Threshold People (Leviticus 19:1-2, 17-18)

(Meditation for Gayton Road Christian Church's Worship on October 20, 2019, Proper 24)

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Home Makeovers

If television is any indication, our world is fascinated with home makeovers.  My brother used to live in Waco, Texas, and he worked at a church just one block away from where Chip and Joanna Gaines worked their magic.  It was surreal, he says, to see the tourists.  There were people who actually wanted to come and visit Waco.

Closer to home, I have to marvel every time our church has a yard sale.  Our yard sale crew have become experts with pricing antique furniture and all sorts of decorative paraphernalia.  I’m pretty sure they could put on a home makeover show of their own now.

Why is our world so fascinated with home makeovers?  Perhaps part of our fascination is simply fantasy, a sort of vicarious wish fulfillment, where we get to see on other houses the renovations and furnishings that we would like for ourselves.  But I wonder if there’s not a deeper reason for our fascination.  I wonder if on some fundamental level we hope and believe in and celebrate the possibility that what has fallen into disrepair can be made good and beautiful again.  I wonder if we aren’t looking for confirmation that everything has potential, even the most run-down house.  I wonder if deep down this has to do with us, with our suspicion that there is more to life, that we can be truer to ourselves, that the world can be made over in a very good way.

“A Priestly Kingdom”

When God delivers the Israelites from slavery in Egypt, God does not simply liberate them.  As the book of Exodus makes clear, something much larger is happening.  The big clue to what’s going on is that the number seven keeps showing up.  God gives seven commandments about the tabernacle where the Israelites will worship; Moses and the Israelites respond with seven acts of compliance.  This pattern of seven harkens back to the beginning of the biblical story, and it suggests that through Israel God is embarking on a new creation.

In other words, God does not simply set the Israelites free to roam the wilderness and find their own way.  God has liberated the Israelites in order that they might help to usher in a new creation, that as liberated people they might model for all the world what liberation looks like.  God commissions the Israelites with the same message with which Christ commissions his followers: not simply “Go,” but more importantly, “Show!”

Here’s how God puts it at one point in Exodus: “You shall be for me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation” (19:6).  “A priestly kingdom” is another way of saying a people who act like priests.  And priests, according to our scripture from last week, are people who distinguish what is holy from what is not holy, what is pure from what is not.  In other words, a priest is like a home makeover host.  A priest distinguishes between what is not good and needs to go, and what is good and needs to be developed.  A priest acknowledges and accepts the present reality even as he calls for a future possibility.  A priest stands on the threshold.  A priest sees the potential for something good and beautiful, and helps make the distinctions that will bring that potential to fulfillment. 

A priest is like a parent or a teacher or a coach, someone who welcomes a child just as they are but also sees and calls forth what they could become.

God delivers Israel that they might be like priests to the world, a threshold people who acknowledge and accept the way things are even as they show and call forth the way things could be.

Different Than the World

And as we all know, the truest and most enduring form of teaching and showing is by example.  Which is what we hear in today’s scripture, a passage that many scholars consider to be the center of Leviticus, its heartbeat: “You shall be holy, for the I Lord your God am holy” (19:2).  How will the Israelites show the world what liberation and the good life looks like?  They will live good, holy lives themselves.

Last week we talked about holiness as making space for God.  Another key meaning of holiness is being different.  To follow our compulsions, our biases, our unexamined plans, is to be all-too-human.  But to make space for God is ultimately to be different.  What follows the command, “You shall be holy,” is an assortment of ethical and ritual instructions that have to do with being different than the world: not living by the principles of impulse and greed and convenience.  These are the unholy things that need to go, so that the makeover might be made complete, so that the potential of this world might be fulfilled. 

These various instructions culminate in verses 17 and 18, where we see a stark contrast between the way of the world and the way of God: “You shall not hate in your heart anyone of your kin; you shall reprove your neighbor….You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself.”  What I hear in these two celebrated verses, from which will spring the golden rule, is the same good news Jesus proclaimed: “Don’t judge.  And don’t keep score so that you might take vengeance or hold the higher ground.  Instead love.”  God’s new creation is founded on a simple invitation: love.  That is the crucial difference between this world of judgment and keeping score and the eternal circle of vengeance and violence, and the new world that God is creating.

I am reminded of Jesus on the cross.  What his followers likely hoped for—that he would come down from the cross with might and muscle and vengeance and show everyone they were wrong and he was right—is in fact the way of this world.  Such a sequence of events would have been all-too-human.  What his followers saw instead was something different, something holy and divine: a man who with his last breath forgave his enemies.

Not the What, But the How

The writer of Hebrews in the New Testament says that Jesus is our high priest.  He is the threshold person par excellence.  He lived with us in this world, but he showed us a different world—a world makeover, one that he called the kingdom of God.  In other words, he distinguished between the world and the kingdom.  He distinguished between the things that are passing and not worth our time and the things that are full of life and will ever be so.  And he called us to join his makeover project by making the same distinction, by discarding things like pride and coercive power, greed and impatience, all the things that preserve the circle of vengeance and violence, and in their place cultivating things like love and trust, giving and forgiving, all the things that liberate and bring new life. 

You and I both stand at thresholds.  We probably both wonder where we will be in a year’s time.  But as Jesus reminds us in our gospel scripture today, these concerns are not holy.  What we will wear, what we will eat, what we’ll be doing, who we’ll be with, what the world around us will be like.  These things are what the world worries about, he says, but not you.  You strive for the kingdom, for things like loving your neighbor and not judging them, welcoming the stranger and not counting the cost, embracing interruptions like children and the sick and the lonely.

It’s almost as if Jesus is saying, it’s not the what that’s holy.  It’s the how.  To live as a threshold person means to welcome the uncertainty of our lives—we don’t know what the final makeover will look like.  What we know is the how.  Just as Chip and Joanna know how to fix a living room or how to renovate a basement, just as a coach knows how to encourage his players and cultivate their skills, we know how to live. 

The good news of Leviticus, which is also the gospel of Jesus Christ, is that even though we don’t know the future, we know that it can be made good and beautiful.  And according to both Leviticus and Jesus, it all starts in the simplest way: by loving our neighbor.

Prayer

Holy God,

Whose love

Orders all of life

In goodness and beauty:

We are a work in progress.

Bless us at this threshold

With levitical hearts

That beat not according to worldly impulse

But according to the kingdom of God,

Where love reigns.

In Christ, our high priest: Amen.

Making Space (Leviticus 10:1-3, 8-11)

(Meditation for Gayton Road Christian Church's Worship on October 13, 2019, Proper 23)

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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.

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[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.

All the World Holy (Leviticus 17:1-16)

(Meditation for Gayton Road Christian Church's Worship on October 6, 2019, World Communion Sunday)

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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.

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[1] Maurice D. Harris, Leviticus: You Have No Idea (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2013), 36.

[2] Harris, xxiii.

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)

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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.

Beginning with Joy (Leviticus 3:1-17)

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

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“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.

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[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.