Suiting Up

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!