The Ethics of Celebration

Celebrate the Festival of Tabernacles for seven days after you have gathered the produce of your threshing floor and your winepress. Be joyful at your festival—you, your sons and daughters, your male and female servants, and the Levites, the foreigners, the fatherless and the widows who live in your towns (Deuteronomy 16:13-14).

Last Monday, we reflected on the discipline of celebration to which God invited his newly freed people. We considered the emotional benefits of this worship practice. Today, let’s explore the ethical benefits of Israel’s feasting.

These dinners focus attention on the food resting on the table, but also on the coworkers, neighbours and others gathered around it. The instructions read, “Be joyful at your festival—you, your sons and daughters, your male and female servants, and the Levites, the foreigners, the fatherless and the widows who live in your towns.”

Many of us learn things best when we practice them. God was training his people into a new kind of economy, very different from that of Egypt. That was one of scarcity. There was not enough to go around. The Israelites, being slaves, certainly always got the leftovers, if there were any. But now these folks were to look around the table and understand that the purpose of there work was not their own profits, nor their own personal enrichment and security.

The purpose of their labour is the flourishing of the whole community. The work of their hands would be blessed, and their joy would be complete, if their profits caused the community to flourish, and specifically, the vulnerable and the marginalized of that community. This celebration liturgy was training the landowners to see these others within the economy of God.

These things were learned not by the preaching of the priest, nor the lecturing of the ethics professor. Rather, it was practiced as they saw, tasted, smelled and passed around the fruit of their labours. Since there were foreigners, it is very possible that there were language barriers, but sharing the produce of the farm, built community and countered individualism. Justice was tasted. By sharing their table, God’s people reached beyond the borders of race, ethnicity, class and gender.

Obviously, we do not have such meals today. In fact, our practice of donations leans in the opposite direction. It separates giver from receiver. Giver and receiver rarely meet. God would have us change that, to offer gifts face to face. And to rejoice in the giving and receiving. Communities flourish when people know each other. We need to find ways to interact. For example, the Out of the Cold BBQs our church hosts during the summer offer times of interaction. Volunteering at Helping Hands or Neighbour 2 Neighbour are other venues to break social barriers.

Jesus was known for eating with all sorts, accused of being a glutton and drunk. It was one of the things that led to his crucifixion. Still, we are to follow his example. How can you sit at table with other people? How can we share the bounty God has given us so that the community flourishes economically and socially? How can we celebrate together the good gifts of God?

As you journey on, go with the blessing of God:

Wherever God takes you this week, may He fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit and that you may live carefully—not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity.