By Pastor Heerak Kim
“I despise your festivals…” Amos 5:21.
It contradicts Genesis 1 in which God creates lights in the sky “for signs and for seasons and for days and years” (14), and also Genesis 8 where God promises to Noah after the flood, “As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvests, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease” (22). Circumstances are different. In Genesis, God creates order from chaos and establishes the rhythm of life after destruction. In Amos, God judges the injustice of the already established order.
As we face the season of Lent in a long pandemic and with great resignation, I have mixed feelings. Will Lent provide a sense of normalcy and certainty because it’s an annual observance according to the Christian calendar? Repetition/pattern renders order, right? The creation story in Genesis 1 does that so well. Imagine the Israelite exile in Babylon whose life was full of unpredictable tragedy, to whom Genesis 1 was read. Their unspeakable struggle resulted in strict rituals such as Sabbath and Kosher-forming Jewish identity. However, those order-providing laws were challenged later by the Gospel writers. Jesus is portrayed as a violator of Sabbath. Peter is encouraged to eat unclean animals in his dream. Why is that? Are Gospel writers anarchists like the Joker, in the movie The Dark Knight who says “Nobody panics when things go according to plan. Even if the plan is horrifying”?
They are not, obviously. In Matthew 5:17 Jesus says, “Do not think I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.” The spirit of the law shall be what Amos proclaims, “let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream. Did you bring to me sacrifices and offerings the forty years in the wilderness, O house of Israel?” (Amos 5:25).
Thankfully, our Lent is not forty years but forty days. I’m also glad that the wilderness experience in Exodus is not about sacrifices, rather of relationship, trust and grace. Yom Kippur, the day of atonement in the Jewish calendar, might be somewhat equivalent to Lent. In this one full day, the Jews are called to ponder their shortcomings trusting God who carved the Ten Commandments a second time in the wilderness. It was already a broken covenant, but God carried the people of Israel anyway.
Some might not care about Lent because we seem to have been in the wilderness at least during the pandemic. Some might find comfort in the recurring familiarity of the season. I hope for something better. I hope that Lent will be a formative time for us. I hope we will experience something beyond the rituals. I hope we will encounter God who calls us to a just and righteous life. I hope we will see God’s kingdom/righteousness actualized in Jesus, full of grace and love.
