Happy Birthday, People!

This Saturday is, for our friends in the Jewish faith, the last weekend of the year.  Tomorrow, October 2, at sundown, the New Year begins.  (God-created time begins with sundown, not sunrise. Read Genesis 1:5 if you don’t believe me.)  So, on the first day of the 7^th month of the biblical year, the Holy Days of Rosh Hashanah are observed. It begins with the blast of a shofar (a hollowed-out ram’s horn), and so it is a time also known as the Feast of Trumpets.  The trumpet announces the arrival of the time to celebrate the old being made new.

Some people believe that this day is the anniversary of the day God created humankind, namely, Adam and Eve.  We can argue about the meaning of the “six days” of Creation, and all that goes with it, but the thought that brings me joy today is this: humanity has a birthday, and we should celebrate it. October 2 is the day that God spoke the words that ushered in humanity,  which followed the days that God spoke the words which ushered in the globe on which humanity would walk, the Lights which would show them the way, and the animals and plants which would surround them.

“People” have a birthday.  There was a time there were no people. When I woke up this morning I was trying to picture what that must have looked like, when nothingness became the World and all that is in it. What was it like on the day when the rabbits and deer first saw Eve’s eyes admiring them; when the plants first felt Adam’s hands gathered  them up in the harvest?

Why doesn’t the Christian faith have a day to celebrate the birth of humanity? (There is a lot more to Rosh Hashanah than this, of course. Indeed, the Holy Days that follow are known as the Days of Awe, and it all ends with Yom Kippur,  the Day of Atonement. The holy days are filled with thoughts of the Book of Life, a topic to which I will return next Saturday.)

I wonder if Christianity’s lack of a day to celebrate humanity’s birth is because the Christian focus is not so much on what is as it is on what will be.  What the Christian expression of faith in One God adds to the Jewish expression of faith in that same One God is a focus on Hope.  We focus on the Hope that is found in the birth of the Creator who became a human.  We focus on the Hope that is found in the transformation of a new body after the old body dies.  And we focus on the Hope that this Old Earth will become the New Earth. We celebrate Genesis 1 and 2 by reading it through the lens of Revelation 21 and 22.  Go and read just the headings of those chapters and you will see what I mean.

So, yes, we should join our Jewish friends in the faith in helping them to celebrate the anniversary of humanity. Tomorrow night we should raise a “happy birthday, people” shout. I do believe there was a time when we “were not”, and I want to celebrate that we “are.”  But mostly, I want to celebrate the Hope that we “will be”.  Forever. Hallelujah. Sound the Trumpet!