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Zechariah 7: 5, 6 “Ask all the people . . .
‘When you fasted and mourned in the fifth and seventh months for the past
seventy years, was it really for me that you fasted? And when you were eating
and drinking, were you not just feasting for yourselves?’” (NIV)
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Just think how difficult it would be to share our faith during the holidays if “reason” didn’t rhyme with “season.”* |
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Christmas was approaching and my co-workers (all women) were
stressed over how much they had to do to prepare for the holiday – shopping,
baking, wrapping, decorating. I didn’t have much sympathy for them. “Who said
you had to do all that stuff?” I asked. Turns out, they were doing it because
they chose to.
Zechariah was instructed to have a similar conversation with
the Jews who had returned to their homeland from exile in Babylon. They wanted
to know if they should continue observing the days of fasting and mourning they
had instituted in memory of Jerusalem’s defeat. Through Zechariah, God answered
their question with more questions. “Did you fast and mourn for me?” and “Did
you feast for me?” It seems their fasting and feasting had lost its meaning.
Does that sound familiar? While there is nothing wrong with
getting together with family to eat turkey or exchange gifts or hide eggs,
let’s not pretend we’re honoring God when we have left him out of the
festivities. We may kid ourselves that Thanksgiving is about being thankful;
Christmas is about Jesus’ birth; and Easter is about his resurrection; but
seriously . . .
We may have become like Zechariah’s compatriots – turning a
perfectly fine religious tradition into a meaningless version of its intended
purpose – but our danger lies in how
we observe the only mandatory “holiday” instituted for Christians: the Lord’s
Supper, in which we commemorate Jesus’ death and resurrection. In I Corinthians
11: 17-32, we find instructions for the right way to participate and the
warnings about what will happen if we allow it to become just another
meaningless tradition.
In the situation addressed in this passage, God did finally
answer the people’s question with an answer. In 8: 19, we find the good news:
their self-imposed fasts would become joyful and festive occasions. The same
may be possible for our traditional holidays if we include God in our
celebrations once more and if we heed his plea to “love truth and peace.”
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It can be a deadly thing to come to God with unexamined lives.* |
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