Leviticus is probably one of the most difficult books in the Bible. The material in it ranges from unpleasant to incomprehensible and back again, with one or two flashes of clarity and simplicity almost as if to catch us off our guard. If it hadn’t been for the fact that I promised to preach on one of the passages for the week that are printed in our calendars, I probably would have found a really good excuse to preach on something else.
But one of the reasons we’re reading our way through the ENTIRE Bible this year is because all of it is useful. Paul told his young disciple Timothy, struggling in his first pastorate, that “All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work. “ [2 Tim 3:16-17] So this discipline is good for me, as well as for you. I don’t think I’ve wrestled so hard with the nuts and bolts of Scripture since I was in seminary.
But - believe it or not - the book of Leviticus has only one theme, and that theme is, “How can a sinful people live in intimate daily communion with a Holy God?” And so we can learn from it. Because we are still sinful, and God is still holy.
But we can break it down a little further, which will, I hope, help us to get clear in our minds how the different parts of the law relate to us, here and now.
The first and central theme is, as I said, holiness. But it couldn’t stop there. Because God’s holiness is something completely OTHER, something so totally inaccessible and incomprehensible to human beings that if God hadn’t set up some kind of system of access, the Israelites - and we, in our turn - would have stayed stuck in the same position as at the foot of Sinai, quaking in their sandals and refusing to come one step closer to the terrifying mystery that was speaking to them from the cloud. And they were right to be afraid, because God’s holiness would burn them up like dry grass in a prairie fire if they got out of line.
But, somehow, this holy God is going to take up residence among these ordinary flammable fragile human beings. Right there in the middle of their camp. So the second theme is God’s presence. YHWH God is really going to be right there, which is going to complicate things, because it’s sort of like having a nuclear power plant in your living room. And both they and YHWH wanted to minimize the incidence of - shall we say - accidental incineration.
The third theme, then, is the terms on which this remarkable arrangement is going to work. It’s in two parts, covenant and sacrifice.
First, the covenant. It’s a legal contract, a promise, laying down the obligations of all the parties. In this case, given the unusually large imbalance in power between the two parties, it’s almost all about God’s promises to Israel. For some bizarre, incomprehensible reason, YHWH God picked on a ragtag bunch of desert nomads and decided to make a nation out of them. As the old quip goes, “How odd of God to choose the Jews.” How odd of God to choose anyone, actually. But there they are, and YHWH is going to give them land, and laws, and leadership, and protection... and in return, what do they have to do?
The first thing they have to do is to start imitating God. “Be ye holy, as I am holy” is a theme that begins with Sinai and echoes down to the present age. But becoming holy like God is easier said than done. It’s something that happens over time, through constant attention and exposure to God’s own holiness.
And since that is of course something totally beyond the ability of any human beings, scruffy desert nomads or sophisticated city slickers, God also had to give them the means to become holy. And that means was a combination of ritual laws, moral laws, and sacrificial system.
Every single part of the daily lives of the ancient Israelites had to be lived in relationship to God. YHWH had a claim on everything they had and did: the food they ate, the clothing they wore, their economic activities, their personal relationships, everything. The relationship that required this of them was a completely new kind of religion, one that didn’t leave anything out, and it was hard. It required continual spiritual replenishment from this God who lived in their midst, but whom they couldn’t go near because if they did they’d be burned to a crisp. What a dilemma!
The sacrificial system was what enabled the Israelites to get close enough to YHWH so that he could give them what they needed to stay centered on him.
The daily sacrifices - morning and evening, meat and bread - was a kind of daily scrubbing of the atmosphere; it kept the inevitable daily human sinfulness of the congregation from rising to a level that YHWH could not tolerate - even from a distance. The other offerings made it possible for the members of the covenant community to come near to God to be sustained and nourished. Because, you see, you had to get close to God to be fed - but in order to get that close, you had to take major precautions. Because not only was God displeased by uncleanliness, it was also - you’ve got to remember this - it was DANGEROUS. Like it’s dangerous to light matches around gasoline fumes. Anybody remember the old Burma Shave signs? There’s one that for some reason came to my mind at this stage in sermon prep - “He lit a match to check the tank; that’s why they call him skinless Frank. - Burma Shave.” Some things just don’t go together.
And so everybody who came in contact with God had to be very careful indeed to do things just right. Especially the priests. They lived in close contact with YHWH God, touching holy things on a daily basis, and so they had to be that much cleaner, that much better protected, against God’s consuming fire.
The passage read for us today was the ordination ceremony for Aaron and his sons. It’s pretty detailed, and involved several steps. First, they had to be washed. Second, they had to put on the proper clothing: tunic, sash, robe, ephod, breast-piece, turban. Then they were anointed with oil. Next, a bull was sacrificed as a sin offering - that means, the life of the bull paid for any particular sins that Aaron and his sons had committed. Then a ram was sacrificed; but that wasn’t the same as the sin offering. It was more like a gift, a sign of the giving of their lives to God’s service. But with both sacrifices, Aaron and his sons put their hands on the animal to be sacrificed, which showed that the animals served in their place. God was pleased to accept the lives of the animals instead of their own lives.
But what on earth does all this have to do with us?
Well, first of all, we, as Christians, are a priesthood. Each one of us, individually, is a priest. God has called us to live in intimate, daily contact with him, caring for the sacred things, bringing the word of God to people, calling people to repentance and obedience. And each one of us has received an anointing that repeats in almost every particular everything that Aaron and his sons went through that long ago day in the desert.
We were washed. When were we washed? Who can guess? Right. We were washed when we were baptized. Then we put on particular clothing. That’s a little harder. What is our clothing?
There are two short answers, and two long ones. The long answers are, first from Colossians, “clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience.” [Col 3:12] and secondly from Ephesians: “Put on the whole armor of God: the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, for shoes... the gospel of peace, the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.” [Eph 6:13-17] The first short answer appears in both Ephesians and Colossians: we’re “to clothe ourselves with the new self.” [Eph 4:24, Col 3:10] And last, most important of all, we are “clothed in Christ.” [Gal 3:27]
We have all this clothing available to us every day. But do we bother to put it on? Being clothed in Christ comes with our baptism. It is what makes it safe to come into God’s presence, kind of like a radiation suit. But what about the rest of it? What about those garments that we can take up and put down as we please? It’s not important to wear suits and ties or hats and gloves to church... but the spiritual clothing we wear when we approach God DOES matter.
Being washed and wearing the right clothing is necessary - but it is still not enough. Because God is still holy, and we are still sinful.
The sacrifice, the sin offering that was made for us, was made by the only perfect One, the lamb of God, who takes away not only our sin but the sin of the world. When we take the bread and the wine, the blood and body of Christ, we accept the sacrifice which he made on our behalf, and acknowledge that it was done in our stead, and pays for our sin.
Christ is our priest, making our sacrifice for us; he is our sacrifice, making atonement for us; he is our clothing, making it safe for us - to enter the presence of the only High God.
But that still leaves a question. Why is it that nothing happens any more to those who dare to approach YHWH God without accepting Christ’s sacrifice, without being properly clothed? After all, how long has it been since you’ve seen a spontaneous combustion in the aisle? I believe that it is because you simply can’t get close enough to God for it to matter, unless you are clothed in Christ. The means of access apart from Jesus Christ has been closed; our protector is also the only way to God. God hears everyone - in Christ or not - but you can’t get close enough to be warmed and fed unless you follow the Way. And so,
“Now to him who is able to keep you from falling, and to make you stand without blemish in the presence of his glory with rejoicing, to the only God our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, power, and authority, before all time and now and forever.” Amen [Jude 1:24-25]
