Sunday 29 September 2019

Sin as a Social Pollutant (Lev 4:1-2, 13-21; 5:1-6)

(Meditation for Gayton Road Christian Church's Worship on September 29, 2019, Proper 21)



Lasting Consequences for Everyone

“It’s not fair,” I declared to my mom as I slung my backpack onto the ground and sat down at the table.  “I didn’t do anything wrong.  But the teacher said everyone in the class has to write one page about respect.” 

That was fourth grade.  My class had conspired against a substitute teacher, and various individuals had pulled off a series of pranks against her.  Nothing sinister—chalk in the eraser, changing nametags, having stopwatch alarms go off every few minutes.  But it was enough to get the message across to the substitute that she was not fondly regarded.  Later, of course, we would have to apologize to the substitute as a class.  But the apology was not difficult nor did it offend my fourth-grade sense of justice.  Rather, it was having to write a paper for something I did not do.

The class punishment tactic is not an unfamiliar one among teachers.  And although it upset me at the time, I can see now a profound wisdom in what my fourth-grade teacher was doing.  In fact, she was a teaching us a lesson as old as Leviticus.  First, she was teaching us that one person’s action have consequences for the whole community, and that in fact the whole community bears responsibility for that one person’s actions.  This was very true for my fourth grade class.  Several of the ringleaders had begun conspiring at the lunch table.  The rest of us heard their plans and did nothing.  Ultimately their disrespect for the sub was our disrespect. 

But my fourth grade teacher was also teaching us something else: namely, that an apology does not magically restore what has been broken.  As my Old Testament seminary professor would later say, the apology of a drunk driver does not restore whatever he has wrecked.

To summarize these two lessons together: sin has lasting consequences for everyone. 

The Visible Expression of an Invisible Reality

But the writers of Leviticus are deeply aware of another truth: that sin is often subtle and slips under our radar.

Irish poet and playwright Oscar Wilde once wrote a story about this, The Picture of Dorian Gray, where the main character Dorian decides upon a hedonistic and corrupt lifestyle.  On the outside, this doesn’t change a thing.  He appears as young and dapper as ever.  But Dorian has a self-portrait that he keeps hidden within a closet.  And every time he breaks someone’s trust or hurts someone, every time he delivers distress and damage to the world around him, his portrait becomes more and more disfigured. 

In Leviticus, the tabernacle and the altar are that portrait.  According to the worldview of Leviticus, every time someone in Israel sins, the altar becomes contaminated.  In this view, sin is something like a social pollutant.  If you do something wrong, it might not show immediately.  But you can bet that your sin has entered the air and polluted the whole community.  In particular, it has polluted the altar and the tabernacle.  The altar and the tabernacle are the portrait—they are where the sin shows.  They remind the people that if their sin goes unaddressed, then sooner or later their world will fall apart.  This is the reason for the sin offerings.  If sin has polluted the altar with impurity and death, then what is required is a cleansing agent of purity and life.  That cleansing agent is the lifeblood of the sacrificial animals.

If this strikes us as primitive and outdated—well, on the one hand, of course it is!  It’s thousands of years old.  When Leviticus was written, animal sacrifice was the ritual lingua franca.  It was how the ancient Near East gave expression to its hopes and fears.  On the other hand, what Leviticus does with sacrifice is revolutionary.  Embedded within this customary act was a new meaning.  Whereas other nations were performing sacrifices to ward off evil spirits or to fight demonic forces, Israel understood that the chaos of their world did not result from evil spirits or demons outside them.  It resulted primarily from human words and actions—it resulted from their sin.  The revolutionary significance of the sin offerings, then, was that it gave visible expression to an invisible reality.  It reminded the people that their misdeeds and mistakes had consequences, even if they couldn’t see them.  The ultimate consequence is rarely spoken of in the Bible, but it’s clear.  If there is too much sin that remains unaddressed, if the altar becomes polluted beyond a certain threshold, then God will leave.  This idea of God leaving gives practical expression to the experience of a people’s sins catching up with them.  You know the expression “leaving someone to their own devices”?  It’s the same idea here with sin.  If the altar becomes too polluted, God will leave, and the people will have to face the unbearable consequences of their deeds.  They will face a tsunami of sin.

Social Consequences

Today people generally think of sin as a private and personal thing, particularly as something you know you shouldn’t do, but you do anyway.  Thus chocolate or a dessert might be described as “sinfully” delicious.  You know you shouldn’t eat it, but you do anyway. 

What’s fascinating about today’s scripture is that it only addresses sin that is unintentional or involuntary—when you don’t know that what you’re doing is wrong.  The message is clear: sin isn’t just about personal morality.  It’s about social consequence.  Even when a person does something wrong and doesn’t intend it, it is a sin that affects others.  The last scenario mentioned in Leviticus 5:4 gives us a good example: when you make a promise and then forget to fulfill it on time.  Not being true to your word, even if it’s a careless mistake, could have ruinous consequences for the whole community.  I can only imagine that every family has been here before: “You said you’d cook dinner!”  “You said you’d pick me up!”  Some scholars of Leviticus go even further and claim that behind this scenario is the principle that a sin grows over time.  That is, it festers.  The longer a person goes not owning up to his false speech, the stronger the sin becomes.  We see this in relationships all the time.  Perhaps we see it too on a communal level, where the sins of previous generations lie hushed up or unacknowledged and thus smolder and eat away at people’s unconscious.

