Day 8: Any successful community relies on authority that balances the traits of both lovingkindness (chesed) with discipline (gevurah).

BLESSING FOR COUNTING THE OMER:

Baruch ata Adonai, ELOHEYNU melech ha-o-lam, asher kiddeshanu bidvarecha v’tzi-va-noo al sifeerat ha-omer. 

Blessed are you, O Adonai our GOD, King of the universe Who has sanctified us by your Word and commanded us concerning the Counting of the Omer.

Today is eight days, which is one week and one day of the Omer.

As we enter into the second week of counting the omer and moving closer to Mt. Sinai where Israel becomes a nation for the first time entering into marriage with the Creator of the Universe; we stop for a moment and acknowledge the unfathomable love of the Father for all of humanity.  One would think that after the recent incident of the Golden Calf, the last thing HaShem would have on His agenda is the command to ‘build Me a tabernacle that I might dwell in your midst.’  I would have punished them with the minimum of time out from my presence; but not so with Our G-d!  Rather, we see in Exodus 34:6-7 HaShem revealing to Moses His 13 attributes, promising to protect and show mercy to the Israelites, allowing for REPENTANCE (teshuvah) after the sin of the Golden Calf.  His mercy alone provides forgiveness of iniquity (intentional sin), willful sin (rebellion), error (carelessness), and cleansing if we repent our transgressions of Torah.   

In the precious small “A Spiritual Guide to The Counting of the Omer – The Forty-Nine Days of the Sefirah” by Rabbi Simon Jacobson; we are reminded that the underlying intention and motive in discipline (gevurah) is love (ahavah).  Why do we measure behavior and establish standards (law) and expect people to live up to them if for any other reason than love? Even judgment of the guilty is not vengeance but rather another way to express love by cleansing anything antithetical to love.  Yeshua defined love as obedience to Torah (John 14:15).  And in doing so, we realize that such discipline is not the right to judge as much as it is the opportunity to love the guilty and want them to be their best in the future.  This is the power of teshuvah – repentance.  Turn away from lawlessness (torahlessness, the definition of sin) and turn back to HaShem and back to the instruction manual, the Torah.

Our Torah Portion introduces us to the inauguration of the Tabernacle in the wilderness and the sacrificial system that HaShem has instructed as the means to ‘draw near to Him.’  Can you imagine being present to witness this new and exciting opportunity to bring one’s gift and worship to their Redeemer and Creator?  The One who redeemed them from slavery in Egypt and was seeing to their every need in the harsh and inhospitable desert.  A pillar of cloud by day and fire by night and smoke 24/7 arising from the Holy Place whenever the ark was not traveling. Imagine the thousands of people they encountered in their journeys from one camp to the next over their 40 years of total reliance on HaShem for their very existence.  Our texts painstakingly show how serious HaShem is about our need to seek righteousness (doing what is right as expressed by the standard of the Torah).  His two faces (panim) of mercy and justice must coexist as we know there is reward for obedience and punishment for disobedience.  Without this balance, humans rapidly devolve into chaos and anarchy.  And we start off this sacrificial service with a stern reminder of the importance of the details when HaShem gives us a task to perform.  When we read in Exodus Chapter 10 of the death of Nadab and Abihu; Aaron’s two sons entering the tabernacle for the first time who apparently were a bit sloppy in their execution (no pun intended) of their duties; we realize that our G-d is indeed a consuming fire and cannot tolerate sin in His presence.

 And we see a similar echo of this text in our Haftorah portion for today as we read the story of King David in II Samuel Chapters 6 and 7 recount for us what was meant to be a glorious and joyful excursion of David and 30,000 of his chosen men of Israel to return the ark from the House of Abinadab and return it to Jerusalem.  We all know the tragic story of how the brothers Uzzah and Ahio, sons of Abinadab, were given the privilege of driving the new cart with the ark of God in it.  Ahio walked in front of the cart while his brother Uzzah remained in the cart with the ark. It was a wild celebration of David and this massive entourage of men singing and dancing when the unthinkable happened.  The oxen pulling the cart stumbled and in an attempt to keep the ark from possibly slipping off, Uzzah put his hand and took hold of the ark of HaShem; and he was struck dead by G-d because of his ‘error’ (touching the ark) and David was so angry at the fate Uzzah received that he was not willing to take the ark back to the city of David but rather took it the house of the Gittite Obed-edom for 3 months until he was finally able to move it safely to the city of David. 

Apparently, getting too close to HaShem is dangerous business.  These incidents might conjure fear in drawing too close to Our God.  Which brings us to our Brit Chadashah text telling us of the story of Yeshua going to the Jordan River to be ‘baptized’ by His cousin, Yochanan the Immerser.  It is Yeshua’s first public appearance as He begins His short but epic 3 year ministry. And His cousin sees the heavens opened and the Spirit of Holiness of HaShem descending and testifying to him that this one, Yeshua, is ‘My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.’ 

The young disciple John whom Yeshua so loved,  in His mystical gospel which is all about His divine nature speaks of Him as ‘the WORD (Torah) made flesh (human) who dwelt (tabernacled – Sukkot) amongst us.  And that this Yeshua, this WORD of G-d was G-d. And the journey of mankind and the mutual need and desire for the Father and His children to draw near to one another weaves through time starting in the wilderness with G-d’s presence being close but not too close in the Holy of Holies.  And it was exhilarating and a privilege to get even that near to Him then. And the ark finding its resting place finally in ‘haMakon’ – ‘The Place’ – Jerusalem, the temple Mount and eventually in the future temple built by Solomon where people could come to ‘draw near’ through the sacrificial system always knowing and longing for the coming of the Messiah to right all injustice on earth.  And 2000 years ago, the WORD did indeed become flesh and tabernacle in our midst, and we experienced Him truly ‘face to face’ as He called all of us who are weary and heavy laden to come to Him to find rest (Matthew 11:28-30).  An invitation to find spiritual reset, comfort, and relief from life’s heavy burdens, stresses, and self-reliance, rather than merely physical rest. Our heads learned about the Shechinah presence of HaShem in the wilderness and the land of Israel prior to its permanent home in the temple.  Our hearts yearned then and continue now to having a living and tangible relationship with Our ultimate Redeemer from the spiritual slavery of sin and our hands and feet have taken up His marching orders to “Go therefore and make disciples (students and future teachers and Kingdom builders) of all the nations (goyim which today includes Jews who don’t know Yeshua as their Messiah), immersing them (baptism, a death to the old self and resurrected into a new life in Him) in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you ALWAYS, even to the end of the age " Matthew 28: 19-20– which we are living today!