(Meditation for Gayton Road Christian Church's Worship on October 13, 2019, Proper 23)
Interpreting “the God of the Old Testament”
“Finally! Finally we get a bit of action in Leviticus,
some story and drama, not just rituals and rules.” That was my reaction, at least, when I first
read Leviticus 10. But my joy was
short-lived, because I was faced with a rather disturbing story. Two priests offer the wrong kind of fire—and
the consequence is death?
It’s passages like this one that
lead people to talk about “the God of the Old Testament,” as though the God of
our Bible is schizophrenic, on the one hand wrathful and angry, on the other
loving and forgiving. I would like to
push back gently against this notion.
After all, Jesus read the Old Testament and revered it as scripture. He frequently cites the prophets. Two of his seven dying words on the cross
come from the psalms. And he says that
he came not to abolish the law but to fulfill it. For Jesus, the God of the Old Testament is
the same God embodied in his life.
So how do we read a disturbing
passage like this one, where God seems to punish a person simply for using the
wrong fire? I believe healthy
interpretation begins with the questions we bring to the text. Oftentimes we approach the Bible like we
approach a news report. We ask, “What
happened?” This literal way of thinking
is helpful if we’re trying to reconstruct a history or determine the mechanics
of a certain process. But as valid as
these interests can be, they are not the primary interests of scripture. Scripture is the sacred witness of a people
who have encountered God in such a way that they must express it. So, a better question to ask is, “Why
did they share this story? What are they
trying to communicate? What did it mean
to them? What does it mean for me?”
Empty
Time and Empty Space
When we ask these questions, it
quickly becomes apparent that our story today is not as interested in the
historical fact of Nadab and Abihu’s demise as it is in the reason for
their demise. “They offered unholy
fire before the Lord, such as he had not commanded them,” the storyteller
explains. In other words, the strange
deaths of Nadab and Abihu have something to do with holiness. The storyteller reinforces this theme on two
more occasions. Moses tells Aaron that
the priests’ deaths are an illustration of what God meant when God said, “I
will show myself holy” (10:3), and God later speaks directly to Aaron and
stresses the importance of distinguishing between what is holy and what is not
(10:10). All of this is to say: somehow
Nadab and Abihu ran afoul of the physics of holiness.
A good question to ask, then,
would be: what is holiness? The root
word for “holy” first appears in the Bible when God has finished creation and
then makes holy the seventh day (Gen 2:3).
So, time can be holy. Later,
after the Israelites have constructed the tabernacle, God instructs them to
anoint it all with oil and to make it holy (Ex 40:9). So, space can be holy too.
The common thread between these
two holy realms of time and space is emptiness.
The Sabbath is essentially empty time.
On the Sabbath, the people rest.
They let go of their work. Why? To
abide in the presence of God. And the
tabernacle is essentially empty space. There
is a large courtyard with nothing but an altar, and an inner tent with another
altar, a table, a curtain, and the ark of the covenant. Quite unlike a furnished home, the tabernacle
was mostly bare space.[1] Why?
Because humans are not the masters of this tent as they are masters of
their homes. In this tent, they let go
and abide in the presence of God.
To enter the holiness of God, we
humans must first make space for God. We
must empty ourselves.
There’s a famous psalm that we
all probably know, where God says, “Be still, and know that I am God.” The Hebrew for “be still” more literally
refers to something you do with your hands; it means something like, “let go”
or “drop it.” I think it’s a great
expression for holiness. What is holy is
the place and the time where to encounter God we must first let go—let go of
our plans, our preconceptions, our self-projections.
Warning:
High Voltage
Now we can rewind and begin to
make sense of Nadab and Abihu’s fate.
The storyteller explains that they approached God with incense that he
had not instructed them to bring, that is, “unholy” fire. In other words, they approached a holy space
but did not leave space for God. They
did not let go of themselves. And that
is the real problem that the story wants to show us: not their demise but the
reason for it. To assert our
presence in the presence of God is “a contradiction in terms.”[2] It’s like a conversation where you invite the
other person’s response but then keep speaking.
It’s impossible for two voices to inhabit the same space in any
meaningful way.
To assert our presence in the
presence of God can only result in disaster.
