Celebrate! May 31, 2025 Devotional
May 31, 2025
PSALM 51:17 | 17 The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.
ISAIAH 58:5-6 | 5 Is such the fast that I choose, a day to humble oneself? Is it to bow down the head like a bulrush and to lie in sackcloth and ashes? Will you call this a fast, a day acceptable to the Lord? 6 Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the straps of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke?
Sacrifice, for an Israelite, evoked a sense of individual need and responsibility. But it also intensified the sense of collective need and responsibility. Groups can only grow as far as members within them develop, because they are essentially composed of individuals. But groups also have a corporate identity, a shared profile. Groups and nations act together, sometimes righteously and graciously, and sometimes immorally and shamefully. Temple sacrifices also addressed this true collective problem. Part of my individual identity is my active or passive participation in my church, neighborhood, company, state, and nation. The prophets continually reminded their fellow Israelites that sacrifices could be empty unless their life together included concern for the poor, the stranger, and respect and care for one another. Rituals on their own, without a desire to follow God's commands, were empty.
Do you have a sense of collective identity?
Gracious God,
Sanctify our common life and extend our sense of responsibility outward and upward.
Amen.
