Solemn Assembly

Day after day, from the first day to the last, Ezra read from the Book of the Law of God. They celebrated the festival for seven days, and on the eighth day, in accordance with the regulation, there was an assembly.

Nehemiah 8:18 NIV

Last time we saw our gathered people obey and make booths with gathered branches. The abundance of marvelous mirth which characterized their celebration came from hearts genuinely set free from captivity. Today we see another aspect of this group’s festival obedience.

For starters, from the first day until the last, Ezra read (qara – call, proclaim, make famous, summon) the Torah. Truth was proclaimed and made famous and summoned the group’s joyful obedience even as they ate the fat and drank the sweetness and celebrated the harvest.

Can we get real personal for a second? How easy is it for you to picture a community party alongside the law of Elohim being read? Do those two things seem completely separate in your mind? How does your heart respond to the communal hearing of God’s law and a clear command to drink wine and eat fatty foods and have a giant, camping slumber party with an entire city?

Yeah, me too. It is hard to reconcile what seems quite unspiritual with what is clearly done to focus on God. But I think this is where we often suffer in our discipleship to the Living God. We separate events and desires and traditions and holidays from things like Bible study or prayer or fasting. When the clear message of Scripture is they are all parts of one whole life devoted to Yahweh.

If you are on a path of obedience regarding food consumption or alcohol or reducing the amount of time you have with people in order to reflect or better serve, please do not read into this some sort of permission to abandon obedience in that area. What I hope diving into this text does is challenge the parts of our lives into which we do not invite our Creator. For example, for me to ignore any sense of restraint this holiday season in the area of sugar, when God and I have clearly been walking this thing out together for a few years, is not inviting my Creator into a celebration. It is not obedience with marvelous mirth. It is gluttony in which I ignore the growth we’ve made and do whatever I want, numbing out instead of talking through my fears or desires or stress with Him.

For you, it might be the part that thinks desires – food, drink, sex, connection, rest, excitement, celebration – are either frowned upon by a joyless God or are nothing to invite Him into. Instead of seeing them as part of a good creation (though marred and broken by sin and teeming with poor examples) they instead seem to be ways to ignore your heart “for Him.”

Or maybe you have no issues diving into your desires but you lack times of restraint. Perhaps you’ve never experienced that lovely, dependent weakness that comes from a day – just one day – without food, pointing to your absolute creatureliness. Instead, having all you’ve ever needed, you take for granted there will always be more and assume it is your right. What life (God?) owes you because of hard work or intrinsic rights.

Indeed, we all have areas of soul work into which He invites us. But if we are never letting Him in on either end of the spectrum, we will ping pong back and forth on our own strength. And it just so happens that after a few weeks of focusing on feasting and celebration and marvelous mirth, today’s verses end with an assembly on the final day of the festival. The word for assembly is atsarah which denotes a solemn gathering. It comes from atsar which means to restrain, confine, detain, prevent, check, slow down.

Yes, there comes a time for restraint, to slow down. To check motives and intentions, to prevent disaster. As we grow in obedience to Him, I think one of the sweetest things He does is help us trust His law. As we trust His character, we see His faithful heart behind His requirements. And as we step out in what He commands, we experience the rightness of walking with Him. Holy Writ becomes both how we love Him more and the way we engage Him experientially. And so often He will surprise us when we obey without full understanding, then He shows us how much better His way was than our own. Not that He owes us that – He is God – but when we begin to see a kind Creator, gentle Shepherd, and wise Father prove to us His ways are for our best, it is solemn indeed. Restraint can become more reflexive as we don’t move without Him.

And this solemn assembly was “in accordance with the regulation.” The Hebrew word used here is mishpat – judgment, just, mode of life, order, standard, worthy, what is right, custom, discretion, human or divine law. It’s the word most commonly translated “justice.” Side by side with hesed, the Hebrew translated loving-kindness, we have a more filled out picture of what Old Testament prophets considered loving God and neighbor.

Mishpat comes from the root word shaphat – to judge, govern, avenge, defend, reason, rule. I’m most intrigued by the idea of a worthy mode of life. An entire life shaped by love of God and others. When we do what is just, use discretion in how we live by considering others in what we choose to do and refrain from doing, we are loving in practical ways. When we take the areas given to us to govern (and we all have them) and view them as a sacred trust in which to defend those who are marginalized and judge with fairness, we are living out mishpat.

But the most tender thing to me is the just rule in this situation, the regulation required at the end of this festival, is a time of solemnity, slowing down, a time of restraint. And don’t look now, but Advent is upon us.

And during this upcoming time as the world celebrates the first arrival of God to a planet requiring lungs and legs and ligaments, we can slow it down a beat. We can sit with twinkle lights and, as my son just asked me, ponder how Mary knew her Baby created the world. Yes, she knew. Perhaps not all of it, but His miraculous conception and divine birth pointed to His power. Just as being surrounded by manure and hay pointed to His humility. After all, she was the one who declared:

Let’s take a lesson from our gathering of festive returned exiles. May we slow down and practice restraint on behalf of others and the planet this Advent. May we listen intently to the Law of God daily even as we celebrate with those we love. And may we dedicate ourselves to mishpat, a worthy mode of life.

Peace on the earth, goodwill to man.