Rebuilding the Person in the Rhythm of Worship and Community

Starting Anew in the Seventh Month
Ezra-Nehemiah is retelling the Exodus story with a twist. In Exodus, the children of Israel become a people while still in Egypt. They eat a proscribed ritual feast, which protects them during the passover of the death angel. This Passover becomes the start of their identity as a “called out people,” redeemed from slavery and restored to the call of their father Abraham. Passover thus designates the start of their new year and the high feast of their year.

But we know the story. While God has blessed and redeemed this people. They still struggle between two identities: the children of Israel serving the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and the slave people who worship the gods of Egypt. Immediately, we see a reversion to idol worship when Moses is on the mountain. This struggle to become the “called out people” plays a fundamental role throughout the story of the conquering of the land and the establishing of the kingdom.

But now after the exile in Babylon, the children of Israel are “called out” again. This time the initial act of worship is not the passover meal. Chapter 3 of Ezra tells the story of the first feast of these “called out ones.” It doesn’t happen in the land of Babylon but in the land of Israel. It is the seventh month of the year.

Think rest. The theme of idolatry will no longer play a defining role in the people of Israel. By God’s grace, they are “called out” from idolatry and now rest in His faithfulness. Eventually the first day of the seventh month will become known as the new year. Is this because the new people emerge in the seventh month?

The festival that marks the beginning of this new people is the Feast of Booths. This feast marks the passage in the wilderness. This feast reinforces that these are a pilgrim people. Even as they occupy the land, they are still on pilgrimage to the land of promise.  This feast is also a harvest feast.

Whereas Passover might be seen as a planting feasting, the seed has grown up now and is bearing fruit in the feast of booths. The people who died in Babylon, have grown up and will now begin to bear fruit in the land of promise.

Whereas Passover focused on the family, this feast is a gathering of all families together as community. This is a feast of the people as one man. The culmination of the Feast of Booths is the Day of Atonement. The focal point of this people born is the seventh month, is atonement, cleansing of sin, renewed holiness before God. Once again we see images pointing this renewed people toward the one and complete Day of Atonement in Jesus Christ.

One Man
The text says that the people gathered as one man to Jerusalem. This image of one man is a movement in the text toward Jesus. The story in the Old Testament is a story of many gods toward one god, and many peoples (divided at Babel) moving toward one man (Jesus). Israel gathers to worship God as one man.

I see a movement toward one man (Jesus) that moves back out toward all men ingrained in one man, thus the church becomes one new man in Christ. In Christ, all tribes of the world become one new man.

Hidden Glory
The older people weep at the rebuilding of the Temple because they remember a more glorious Temple from Solomon. But the promise is that the glory is growing brighter and extending: glory to glory. I think this is a clue that the symbolic focus has shifted from Temple. In the coming centuries, it shifts to the law. The glory associated with the Temple will be highlighted in relation to the law.

And eventually it shifts again to the person of Jesus. All symbols find their source in Jesus.

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