(Meditation for Gayton Road Christian Church's Worship on October 6, 2019, World Communion Sunday)
All Barbecues Are Holy
Rabbi Maurice Harris who lives in
Eugene, Oregon, tells the story of teaching a class of seventh graders about
the book of Leviticus. When he got
to the part about animal sacrifice, the class reacted with looks of disgust and
revulsion. I imagine there was a chorus
of “gross!” and “yuck!” throughout the room. (I imagine that silently there may have been a similar
chorus in this sanctuary the last few Sundays!) Some students thought sacrifice was just plain cruel. Others mocked it as superstitious. Rabbi Maurice tried to persuade the
students to leave behind their own assumptions and values long enough to
consider another worldview and the possible significance that lie behind the
grisly surface of sacrifice, but to little avail.
That’s when Evan, the “enigmatic
and anti-authoritarian” student who sat against the back wall, came to the
rescue. He spoke up with a loud
voice like a little, latter-day prophet of ancient Israel: “Which do you think
is more moral? Doing a sacred
ritual and dealing with God every single time you kill an animal for its meat,
or anonymously shoving millions of animals into crowded pens and cages so that
they’re growing up in their own feces on factory farms, and filling the animals
up with drugs that make them sick just to fatten them up some more, and then
shipping them out and slaughtering them by the millions without even thinking
about how they feel, and then cutting up their body parts, shrink-wrapping them
in plastic and lining the walls of grocery store refrigerator cases with a
horror show of dead animal body parts from factory farms while you and your
parents stand there talking about soccer and gas prices in front of this wall
of death and animal body parts, acting like there’s nothing wrong?”[1]
Hearing about Evan’s breathless
tirade left me as speechless as his speech surely left his classmates. I have to confess, I’m woefully
ignorant about the modern-day meat industry. Inspired by Evan, I did a little research. What I found only corroborated his
prophetic put-down of contemporary practice. The picture of one bloodied altar hardly compares to fleets
of trucks running continually to and fro slaughterhouses carrying tubs and vats
of blood from the anonymously and routinely slaughtered livestock. The presumed “waste” of those animals
that were burned completely as offerings of joy and gratitude to God hardly
compares to the waste of our nation, where one-third of available meat goes
uneaten every year as an offering to the gods of convenience and profit.
So far in our reading of
Leviticus, we have not directly addressed the nature of sacrifice. But today’s scripture does just
that. It makes an astonishing
claim that reveals a surprisingly moral logic behind sacrifice. Listen to it again: “If
anyone…slaughters an ox or a lamb or a goat…and does not bring it to the
entrance of the tent of meeting, to present it as an offering to the Lord…he
shall be held guilty of bloodshed”
(vv. 3-4). Effectively this means
if you kill an animal anywhere other than at the tabernacle, it is an act of
murder—comparable to having murdered another human being. Elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible, the
life-force of animals is referred to with the same word used for humans: nephesh, often translated soul or spirit
or self. This equivalence between
human and animal demonstrates how the ancient Israelites regarded animals as
fellow creatures whose life was given by God and not to be taken casually by
humans. This is why Leviticus
requires that anytime a person wants to eat meat, they must first participate
in a ritual that honors the [animal’s] life and acknowledges that this particular
act of killing is itself an exception
permitted by God—that this animal is not just a gift to God but a gift from God. It may also explain why Leviticus requires the sacrifices to
be “without blemish.”
Traditionally readers have thought this meant God wants only the very
best. That may be true, but that
requirement may equally supply motivation for the Israelites to take care of
their animals. These are not just
pieces of future meat. These are
creatures with the same nephesh that
they have, and they should be cared for accordingly—not kept full of drugs and
in their own filth but kept whole and “without blemish.”
Finally, it is worth noting that
the requirement to sacrifice any animal that you will eat ensures that all
feasts are sacred. Another way to
say this: all barbeques are holy.
This day in age, we meet at
church for worship and then we leave church for meat, but in ancient Israel
worship and the table were inextricably a part of one another.
Around Every Corner
Around one quarter of Leviticus
is about food. Sacrificial
guidelines and dietary laws regulate how and what the ancient Israelites
eat. As one rabbi noted, the first
commandment God ever gave humans was a dietary restriction: do not eat from
this tree. Leviticus begins in a
similar way: here’s what you can and cannot eat. As we see in today’s scripture, these restrictions are not
as arbitrary or superstitious as they might first appear. They actually follow from a profound
theological sensitivity that animals are fellow creatures created by God, and their
lives are sacred. The rituals and
restrictions of Leviticus curb any impulse toward indiscriminate violence against
animals for their consumption.
Dinner is not a casual, careless occasion, whatever animal stands before
you in the field and catches your fancy.
Only certain animals can be eaten, only in certain conditions, and only in a holy act that honors their
life and shows gratitude to God.
All of these rituals and rules
are Leviticus’ way of saying that the table is holy. If we approach it purposefully and pay attention, we will
discover the divine in our midst.
A quick look at the rest of
Leviticus shows us it’s not just the table that’s holy. All the rituals and regulations about
the body and how you take care of it and who you can touch tell us that our
flesh and blood are holy. Or as
Paul would later say, our bodies are themselves a temple (cf. 1 Cor 6:19). All the rules and rituals about being
true to our word and keeping our promises tell us that conversation is holy,
and silence too. All the
regulations and rituals about how we negotiate transactions with our neighbor
and how we treat the stranger tell us that our relationships are holy. All the rituals and rules about money
and property and how we don’t actually own either in any final sense tell us
that the land is holy and so is the freedom of the others who dwell alongside
us.
In other words, it’s not just the
dinner table where we encounter God.
We also encounter God in the health and sickness of our bodies, in the
honest exchange of words, in the vulnerability of our relationships, in the
ancient and formidable rhythms of the land. If we think about Leviticus as a rulebook, then the game it
invites us to play is one where we begin to see God around every corner.
What We See at the Table, We See in All the
World
Beginning with today’s scripture,
we’ve come a long way from the picture of a primitive and barbaric society
making brutal blood sacrifices.
But there’s one more step I’d like to make.
Rabbi Maurice Harris suggests
that the word “sacrifice,” which has come to characterize the contents of the
book of Leviticus, is actually a misleading translation. The Hebrew word qorban comes from the verb that means “to draw near.” Drawing near does not imply sacrifice
as much as it does fellowship and connection. What really catches my attention, however, is that Rabbi Harris
chooses a curiously Christian word for his alternative translation: instead of
calling it sacrifice, he suggests calling it “an offering of communion” because the offering is
intended to draw the person into communion with God to amend or enrich their
relationship.[2]
If we think of the sacrifices in
Leviticus in this way, as offerings of communion, then the connection between
the God of the Old Testament and the Christ we follow becomes stunningly
clear. For was not Jesus known by
his love of the table? His
detractors called him a drunkard and a glutton. More neutral observers remarked of him, “He eats with tax
collectors and sinners.” All of
which is to say, God in Christ drew near to us at the table.
And not just at the table. Christ also drew near to us through the
body and touch, through tender and tough words of truth, through the
vulnerability of relationships.
Christ appeared around every corner of this life’s experience.
Christ shows us the same thing
that the rituals of Leviticus show us: namely, that all of life is an
opportunity for communion with God.
That is the good news from the very beginning, and it is fitting that we
hear its message this World Communion Sunday. As we celebrate God’s love around the table with followers
of Christ around the world, we celebrate also that the table is not the
boundary of God’s presence but the beginning. What we see at the table, we see in all the world: an
opportunity for communion.
Making Holy the Moments of Our Days
Today we are having a potluck
luncheon. Normally we would say
this happens after worship. But today we will try thinking of it as
part of worship. And as we eat, we
will intersperse within our conversation a series of simple blessings that call
attention to the holiness of the routine moments of our lives, such as our
phone calls and work difficulties, hellos and goodbyes and unexpected changes. For if the rituals of Leviticus and the
example of Christ are any indication, all of these moments are
gifts—opportunities for communion with God.
Prayer
Holy God,
Drawing near to us in all things,
Found behind every corner of lives—
Grant us levitical hearts
That we might attend
To the littlest moments
Of our lives
With care and curiosity,
Trusting that you are there
With love and life.
In Christ, in whom you are reconciling all things:
Amen.
[1] Maurice D.
Harris, Leviticus: You Have No Idea
(Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2013), 36.
[2] Harris,
xxiii.
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