Sins of the Community

Earlier in our scripture today, Leviticus specifically addresses sins of the entire community.  Apparently these sins have even greater consequences on society than individual sins, for they require a more involved sacrifice.  Whereas an individual sin only requires blood on the altar outside the tent, a community’s sin requires that the blood of the sacrifice be sprinkled also on the altar inside the tent.  The more serious a sin’s consequences, the more deeply it violates the holy space. 

What would it look like for the entire community to sin?  Later laws in Leviticus suggest some possibilities for communal transgression.  One law commands that the Israelite community shall not reap to the edges of the land.  This ensures that there is food for the resident aliens—a biblical word for immigrants (23:22).  Another law commands that all Israelites let their land lie fallow on every seventh year (25:4).  Now if people have accidentally transgressed one of these commandments, it can’t be addressed until someone else points it out.  Notice the wording of today’s scripture.  “When the sin that [the congregation has] committed becomes known”: in other words, there is a move from ignorance to awareness.  The community has not intentionally been hurting the land or the immigrant, but at some point they become aware that they have unwittingly been doing so. 

I wonder how these communal sins became known.  Did it happen when the wealthiest or most powerful noticed that there were others struggling?  Or did it happen when people protested?  However the sin comes to light, it then becomes the responsibility of the leaders to own up to it.  As the text puts it: “The assembly shall offer a bull of the herd for a sin offering and bring it before the tent of meeting.  The elders of the congregation shall lay their hands on the head of the bull….” (4:14-15).

People talk about Leviticus as though it were a primitive and barbaric text, yet I can’t help but wonder if sometimes this world isn’t more brutal.  There is a general paralysis about our world when it comes to national and global issues, whether it’s care for the environment or immigration policy or the crisis of unwanted births—issues which sometimes begin to feel like a growing tsunami.  Some folks seem inclined to deny that there are consequences for our failure in these spheres.  Others acknowledge certain misdeeds and their consequences but are uncertain how they could ever be made right.  Underneath the blood and guts of Leviticus lies a profound suggestion.  What if there were a ritual whereby the entire community owned up to the collective grief and hurt and wrongdoing?  What if there were a ritual where the entire community said, “This isn’t right.  We didn’t mean to, but somewhere along the way we messed up.  We have failed—the earth, the stranger, the mothers and fathers-to-be.”

I’m told that you can hardly walk a few blocks in Berlin without encountering some sort of Holocaust memorial.  Perhaps that is the Germans’ way of acknowledging the hurt of its history.  Or in South Africa, schools resolutely teach the evils of apartheid as a way of marking their acknowledgment of a horrendous past and its enduring consequences.

The more that I become aware of this planet’s ecological struggle, the more that I hear the harrowing stories of refugees, the more that I encounter impoverished and helpless mothers and fathers-to-be—the more I wonder.  Sure, I haven’t intentionally contributed to the hurt or injury in any of these circumstances.  Just like I didn’t set my watch to go off in fourth grade, or plan any of the other pranks.  But still I am a part of it.  And the consequences are very real for everyone.

Acknowledging What Is Wrong

There’s a small but significant detail in all of the sin sacrifices that we haven’t touched yet, but it’s crucial.  Listen to the wording again: “The priest shall make atonement for them, and they shall be forgiven” (4:20).  The priest makes atonement—but the priest cannot secure forgiveness.  “They shall be forgiven” is all our text says, but the implication is clear: only God forgives.  The ritual itself does not mend what has been broken.  Only God can do that.

That’s where the gospel of Leviticus becomes wrapped up with the gospel that we proclaim.  Only God can make right what we have made wrong. 

But for that to happen, for God’s forgiveness and love to redeem what has been broken…first we have to be humble and honest and willing to acknowledge what is wrong.

Prayer

Forgiving God,
Who enters into
The hurt and heartache of our world
In order to heal it:
Give us eyes to see
The harm around us;
Hearts willing to acknowledge
Our part in it;
And hands ready
To own up to it:
That we and our neighbors
Across the world
Might know the fullness
Of your forgiveness
And the joy of your salvation.
In Christ, our Savior: Amen.

Monday 23 September 2019

Beginning with Joy (Leviticus 3:1-17)

(Meditation for Gayton Road Christian Church's Worship on September 22, 2019, Proper 20)




“A Pleasing Odor”

If you found yourself nodding off there, don’t be ashamed.  Leviticus is like a heavy-strength sedative.  Reading it puts nearly everyone to sleep.  In today’s passage, it feels like the same thing happens again and again.  If it’s an animal of the herd, here’s what you do with the kidneys and the liver and the fat and the blood, et cetera, et cetera.  If it’s an animal of the flock, here’s what you do with the kidneys and the fat and the blood, et cetera, et cetera. 

It’s easy to turn off or tune out when we hear the same details repeated over and over again.  But actually, as our high school English teachers probably taught us years ago, repetition can clue us in to what is most significant in a text.  And there is one phrase that repeats without fail in the first three chapters of Leviticus.  It’s there for the burnt offering.  It’s there for the grain offering.  It’s there this week for the well-being offering (or in some translations, peace offering).  You’ve probably noticed it, if not consciously then unconsciously.  At the end of each offering, like clockwork, like a bass note that anchors the changing melody, we hear again and again the serene refrain: it is  “a pleasing odor” to the Lord (1:9, 13, 17; 2:2, 9; 3:5; 3:16).

What is especially curious, however, is that this repetition suddenly disappears in the next three chapters—which all deal with sin and guilt sacrifices.  This sudden disappearance highlights the special character of these first three sacrifices.  Leviticus begins not with sin and guilt.  Leviticus begins with joy and gratitude.  This is the common thread of the first three offerings, all of which are voluntary—you make them because you want to make them—and all of which are “a pleasing odor” to the Lord.  These offerings all tell the Israelites: you can enter into God’s presence and feel God’s joy and pleasure.  Any time you want. 

To repeat that point: contrary to what you might expect, Leviticus does not begin with obligation.  It does not begin, “You have sinned, and here’s what you need to do.”  Leviticus begins with joy.  It begins with, “God wants you to draw near.  You can feel the presence and the peace and the pleasure of God.” 

There’s a clue, in fact, that this joy has cosmic significance.  How many times do we hear that a sacrifice is “a pleasing odor” to the Lord?  Seven.  The same number of times that God looked upon creation and saw that it was good.  It’s as though the priests are saying, “The beginning of life, the goodness of this creation—it has to do with joy.  Life begins with joy.  The foundation of this world, the bass note that holds everything together—it’s joy.”  Some Christian mystics would later go so far as to suggest that in the beginning, there was laughter.[1]  God created the world in joy and delight.

Starting with Joy

Deep down, our world knows this truth about joy.  I return to a couple of analogies that we’ve explored since we began our journey in Leviticus.  Consider first how gratitude journals are often an essential part of a recovery program for addicts.  It almost seems counterintuitive.  What would someone who’s hit rock-bottom have to be thankful for?   It might not be much.  But whatever it is, it is the seed of new life.  Joy draws the addict into the goodness of life once more: perhaps the goodness of a healthy friendship or a fulfilling project or simply the appreciation for all the gifts and possibility that are open to us through no doing of our own.

Or consider sports.  A good youth coach knows that his or her players must feel joy.  If a child does not love the game, he or she won’t be inspired to learn and grow.  The players who improve the most are almost the ones who play the sport not just at practice but in the backyard and on the blacktop and in the kitchen and on any square foot they can find to catch or bounce or kick a ball.  It all begins with joy.  If there’s no joy, there’s ultimately no life.

Or consider relationships.  I always have to smile at how joyless Valentine’s Day can be for some couples.  The reason is clear.  It has become an obligation, a cold, sterile exchange of affection.  But that’s not how real relationships grow.  Real relationships grow when gifts are given freely and joyfully—one might even say sacrificially.  Real relationships grow from a joy that is so great that it makes sacrifices.

Not Repent, But Rejoice

What makes the sacrifices at the start of Leviticus even more striking is the context in which they happen.  The tabernacle is constructed immediately following the Israelites’ rebellion against God.  Remember how when Moses came down with the 10 commandments, he found the Israelite camp worshipping a golden calf that they had made?  Remember his anger? 

In our world, the response to such egregious infidelity would be to demand repentance.  We would expect the first sacrifices in this newly constructed tent of meeting to be sacrifices of repentance and atonement.  But that’s not what we find.  Because just as the last thing an addict needs is another heaping of shame, or the last thing a relationship needs is another lifeless rule, so the last thing these Israelites need is a kick while they’re on the ground.  Instead God lifts them up and declares that they can still draw near to God.  Instead God wants to share God’s joy with them.  The sacrifices at the start of Leviticus do not preach, “Repent and do better” but “rejoice in this life!”  Only in the frame of joy, only in the context of gift and grace, will the later sacrifices of sin and repentance make any sense. 

I wonder on behalf of what joy would the Israelites have offered their first sacrifices?  For what would they have been grateful?  Remember that at this time they are in the wilderness. Sure, they are free from slavery in Egypt, but they are having to make do with limited resources, and in front of them is the great unknown.  Where did they find life in that experience?  I imagine that their first sacrifices had little to do with material success or provision and more to do with certain intangible or spiritual experiences—like being able to savor the sunrise for its spectacular colors instead of seeing it as the herald of hard labor; like being able to enjoy what little food they had, eating it now unhurriedly and in the fellowship of friends and family; like being able to enjoy the laughter of their children, hearing in it now the promise of a new world.

The Gospel according to Leviticus

Leviticus is ultimately about creating a new world.  Its rituals constitute a new world a world where everyone can draw near to God.  Its first three sacrifices in particular, which are not penitential or obligatory but rather spontaneous and cheerful, set about creating that new world through joy.  Just as God looked upon the first creation and saw that it was good, God invites the Israelites to look on life and rejoice.  Even though life for them literally is a wilderness.  Even though they have just rebelled against the life that God has given them.

I read in these first three sacrifices a profound metaphor for the gospel.  That is, what is happening here in these first three sacrifices is the same thing that we see in the person and message of Jesus Christ.

First, the sacrifices of joy and gratitude encourage us to start where we are.  They tell us that God loves just and welcomes us just as we are.   They tell us that life is not at some point ahead of us, when we start doing things better or start achieving our goals, but right where we are.  If instead Leviticus had begun with sacrifices of sin and repentance, the worshiper might be led to feel a deep shame or a sense that he is a failure.  But living out of shame or unrealistic expectation will set a person up for a cycle of defeat and disappointment, just as repeatedly telling a child how they’re doing it wrong will lead them away from a sport.  Instead, the rituals of Leviticus invite us to recognize that God loves us and wants to be near to us right where we are.  They encourage us to start where we are, to be thankful for the life we have and the promise and possibility that is in it.

At the same time, however, starting where you are is not the same thing as staying there.  Leviticus is all about a journey.  This is a tent, remember, not an immovable brick building.  Even as the Israelites are invited to find life right where they are, they are also reminded that this joy and gratitude will lead them into change and renewal and growth.  They are not at their destination.  Be grateful where you are, but don’t be completely content.  We see this in Christ, who always welcomes us right where we are, but also lovingly calls us to follow him.  There is always more love to give, more forgiveness to share, more peace to make, more hope to spread.  This is a joy on the move.

And perhaps “on the move” deserves added emphasis.  Leviticus says very little about the destination.  It talks very little about the promised land.  It’s almost as though Leviticus is saying, Don’t worry about the destination.  Enjoy the way.  Life is found not at a destination but in the way.  In recovery, the way is what matters.  In one sense, the addict never makes it.  There is no achievement that finishes the journey.  What matters is this new way of living, which begins with gratitude and joy, which sees every day as a gift, a possibility for new life. Christ says, “I am the way and the truth and the life” (John 14:8), which means the same thing: that life is found in a way.

For the Church

Some people say that the future of the church universal is bleak.  I would say, however, that the future of the church is not the church’s concern.  The gospel that we hear in Leviticus suggests that the church’s concern is, first, to start where it is.  Acknowledge the reality of the situation and rejoice.  Be grateful—perhaps not so much for material realities as for the spiritual realities that give us life, like the radical grace and welcome of an open table or the fellowship and blessing that is shared with our needful neighbors.  But then also do not be completely content.  Be prepared to move and to change and to grow, because that’s what this God is about.  This God is working on a new creation and needs your help.  And finally, don’t worry about a destination, whether that’s filled pews or a bigger building or the prestige of a successful ministry.  Life is not a destination but a way.  For those who find life in sports, it’s not about money or trophies but about playing for the love of the game.  Recovery is not about one day defeating addiction but every day learning to enjoy the fullness of life.  Relationships are not about getting somewhere but about enjoying the journey together. 

“Rejoice always,” Paul says.  “Give thanks in all circumstances” (1 Thess 5:16-18).  Or as the gospel according to Leviticus would put it: start with joy, wherever you are, because God is with you every step of the way.

Prayer

Loving God,
Who is well pleased
With us right where we are:
Inspire in this church
Deep gratitude and joy
For the humble movements
Of your spirit.
Ready it for change and travel.
And bless its journey
With the fullness of life.
In him who is the Way, Jesus Christ:
Amen.




[1] E.g., Meister Eckhart says of the Trinity: “The Father laughs with the Son; the Son laughs with the Father. The Father likes the Son; the Son likes the Father. The Father delights in the Son; the Son delights in the Father. The Father loves the Son; the Son loves the Father. This laughter, liking, delighting, loving is the Holy Spirit!”  Some readers also find hints of laughter in scripture itself: in Prov 8:30-31, where Wisdom rejoices in creation and in Ps 104:31, where the Lord rejoices in his works.



Sunday 15 September 2019

The Little Way (Leviticus 2:1-16)

(Meditation for Gayton Road Christian Church's Worship on September 15, 2019, Proper 19)




The Problem with Ritual

Many a resolution to read the Bible from front to cover has foundered on the rocky, ritualistic banks of Leviticus.

Leviticus is full of ritual.  Whether it’s talking about sacrifice, diet, childbirth, or death, Leviticus consistently prescribes particular, precise, repeated actions.  Today’s scripture in particular reads a little bit like a cookbook.  Addressing the cereal offering, it specifies the ingredients: the finest of your flour, along with some oil and frankincense.  The text describes the different methods of preparation and the equipment.  You can prepare it uncooked, bake it in an oven, cook it on a griddle, or fry it in a pan.  And the text repeats itself.  When you do this, the priest will do this, and all of this will be “an offering by fire of pleasing odor to the Lord” (vv. 2, 9; cf. v. 12).  Again and again in the opening chapters of Leviticus, we hear that the sacrifice is a “pleasing odor to the Lord.”

Throughout history, Christians have had a tendency to dismiss all this ritual as what is mistaken or misguided in Judaism.  Doesn’t this obsession with detail and repetition just drain life of its spirit?  Isn’t that what Paul’s talking about when he says that the letter kills but the Spirit gives life (2 Cor 3:6)?

In fact, the problem for Paul is not law or ritual.  The problem is when people forget its meaning—the Spirit behind it.  The problem is empty law and empty ritual.  When Jesus said he came not to abolish the law but to fulfill it, he likely meant that he came to show us the Spirit behind the law, what the law was all about in the first place.

The Spirit of Ritual;
Or, Constitutive Law

So what is the spirit behind the sacrifices we have read about so far?

To begin to answer that question, it is helpful to make a distinction between two kinds of law.  First, there is regulatory law, which regulates the world as it already is.  Laws about trade, theft, and murder are regulatory laws, because trade, theft, and murder are things that already happen in our world.  They need to be regulated.  But there is also constitutive law.  Constitutive law does not address the world as it is.  Instead, it creates—it constitutes—a new reality.

The laws of any sport or game are constitutive law.  They create a new reality.  Before people created law about goals and sidelines and fouls and free kicks, there was no such thing as soccer.  But because of these rules, soccer now exists.

Of course, reading the rulebook to a game would be boring, which explains why reading Leviticus can be quite boring.  We’re basically reading a rulebook.  But to play the game is an altogether different proposition.  When you really get into a game, you’re not thinking about a bunch of rules.  A good game will almost possess you, filling you with its spirit.  A good game draws you into the world it has created.  When I play soccer, I often forget this world—for the simple fact that I’m living in a new one.

Sports and games are not the only constitutive laws of our lives.  You might also consider certain rituals that make up a beloved holiday.  Cooking a turkey and gathering around a table with family and watching football and taking a walk in the park.  These are all rituals that are meant to fill us with a spirit of gratitude and fellowship and rest.  Perhaps just as I forget the world on the soccer field, you find yourself forgetting the world while you cook in the kitchen or play a game with your grandchildren.  Rituals are constitutive laws.  They create a new world.

Ritual as Recovery

If you’ll remember from last week, the ritual of sacrifice has at its foundation a very simple meaning: everyone can draw near to God.  For a people who had lived their whole lives trapped in a world of hopelessness and helplessness and humiliation, the ritual of sacrifice created a new world, one where the God who liberated them wanted to be near them and to dwell with them.  The ritual of sacrifice created a new world where they were precious and beloved, not debased and demeaned, a world open to new possibility, not closed in a circle of misery.

In more than one sense, ritual was the road of recovery.  It gave new meaning and order to a life that had previously been ordered in a very hurtful way.  Imagine if a friend of yours were recovering from a bad relationship or a toxic workplace environment or a debilitating addiction.  You might indulge them for a little while in their “woe is me” wallowing.  You might down a tub of ice cream with them and rewatch a few old favorites on television.  But you wouldn’t stop there.  The last thing a friend in recovery needs is empty space or unstructured time.  What your friend needs is a plan.  They need boundaries and rules and tasks and projects.  They need to relearn how to live, starting with waking up on time and brushing their teeth and making their meals and planning to meet people and do new activities that they enjoy.  In a word, they need good rituals, rituals that tell them a different story than their past disorder.  Seemingly insignificant things like washing your face or preparing a wholesome meal or committing to a daily practice—these things actually create a new world, one where you care about your health, where you enjoy the gifts of life, where you are growing and have a purpose.

The Grain Offering:
What Matters Is Not What It Does, But That It’s Done

The ritual of grain offering that we read about today, was a small but significant part of Israel’s recovery.  What was the purpose of this ritual?  There’s no mention of sin or forgiveness or atonement.  There’s no prescribed reason to do this.  While other sacrifices have a very specific purpose, this one has none.  I wonder if this sacrifice is not unlike the new hobby that a person undertakes who is recovering from addiction or a bad relationship or a toxic workplace.  What matters for that person is not the precise hobby.  She chooses ceramics or gardening or hiking not because ceramics is an essential part of recovery, or gardening has innate qualities of restoring your soul.  She chooses one simply because she needs a hobby; she needs something to do.  What matters is not so much what she’s doing as that she’s doing something.

The grain offering in today’s scripture has a distinctly daily, run-of-the-mill character.  For one thing, these grain cakes resemble the people’s common meal.  (It is not coincidence that one Israelite named Jesus would pray for his “daily bread.”)  The grain offering also was part of the tabernacle’s daily regimen, apart from whatever else individual worshipers would bring.  Every sunrise and every twilight, a grain offering would be made by the tabernacle priests. 

It’s almost as though what matters most about the grain offering is not what it does but rather that it’s done regularly.  What the grain offering accomplishes is not an instantaneous result but rather a sustained growth.  Its effect is cumulative.  Day after day, week after week, the people draw near to God and offer what looks like a common meal—as though to say, as often as I eat this bread, I do it in remembrance of the God who delivered us.  Indeed, in our translation there is mention of the “token portion” which is burned on the altar, but in the Hebrew the root from which this word comes is zkr, “to remember.”  The salt that is an essential ingredient builds on this idea of remembrance, reminding the worshiper that what God did, God does still.  In the ancient world, salt was thought to be nearly indestructible.  It could withstand fire and time and the elements.  Thus it was a symbol of covenant and continuity.  The salt declares that God will never forsake the worshiper, even as it calls the worshiper never to forsake God. 

The specific ingredients of the grain offering suggest one thing more about its character.  As the writer of Proverbs would say, “Oil and perfume make the heart glad” (Prov 27:9).  The oil and the frankincense that regularly accompany the grain offering suggest, then, that this is a happy, hopeful sacrifice.  Remembering God’s goodness in the past, gives the worshiper hope for the future. 

Our Rituals Today

Every day grain offerings went up in smoke at the tent of meeting.  Regularly people like you and me prepared what looked like lunch, and then took it to the altar.  What did this sacrifice do?  In the moment, perhaps nothing at all.  But over time, it was a ritual that created a new and good world, a world where people daily drew near to God, a new world where the past had a meaning and the future held new possibilities, a new world full of gifts and growth and life.

Last week in Sunday School, the question was raised: what rituals have replaced the sacrifices of old in 2019?  Traditionally Christians have answered this question with the ritual-averse response that Jesus is our sacrifice and we need no more rituals.  While this answer contains within it a kernel of truth—Jesus has indeed shown us that sacrifices themselves do not accomplish what a living sacrifice of love does—I fear that it throws the baby out with the bathwater.  Ritual is not a bad thing.  Performed in the right spirit, it is a creative, constructive thing.  It is how God recreates our world.

So what rituals do we perform today?  In our gospel text, Jesus gives us a hint.  The kingdom of God, he says, is not found in the spectacular or in grand gestures.  It’s not the kind of thing that people point to and say, “Look, here it is!” or “There it is!”  For in fact, it’s already here among us (Luke 17:20-21).  It’s already here in the daily and the run-of-the-mill.  The rituals of the kingdom are the little way.  They’re the little things we do repeatedly, regularly, the little things that remind us and others of what we tend to forget—that, in fact, Christ is with us in all things, that the past has been redeemed, that the future holds great promise, that this world is full of God’s grace and glory and growth and life. 

I’d like to propose that Gayton Road already practices three such rituals, three little things that constitute or create a new world.  The first ritual is the simple celebration of tables.  Not just the table here in the sanctuary, but tables everywhere—at diners and Mexican restaurants and cafes.  Tables serve as a reminder that Christ is always with us where we gather in his spirit of sharing and selflessness.  The second ritual is the gathering in small groups and the appreciation that Christ needs no special ceremony to be present, only honest and sharing hearts.  The third ritual is the outreach to the needful and the comprehension that Christ is with us in a special way when our eyes meet theirs and our hands touch theirs. 

Perhaps the kingdom of God is not so much a new world out there that will one day overtake this world here but is rather a new way of living in and seeing this world here.  Perhaps the kingdom of God is the same new world that God began to create with the Israelites in the wilderness.  Perhaps it is created or constituted by little deeds that tell a new, different story—that God draws near to us, that Christ is always with us, that love no matter how weak or foolish it seems is stronger than any force in the world. 

Oil and frankincense and salt.  Tables and small groups and the needful.  Both are rituals that, when done in the right spirit, draw us into the goodness and life of God’s new and well-ordered world. 

Prayer

Dear Christ,
May tables,
Small gatherings,
And encounters with the least and last
Be for us
Rituals of recovery.
Like the grain offering
Regularly offered at the tabernacle,
May these little things we daily do
Where we encounter you
Constitute a new and good world.
Your kingdom come,
Your will be done.
Amen.

Sunday 8 September 2019

Everyone Draws Near (Leviticus 1:1-9)

(Meditation for Gayton Road Christian Church's Worship on September 8, 2019, Proper 18)



Hocus Pocus

As a child, I was fascinated with magic.  My family once recorded a David Copperfield magic show on television, and I would watch the show over and over again on sick days home from school. 

I learned soon enough, of course, that magic words were not enough to perform magic.  “Hocus pocus” alone wouldn’t get the job done.  Magic relied on sleight of hand and movements that I could not see.  There was a secrecy and a privilege involved in magic.  Only a select few knew all that was happening.

Interestingly enough, the words “hocus pocus” tell the story of magic’s inner circle, how only a few fortunate persons know the secret.  Historians explain that the words “hocus pocus” derive from the Latin words “hoc est corpus meum,” or “This is my body.”  In other words, long ago when the church worship service took place in Latin, a language that most churchgoers did not speak, the words that the priest spoke at communion “hoc est corpus…” were like magic.  They were the secret that only the clergy knew.  They were the magic words—the words that transformed bread into body, that made an ordinary meal into communion with God.

Historians tell us that this is not the only case where a few religious insiders held secret knowledge apart from the masses.  Rewind a couple thousand years, and the situation was similar among ancient Israel’s neighbors.  If among the Canaanites a person or a house became possessed by a demon, the priest may come and utter an incantation.  If there were a drought or a natural disaster needing remedy, the priest may pronounce certain privileged words that only priests know.  Naturally this contributed to the idea that some people were closer to God (or the gods) than others.  The more you knew, the nearer you could draw to the divine.  And so it was that the priests, who knew the most, became the inner circle.

But in ancient Israel, we see a different picture begin to emerge.

God’s First Order of Business

When the Israelites escape Egypt, they are a mess.  They have only ever known the chaos of slavery.  They don’t know what a well-ordered life looks like.  They don’t know what goodness is. 

But then amid this chaos comes the voice of God.  There in the wilderness God speaks to the Israelites.  Specifically God gives seven speeches, instructing the Israelites to build a special tent.  This seven puts us on notice that God is not just making casual conversation.  What God’s doing here is cosmic.  Just as in seven days God ordered the original chaos of the world (the tohu wa-bohu) into goodness and life, so now in seven speeches God begins reordering the world of the Israelites.  This tent represents a new order, a new chance at life.  We might call it a microcosm of the larger order of goodness and life that God intends.  If you’re going to begin reordering chaos, you have to start somewhere.  That somewhere is this tent.

That brings us to the start of Leviticus, where the first thing that happens is God speaks from the tent.  We are on the edge of our seats, wondering just how God will begin reordering the Israelites’ world.  What comes out of God’s mouth first will represent literally the first order of business in this new creation.

God with Us

Here’s what God says: “When any of you bring an offering…to the Lord” (1:2).  That sounds pretty mundane to our ears, or even primitive if we’re inclined to write off sacrificial offerings as a barbaric exchange where God’s help is bought by sacrifice.  In the Hebrew, however, it sounds revolutionary.

The first word in the Hebrew here is adam, which is the most basic word for human.  It’s a word from the creation story, when God creates adam in God’s image, male and female God creates them.  Adam is as democratic a word as you can find.  Adam means male and female, young and old, this people or that people.  Any human that walks this planet is adam.

So God’s first order of business concerns adam, or anyone.  “When adam of you”—that is, when any of you, male or female, rich or poor, Israelite or not—“brings an offering.”  And it’s here that we come across another crucial Hebrew word.  The word “offering,” qorban, derives from the Hebrew root qarav, which means “to draw near.”  In other words, an offering is fundamentally linked to drawing near to someone.  An offering means you are entering into another person’s presence.

So the very first thing God does to reorder the world of the Israelites is to say that adam, anyone, everyone, can draw near to God.  Everyone can enter into God’s presence.  The first order of this new world is that God wants to be with us.  Every year at Christmas, we celebrate Jesus with that special word Immanuel, which means “God with us.”  We see the same idea here at the beginning of Leviticus.  Before we get into all the rules and thou shalts and thou shalt nots, we hear the basic building block of this new world order: God wants to be with us.  It doesn’t matter who you are, what you’ve done, what you look like.  God wants to be with you.  You can draw near.  And it’s an open invitation.  Everyone can draw near.

