February 29, 2032.

Can you guess what is so wonderfully rare about this date?

It’s a 29th day of February, which is the extra day added for Leap Year – a day just like today. But Leap Years happen every four years, so they are really not so rare. What’s special about this particular date is that it is a fifth Sunday in February. There are five Sundays in February only once every 28 years, so it is truly a once-in-a-generation event. We are seeing it today, and we will not see it again until 2032.

If you are fan of five-Sunday Februarys, make the most of today! You’ll be 28 years older when you get your next chance.

There’s no doubt that it will feel like a different world when 2032 rolls around. Think of the changes that have occurred since we last saw a Sunday, February 29. That was back in 1976, when we were celebrating the United States Bicentennial. The supersonic Concorde airliner made its first commercial flights, the Viking 1 spacecraft landed on Mars, and Jimmy Carter was elected President.

Seems like a long, long time ago, doesn’t it? The Concorde airliner was just starting to fly, and now it’s grounded. In fact, there is a Concorde in the new Dulles Air and Space Museum. Our church member Mike Nelson is a docent there, and he can give you an excellent tour!

Look ahead to 2032, and you can imagine a new generation of supersonic jets, space colonies on Mars, and Jenna Bush receiving the Republican nomination for President.

Three generations of Bushes in the White House. Two Georges and a Jenna. It could happen!

When we look at rare dates on the calendar, we enter into the world of leaping years. We jump ahead, or back, and we think about what has changed and what might change. And when we leap years, or decades, or even generations, we start to think about the things in life that are really worth preserving.

What do we still want to be hanging on to at the end of February 2032?

This is precisely the question that people of faith have been asking for thousands of years, at least since today’s Scripture lesson from Deuteronomy was written. In this passage, Moses is speaking to the people of Israel in the wilderness, and he is giving them instructions about how they are to live in the Promised Land. From the very beginning, Moses is living in the world of leaping years: He leaps ahead to the time of the Promised Land, but he also jumps back to the period of slavery in Egypt. The point of all this leaping is to help the Israelites get a good strong grip on the fundamentals of their faith.

“When you have come into the land,” predicts Moses, jumping ahead, “you shall take some of the first of all the fruit of the ground,” and you shall put it in a basket and take it to the priest as an offering. The worshiper will then say to the priest, “Today I declare to the Lord your God that I have come into the land that the Lord swore to our ancestors to give us” (Deuteronomy 26:3).

So far, so good. Moses looks ahead with confidence, believing that God will surely lead his people into the Promised Land. All he asks the Israelites to do is give thanks, and to show their appreciation with a gift of first fruits. Not leftovers, you understand; not table scraps; not disposable income; not what remains in the checkbook after every other bill has been paid. First fruits. The good stuff. The cream of the crop. A gift of thanksgiving that comes right off the top.

Are you following this pattern in your own Sunday offerings? Is your pledge to the church an example of first-fruits, or is it the left-overs? Generous giving to God’s work is something that we are challenged to carry forward, over all the leaping years.

After presenting the first fruits, the worshiper is to tell a little story, and it is in this story that he leaps back many years to the greatest crisis in the history of God’s people. He jumps back years, decades, generations, and he tells the tale, “A wandering Aramean was my ancestor; he went down into Egypt and lived there as an alien, few in number, and there he became a great nation, mighty and populous” (v. 5).

“When the Egyptians treated us harshly and afflicted us,” recalls the worshiper, “by imposing hard labor on us, we cried to the Lord, the God of our ancestors; the Lord heard our voice and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression. The Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with a terrifying display of power, and with signs and wonders; and he brought us to this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey” (vv. 6-9).

There you have it: The things worth hanging on to in every time, every place, every generation. The Lord hears our voice. He sees our affliction. He brings us out of captivity with a mighty hand. He gives us a new and better land to live in.

That’s the good news of what our merciful and mighty God does for us, and it’s true wherever you go in the world of leaping years. The liberation of the Israelites from Egypt is a central faith experience that jumps over the ages to give meaning to the lives of people in any time and place. It is a truth about God that bounds from generation to generation, leaping from ancient history to 1976 to 2004 to 2032 ... and beyond.

The story of Deuteronomy 26 hits us with the timeless truth that God hears our voice, sees our affliction, brings us out of captivity, and gives us a new and better land to live in. This is as true today as it was when Moses first spoke it.

The Lord hears our voice. Whenever we cry out in pain, God is perfectly tuned to our turmoil. It doesn’t matter whether we are crying over a crushing failure in a college course, a career-ending pink slip in a paycheck, a cancerous tumor that appears out of nowhere, or a spouse who is drifting off into an affair on the Internet. Whenever we wail in anguish, the Lord hears our voice. “In my distress I called upon the Lord,” says David in Psalm 18; “to my God I cried for help. From his temple he heard my voice, and my cry to him reached his ears” (v. 6).

God also sees our affliction. Our Lord looks deeply into the affairs of human life, and knows precisely where there is injustice, violence, and anguish. God acts somewhat like Geralyn Wolf, the Episcopal bishop of Rhode Island, a woman who recently spent a month on the streets of Boston, Philadelphia, and New York, befriending the homeless and sleeping in shelters. She wanted to escape the pettiness of church politics, and enter into the earthiness and passion of life among the homeless. In much the same way, God came to earth in Jesus to make a personal connection with people who were hungry, disturbed, isolated, and oppressed. God saw their affliction, and he did something.

Finally, God gives us a new and better land to live in -- something he does most powerfully through the life, death, and resurrection of his Son. I believe that God has sent us Jesus to lead us from sin to forgiveness, from death to new life, from suffering to salvation. If you’ve seen the movie The Passion of the Christ this past week, you know what an incredibly personal price Jesus paid to give us this gift, and how the breaking of the bread, which we will do this morning, was linked so powerfully to the breaking of his body on the cross.

Jesus leads us to new life, at a tremendous personal cost, and he does this out of his great love for each and every one of us. This truth comes to us in every generation, and it is a conviction that we should carry with us until the year 2032 ... and beyond.

Such truths are timeless, through all the leaping years. Amen.

 

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