We see this in today’s scripture, of course, but we also see it across
human history. The very first act of
worship, remember, ended in murder. Cain
and Abel brought offerings to God, but Cain could not let go of his offering,
his pride—and the story ends in death. Holiness
is high voltage stuff. It is the power of
God that can redeem this world, but if mishandled it can also destroy this
world. Think about all the violence and
oppression that has been done in the name of God. The Twin Towers still stand at the forefront
of our nation’s memory. But behind them
lie fields filled with the sound of cracked whips and the sight of black backs
laboring under coercion, while the preacher maintained that this was the will
of God. To assert our presence—our
presumptions, our profits, our plans—in the presence of God can only result in
disaster.
I wonder about today. Where do we stand in danger of asserting our
presence in the presence of God? Where
do we stand at risk of a holy disaster? Several
ideas come to mind. But on ein
particular I’d like to share. I
understand that the church remains divided over the matter of affirming LBGTQ
identities, and I do not mean carelessly to stoke the coals of that
conflict. But I do worry that this
matter is one in which more than coals have been stoked, and the consequences
have been disastrous for the many LGBTQ persons who have been rejected by the
church for who they are. Surely in this
matter many churches have asserted their presence—their presumptions, their
biases—in the presence of God. Surely
they have not made space for their LGBTQ neighbors, to listen fully to their
story and experience. I understand the
Bible complicates this matter, but I fear that too often it has been read
simply to confirm the reader’s own worldview rather than to bear witness to the
heartbeat of God, which is surely deeper than the cultural mores sometimes
reflected in these ancient texts. If
holiness is high voltage, capable of redemption as well as destruction, I worry
that in this matter many churches have done harm in the place of good. Rather than redeeming a community, they have
condemned it.
The
Healing of Holiness
In contrast to holy disaster, the
positive, healing work of holiness often transpires with little fanfare. After all, it’s usually in the little,
unremarkable moments of life that healing occurs.
For many Christ-followers, these
moments may happen during Sunday worship.
For this hour is holy time and this sanctuary is a holy place. Here and now we make space for God. But as we discover in Leviticus, holiness is
not just a matter of the tabernacle and worship. God calls Israel to be a holy nation, to be
holy all the time.
With that in mind, I want to
share today the example of Mary Mrozowski.
According to one of her friends, Mary Mrozowski had “an in-your-face,
swaggering” kind of person. She fought
with life and anyone who got in her way.
But later in life, she committed herself to the way of Christ in a very
purposeful manner. In particular, she
sought at crucial moments throughout the day to abandon herself to God. What she meant by this, was that at moments
when she became unsettled—when someone insulted her, when she could not solve a
problem, when an unexpected change confronted her—instead of living from her
small self, she would choose to live instead from the source of all life. She would abandon herself to God.
Mary became the pioneer of what
she called the Welcoming Prayer. If
you’re curious, I would encourage you to Google “Welcoming Prayer” and you can
learn all about it. In summary, the
Welcoming Prayer was a way for Mary to let go of her smaller urges—like revenge
or control or greed or proving herself—so that instead she might live from the
depths of God’s love, from which comes all true life. Or as she put, “Do you want to be right, or
do you want to be free?” The Welcoming
Prayer was a way for her to be free—a way to empty herself, so that God’s
holiness could break through in these crucial moments. One of her close friends remarks that by the
simple practice of this prayer, Mary was transformed from a domineering woman
with a Brooklyn accent to a saintly woman in whom others recognized holiness (and
with a Brooklyn accent, no less!).[3]
Becoming
Less, Becoming More
The surprise of faith is that in
order to become more, we must actually become less. In order to become holy, we must make space
for God. And making space for God does
not mean relinquishing our personality—any more than it meant Mary would need
to lose her Brooklyn accent. What making
space means is that God’s love and grace take their rightful place in our heart
instead of the temporary and passing plans and projects and prejudices which
threaten to limit the work of God.
Making space for God does not dull the edge of our individuality but
sharpens it. In the end, we become more
fully ourselves. And all the world
becomes holy, an opportunity to commune with God.
Prayer
Holy God,
So often we live automatically—
Guided by our compulsions,
Our prejudices,
Our unexamined plans and projects.
May this holy hour and this holy place
Be only the beginning for us.
Bless us with levitical hearts
That aspire always
To make space for you,
So that we might faithfully bear
Your love in redeeming ways.
In Christ, the fullness of your love:
Amen.
[1]
Jonathan Sacks, Leviticus: The Book of Holiness (Covenant and
Conversation Series 3; New Milford, CT: Maggid Books and the Orthodox Union,
2015), ebook loc. 384-404.
[2]
Sacks, ebook loc. 2783-2427.
[3]
See the remarks of Cynthia Bourgeault at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bClyhR2ZPc&t=195s
and marymrozowski.com/testimonials.
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