I was recently reminded of the fact that this is Leap Year while attending the Orlando Ballet’s production of The Pirates of Penzance.  For those unfamiliar with the plot, allow me to offer a brief synopsis.  The curtains open on a young man named Frederic.  When Frederic was a boy, his nurse was told to apprentice him to a “pilot.”  Hearing the word incorrectly, she apprentices him instead to a pirate!  Frederic, now 21 years old, has served his loathsome indenture to a Pirate King and his brigade of orphaned outlaws and is on the brink of release.  But just when he is ready to embrace his freedom and a more lawful calling, the Pirate King discovers that Frederic was born on February 29^th, Leap Year.  Instead of 21 birthdays, he has technically only had five.  Therefore, his servitude will truly end when he is in his eighties.  Bound by a strong sense of duty, Frederic decides that he must rejoin the pirates even though this means distancing himself from his true love until his term is fulfilled.  Fortunately, the ballet ends happily when the pirates, who are really noblemen gone wrong, yield out of loyalty to “Queen Victoria’s name” and relinquish all whom they have held captive. 

To be sure, attending this ballet proved to be a delightful evening. There was a perfect combination of beauty, anticipation, gracefulness, and humor.  Even the little fellow sitting near me giggled profusely at all of the appropriate times, only adding to my enjoyment.  But the ballet was more than mere entertainment.  It prompted thoughts with regard to one’s sense of duty, especially in terms of the Christian story. 

Like Frederic, we were once indentured to another master, but instead of being bound to a pirate we were enslaved to sin.  And what we loathed to do, we did anyway.  We were under its rule and reign and headed for death until we were rescued by another-- Jesus Christ.  In Christ, the Year of Jubilee has been declared, meaning that those who have been enslaved are set free and their debts forgiven.  The long-awaited day has come and we are now disentangled to serve God’s lawful calling without the fear of an imposing leap year which may reverse our allegiance.  As the books of Job, Proverbs and Ecclesiastes so clearly remind us, our whole sense of duty from this point onward is shaped by the fear of God and the keeping of his commandments. 

This call from the Wisdom Literature is weighty indeed, but the fact that God has rescued us confirms that we, all along, were noblemen gone wrong.   He set his royal seal upon us and having redeemed us has not left us orphaned, but has given us his Spirit so that we might live in a new way.  Though we still have vestiges of the sinful nature, it does not dominate us.  Now, like the pirates of Penzance, we can yield to the loyalty of King Jesus.  So we chant not after hidden treasure or other perilous ends and we do not seek to oppress or take captives.  Rather, we find liberty in our sense of duty-- loving God, loving those whom he has made and delighting in all which he has spoken in his Word.