during the “religious” observances, but that God watches what Babylon does in the ordinary. 

The specifically religious moments of our relationship with God, times such as church worship, are absolutely essential.  However, those moments are to propel us into right-living, into righteousness, in our ordinary lives.  There is no separation in the eyes of God.  May we learn from our Jewish ancestors, and may we appreciate the traditions that they continue to observe and be inspired by today, so that we practice on Monday what we preach on Sunday.

If you would like to join us for our online Bible study, please send an email to [email protected] for the Zoom logins.
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If you’d like, here is the link to the Southern New England Conference’s daily reading schedule:  www.sneucc.org/lectionary.