Labor Day 2021

 

Moses gave a day of rest in seven free of commerce and transaction, a year of Jubilee every fifty,  enlightenment materialism gives one Monday in September.   From what I can see online, the "white evangelicals" hate this book.  I don't agree with everything he says, but it's worth listening to. 

I haven't listened to the recording at that link yet; I would urge you to do so.  It made me think of something I wrote, and then read again yesterday.  Parts of it apply to the idea of Labor Day, which is actually a holiday meant to recognize the importance to the country of the working man.  To do this, we have to start with the Biblical story of Creation; the first one, in Genesis 1:

[Crossan] points out that Genesis 1 and Leviticus 19 belong to the Priestly layer of the Torah (J, E, D, P, are the four schools discerned in the torah.  Jehovah, Elohim, Deuteronomist, and Priestly, if you were wondering.  Further affiant sayeth not.).  Crossan makes the fascinating observation that the Priestly school was writing a parable about creation in Genesis 1, not an eyewitness account. "The authors know exactly what they are doing.  They know they do not know how God created the world, but they are equally sure the know its purpose and meaning."(emphasis in original).  Crossan points out there are 8 actions of creation squeezed into six days, so all the actions needed will fit the schema of a seven day week.  It is the schema that is important here.

It is that compression of eight chunks into six days that clarifies the authors' intention and purpose.  Put negatively, we humans are no the crown of creation.  (We are the work of a late Friday afternoon. And maybe not even God's best work is done on a late Friday afternoon.)  Put positively, the crown of creation is the Sabbath day itself.

Creation is not the world of six days, as is often mistakenly said--and whether is said literally or metaphorically, historically or parabolically, it is still mistaken.  Creation is the work of seven days, and, as its climax, the Sabbath day is built into the very fabric of our world, the very creation of our earth.

John Dominic Crossan, The Greatest Prayer (New York:  HarperOne, 2010, p. 64.

Crossan goes on to argue that this rest, established for one day a week, and every seven years (Exod. 23: 10-11 and Leviticus 25:2-7), and then the jubilee every 50 years (Leviticus 25:8-10), is a rest from work as worship.  It is a ritual; an ordering of life that reminds the people of Israel whose people they are, and how their lives are to be lived in order to enjoy "life into the ages" (the biblical formula often translated as "eternal life").  And that is where my interest lies:  in the importance of ritual.

Christianity is condemned from the outside as a community where individuals are told what to think, herded through meaningless actions from medieval Europe, and taught mythologies of the Bronze and Iron Age.  Religion is disparaged as the redoubt of the frightened:  afraid of death, of mental independence, of the world they live in.  What religion brings to humanity, according to this broad school of criticism, is not only of no value, but is in fact a detriment.  And one of the worst things religion can bring to human existence is ritual.

Which is funny, really, since our secular calendar in America is based upon holidays, which once meant "holy days," days set apart for special activities.  The rituals are thoroughly secular, but their observance is as ingrained into our lives as sunrise and sunset.  No longer mindful of the seasons except as how we change our wardrobe to respond to the weather, we will follow the year based on a calendar that actually starts in August (not January or December, as the Christian calendar does).  That beginning is the First Day of School.

It gets mentioned on the news every year.  Texas has a "Tax Free Day" when sales tax is suspended on certain purchase meant to return children to school in new clothes and shoes (mostly).  Columbus Day pops up in October, but the real holiday is Halloween, an excuse for everyone, child to adult, to dress in costume and be seen in it in public.  Thanksgiving follows hard thereafter, gateway to the shopping season that is Christmas, a season that ends with New Year's Day.  The next holiday is Easter, whether celebrated at a church or with an easter egg hunt and another excuse for a feast (the last of the three feasts which began with Thanksgiving almost six months earlier).  Then, as with the Christian calendar, comes the long season until August, punctuated only with the 4th of July (Memorial Day is a day for shopping and expecting school to end).  Take away too many of these days and the rituals that surround them (shopping; handing out candy; eating turkey and watching football; exchanging gifts and eating again; drinking and eating on New Year's Eve; eating again at Easter, and the last time on the 4th), and the year becomes flat and listless.  It is our rituals that give the year it's shape as well as its order.

So ritual is not something priests do while an audience sits silent and has incomprehensible words muttered over it.  Crossan points out the sabbath day, year, and jubilee, all put into daily life the lesson that the world was God's and we just live in it:

The Priestly tradition was not interested in crop rotation, agricultural management, or responsible farming [all modern explanations of the Sabbath year concept].  It was intended as shock treatment, to make the hearers realize that God's land was a living thing and to make them ponder its right to have a rest like everything else in God's creation.

It is...not about agricultural wisdom, but about distributive justice--for the land itself, the inhabitants, the domestic animals, and the wild animals.  It applies, furthermore, across the great Mediterranean triad of grains, olives, and vines.

Crossan, pp. 68-69.

And what is the point of this?

The logic of all these Sabbath injunctions it an attempt to return once more to that beginning moment of Sabbath creation, when all the world as distributed fairly and equitably by God and was declared good and blessed in its inaugural glory.

Crossan, p. 69.

You'll notice I didn't mention Labor Day in all that recital of holidays, a recital from seven years ago.  But it seems to me the most important holiday for this meditation is today's.