Common Worship

Now what follows next is a little gruesome to our ears.  The offering that you bring is offered as a sacrifice.  It is slaughtered, its blood dashed against the altar, its flesh cut up and arranged on the fire and burnt until nothing is left but smoke.  We won’t get into the logic of sacrifice today, but there is one critical detail in the process of sacrifice that I’d like to point out.  Who makes the sacrifice?  I always thought it was the priests.  I thought the worshiper brought the animal and then the priest did all the dirty work.  So I was surprised to learn that in fact the worshiper does almost everything.  The worshiper selects the animal, brings it to the tent, slaughters it, and cuts it up into parts for the fire.  (All I could think when I first realized this, was thank God I don’t live in ancient Israel!)

But all of this is huge, and especially in a book like Leviticus.  Leviticus gets it name from the word “Levite.”  The Levites were the tribe of Israel from which the priests came.  So Leviticus is a book that focuses on the priests and their duties in this special tent of God.  Now remember what’s happening among Israel’s neighbors.  In many other cultures, only the priests could draw near to God.  Only the priests knew the words to say and the deeds to do.  Only they had access to the “hocus pocus” of sacred moments.  But here in Leviticus, which itself focuses on priests, we see nonetheless from the very beginning that everyone draws near to God.  This truly is “common worship.”  God wants to be with everyone.  That is the first word of this new creation, the first order of business.

By the way, that reminds me of a little detail later in chapter 1, where provision is made for the persons who cannot afford an animal from the flock.  They may instead offer a turtledove or a pigeon.  The guidelines go out of their way to make sure that everyone can draw near.  (Fascinating footnote: we know Mary and Joseph must have been poor, for when they offer a sacrifice after Jesus’ birth, they choose which animals for sacrifice?  The turtledove and pigeon.  It’s as if Luke in the New Testament is making the same point.  Immanuel.  God with us.  All of us, even the poor.)

Everyone a Minister

Today our practice of faith looks rather different than it did two thousand years ago.  But underneath the obvious differences, there remains the same fundamental fabric: everyone draws near to God.  This is essentially what Jesus taught and embodied when he transformed the table into a place of communion, where the lowly were welcomed and lifted up, and sinners were welcomed and forgiven, and the broken were welcomed and blessed with healing and wholeness.  Everyone—adam—is welcome at the Jesus table.

One of the blessings and gifts of a small church, I believe, is that everyone plays a part.  I still remember the words of wisdom I received from Richard, a former Methodist minister who lived in the memory care unit at Symphony Manor.  When I asked him for advice, he said, “I always tried to find something for everyone to do.”  Which is a way of saying what Gayton Road already says: everyone here is a minister.   We all draw near to God.  And we all have gifts that draw others near to God too.

You’ll see in your bulletin today an insert about Gayton Road’s Ministry Teams.  I hope you’ll spend some time pondering and praying about your involvement in one or more of these teams.  Some of us draw nearest to Christ at tables, others in the close support of small groups, and still others in reaching out to the community.  Wherever it is that you draw near to God, I hope that it will sustain you and give you life and inspire you to share the good news of God-with-us.  I hope that it will be the first order of business in your world.  Because according to Leviticus, it is the first order of business in God’s.

Prayer

God with us,
In Christ
Who invites everyone to draw near,
We have come to know
Your unconditional welcome and love.
This communion is the first order of business
In your world.
May we so order our lives,
Sharing with others
The welcome and love we receive from you.
In Jesus, friend of sinners.  Amen.


Sunday 1 September 2019

From Chaos to Goodness (Leviticus 1:1-2a)


(Meditation for Gayton Road Christian Church's Worship on September 1, 2019, Proper 17)



A Voice That Changes Everything

Our culture loves a redemption story, a story where chaos is transformed into goodness and life.  Remember the Titans, The Mighty Ducks, Mr. Holland’s Opus, even Jack Black’s School of Rock—these are just a few titles from Hollywood that reveal our love for redemption stories.  Take Remember the Titans, for instance.  When two high school football teams in Alexandria, Virginia are first integrated, they are a mess.  Players fight.  Positions on the field are contested and confused.  Everything is chaos.  But in steps coach Herman Boone, played by Denzel Washington, and his voice changes things.  In preseason, he starts with the simplest instructions.  You stand here, you stand there.  When this happens, you run this way.  When that happens, you run that way.  Like any good coach, he always encourages. “Good, very good!” 

The rest of the story is history.  This mess of players becomes a well-ordered team of champions—and all because of the voice of their coach.  Herman Boone can’t do a single thing himself.  He can’t step onto the field and catch a ball or make a tackle.  It’s all in his voice.  His words take on shape—take on flesh—in his players, who know where to stand, who know when to run, who know that their coach believes in them no matter what.

Chaos into Goodness

This classic story of chaos into goodness is as old as time itself.  Although theologians proclaim that God created everything out of nothing, that’s not quite the picture that we see in the Bible itself.  In the first verses of Genesis, this is what we hear: “In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was tohu wa-bohu, and darkness covered the face of the deep” (Gen 1:1-2).  Tohu wa-bohu is the Hebrew way of saying that things are a mess—“formless and void,” as the English often puts it.  The “darkness” and the “deep” attest to this chaos.  They give us the picture of a cosmic storm at sea, which is about as chaotic a situation as you can imagine.

