So Many 40’s

We are in the midst of the season of Lent in the Christian calendar.  Lent is forty days long, excluding Sundays which are of Lent but not in Lent.  Last Sunday was the second Sunday of Lent.  I have been thinking of the fact that the number forty (40) occurs frequently in the bible.  If you are familiar with the bible, I’m sure you can think of some of the times when this happens.  Jesus spent 40 days in the wilderness after his baptism in the Jordan River by John the Baptist.  It rained for 40 days and nights during the flood which God sent to cover the earth.  The Israelites were in the wilderness for 40 years after escaping from slavery in Egypt.  Moses was on Mount Sinai for 40 days and night in his encounter with YHWH (God).    That is just a few of the better-known examples of the number 40 occurring in the bible.  However, if we take a bit of a dive into this, we will find there are many more – including some that are rather obscure e.g. the Egyptians spent 40 days embalming the body of Jacob – how’s that for obscure.   

So, is this just a coincidence – or is there a deeper meaning in the number 40 than just a measurement of mathematics or a length of time?  Well, to explore this I did what most people would do these days, I started with a question to AI.  I found out that the number 40 occurs 146 times in the Old Testament and New Testament.  This is the type of question that AI is good at answering. As noted above, there are occurrences where the number seems to be significant and others where it is not so much.

Here’s a few more examples:

·         Jesus appeared to his disciples for 40 days between his resurrection and ascension

·         Elijah traveled 40 days and 40 nights without food to Mount Horeb

·         The first three kings of Israel—Saul, David, and Solomon—each reigned for 40 years

·         Several judges, including Othniel, Deborah, Barak, and Eli, served for 40 years.

·         The holy of holies in the Temple was 40 cubits long 

·         Mosaic Law allowed a maximum of 40 lashes (stripes) for a guilty person

·         Goliath taunted the army of Israel for 40 days before David defeated him

·         The prophet Jonah warned that Nineveh would be destroyed in 40 days

I will leave it to you to decide if the examples are significant or not – for me some are and some don’t seem to be.  However, taking the big picture view, it seems to me that 40 has a significance beyond just its use as a measurement or in counting.  Looking at the symbolic meaning of the number, we find that 40 can symbolize completion.  Forty can be used to represent a complete generation.  Turning to another source for symbols, the Penguin Dictionary of Symbols states, “the number forty marks the completion of a cycle, ending in a radical change or a passage to a fresh level of activity or of living.”  Symbols can be difficult to tie down their meaning.  However, it does give us a different way of looking at the biblical stories.  For me, the 40 in those stories don’t as much mean a measurement but, rather, can represent the story of completion.  Whether the Israelites were actually in the wilderness for 40 years, rather it was a completion of their time of preparation for entering into the Promised Land to fulfill the promise that God had made to Moses. In the bigger picture, we are not ready to move to the next phase of something until we have completed the current stage we are living in.  That’s why we are not born fully formed – like Athena who came fully formed out of Zeus’ forehead.  We need to grow through the stages of life from infancy to childhood to adult and on.  Hopefully we will continue growing throughout our lives.

Something to consider and pray about in Lent.  May your Lent be a blessed one.  

 

Manumission

Manumission; from Latin manumittere, literally ‘send forth from the hand’.

This past week, Lorna and I had one of our discussions that landed on the issue of the history of slavery in Upper Canada (Ontario).  We realized neither of us were really aware of the details of that history.  After some exploration by Lorna, what we found out was very interesting.  As significant as the issue is to our history, that is not primarily what I want to talk about this morning―at least not directly.

To review briefly what we discovered The Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 abolished slavery throughout the British Empire (with the exceptions "of the Territories in the Possession of the East India Company").  This was the result of a movement lead by such worthies as William Wilberforce.  However, Canada, which was a colony of England, led the way in this area. In 1793 Lieutenant-Governor of Upper Canada John Graves Simcoe, signed the Act Against Slavery. Passed by the local Legislative Assembly, it was the first legislation to outlaw the slave trade in a part of the British Empire.

In the course of our investigation we came across the word “manumission” and, being unfamiliar with the word, I was interested in its meaning.  I was only aware of the concept of emancipation in relation to slavery i.e. the abolition of slavery by a country as in the case of the Act Against Slavery in Upper Canada.  However, manumission deals with the setting free of an individual slave by his or her owner.  The root of the word is Latin; manumittere, literally ‘send forth from the hand’.

It stuck me that this is a very apt term to consider in the season of Lent.  If we consider that in Lent our journey is to be more intentionally the people that God intends us to be, then what God does is to set us free from the bonds of sin i.e. those things which keep us separated from God.  If that is the case what are we to do with this new-found freedom?

Coincidentally (if you believe in coincidence), at my new parish we are using the video series, “Thy Kingdom Come” for our Lenten reflections.  This series is produced by the Church of England and features a discussion led by with the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby.  The topic of Sunday’s video was evangelism

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At St. John the Evangelist in Strathroy we had technical difficulties in trying to access the series.  The first week the video series could not be downloaded from the website as it crashed.  The second week was more successful but not entirely as the sound quality of the speakers on our parish hall did not provide a very clear sound (complicated by the English accents of the participants).  That was overcome (at least from the perspective of sound quality) this week with the addition of a blue-tooth speaker.  I mentioned to Rev. Karen Nelles, the Rector, that these days theological training should include training in electronics.  She noted that the evaluation form currently used for clergy in the diocese has a section on competence with electronics.  It makes me very happy I am retired and don’t have to worry about that being an honourary assistant. 

However, I digress; to get back to my topic for today, if we are set free from the slavery of sin and sent forth from the hand of God, that is exactly what evangelism is about.  To evangelize is literally to follow the example of the disciples who were sent forth to spread the Good News, the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

This Good News is perhaps not great news for most Anglicans, at least in this part of the world, who are not raised in a tradition of evangelism―at least in the traditional sense. Evangelism is not something that Anglicans are comfortable with.  The Church of England and the Anglican Church in Canada have been the established church and the church of the establishment.   Traditionally Anglicans didn’t need go out and convert the non-churched around us because most people were already churched. 

However, I take comfort in the words of one of the participants in the video discussion that we can never convert someone, whatever that may mean for the person; that is God’s work.  What then is left for us to do?  It is, I believe, sharing with people what it means for us to be a Christian, a follower of Jesus Christ.  It also means living lives that reflect what that means for each of us and to show that to the world.  To do that we need to know it for ourselves and be clear about it; or at least to have questions which we are seeking answers for.  That is the challenge for Anglicans and all people of God. 

Blessings on your Lenten journey,