But then there is a voice that changes everything.  God speaks.  God starts with the simplest things.  God divides light from darkness, the waters above (the blue sky) from the waters below (the blue sea), the land from the water.  Like a cosmic coach, God orders the elements into their proper place and function.  By the way, I’d like to point out that this isn’t God the dictator as much as it is God the conversation partner.  Like coaching, creation is a two-way street.  God calls out, and then the players respond.  So when God says, “Let the earth put forth vegetation” in verse 11, we hear in verse 12 that “the earth brought forth vegetation.”  The earth listens to God and respectfully responds.  And there is always the encouraging word at the end of the day, “And God saw that it was good.” 

So it is that chaos slowly becomes goodness and life and diversity and collaboration.  Not through God intruding and doing it Godself, but through a voice.  “In the beginning was the word” (John 1:1).  God’s word takes on flesh in the elements of creation.

At the Beck and Call of Pharaoh

If you’ve ever coached before, or taught or parented, you know that chaos is a wild and unruly thing.  You may be able to instill order for a day, but there’s no guarantee that tomorrow your players or students or children don’t rebel.  There’s no guarantee that chaos will not return.

The same goes for creation.  Through God’s voice, God has transformed chaos into goodness and life.  But those unruly elements—that tohu wa-bohu—are not gone.  In time, chaos returns.  We see this in stories like the flood and the tower of Babel.  When the creatures of the earth transgress the limits that have been set for them, when they do not stay in their proper place and fulfill their proper function, chaos threatens to return and undo the goodness and life for which God has called.

At the beginning of Leviticus, the Lord “summons” Moses.  That word “summons” contains within it a dark history.  If we explore its similar usage in previous stories, we find that there is another character who regularly summoned Moses: Pharaoh in Egypt.  The word “summons” reminds us that Moses and the Israelites were not long ago living in slavery.  It reminds us that their history is one of chaos.  When you live at the beck and call of an oppressor, your life has no real order: your time, your space, your actions are all subject to the whims of another person. 

The word “summons” reminds us that Moses and the Israelites have only ever known the chaos of slavery.  They have lived in one of those times when God’s good creation has unraveled and chaos has reigned.  They don’t know what a well-ordered life looks like.  They don’t know what goodness really is.

A New Creation

That brings us to the start of Leviticus.  Moses and the Israelites are in the wilderness.  Behind them is the chaos of Egypt.  In front of them is a new possibility.

You might recall that when God delivers the Israelites from Egypt, he separates the waters of the sea so that they might escape.  That separation of waters is an image that recalls the creation of the world, when God separated the waters above from the waters below and the sea from the dry land.  We might say, then, that the splitting of the sea foreshadows a new creation.

Just a little while later, the Israelites construct a special tent called the tabernacle.  God gives them instructions how to build it.  Not only that, but God’s instructions occur in seven different speeches and his final speech concerns the Sabbath day of rest.  If you’ll remember, that’s the same pattern we see in creation: seven days of speech; the final day, a day of rest.  Again we have a hint that God is working on a new creation.  This tabernacle is the start of something new, a reordering of the Israelites’ lives.  It is a step away from the chaos of Egypt into the goodness and life that God desires.

This helps to explain some of the oddities and strangeness of Leviticus.  When most people think of Leviticus and all its laws about what happens in and around this tent, they think of blood and animal sacrifices, laws about cleanness and uncleanness, about what you can and can’t eat, what you can touch and what you should avoid.  It seems outdated and barbaric.

And in some ways, it is.  Of course it is.  It’s a text written over two thousand years ago.  But if we read it in its context, we see that God is addressing a people who have lived in chaos.  Just as a coach’s voice instills order in his team, so here in the tent God speaks to these former slaves about the basics of life, like how you eat, how you treat your neighbor, how you speak, how you organize your time and space.  That’s essentially what all the instructions in Leviticus are about.  It’s the basics that are important to God when shaping chaos into order and goodness and life.  (Remember creation?  It begins with the simplest of distinctions: light and dark, sky and earth, land and water.)  If you’re familiar with the process of addiction and recovery, you’ll see a strong parallel here.  Establishing boundaries and habits and routines can be the difference between life and death.   Or we can return to the coaching metaphor.  It’s the little things that matter: where a player stands, when they run, what direction they’re facing.

The Gospel of Leviticus

The beginning of Leviticus is gospel.  It’s good news.  It proclaims that creation is not just something that happened in the beginning, and God’s left things to run their course for better or worse.  Rather, the God whose voice drew goodness and life from the chaos of tohu wa-bohu, still calls today in our world.

I mentioned last week the idea that you and I are both entering a sort of wilderness.  If life feels a little messy, a little confused, then at least we’re in good company.  That’s where the Israelites were.

What they heard in that mess was a voice speaking to them about the basics.  Food.  Family.  Neighbors.  Finances.  The little things that make a big difference.

I wonder what the basics are for the church.  I wonder what the little things are that make a big difference.  I wonder how God is calling the church.  (Personally, as I ponder this question, I wonder if God’s call to the church has to do with the same Word God spoke from the beginning: if it has to do with Jesus the friend of sinners and a table and a scandalously diverse fellowship.)

Whatever the call is, we may trust that it is ordering the chaos of our world into a new creation.  And we may trust that responding to it will draw us into God’s order of goodness and life.

Prayer

Creator God,
Whose word went out
Into chaos
And drew forth
Goodness and life:
Help us to hear your word today.
Where life feels like a mess,
Help us to begin with the basics
From which your blessing flows.
In Christ, the living Word: Amen.