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Leviticus 8+11
Sermons from Commons Church. Intellectually honest. Spiritually passionate. Jesus at the centre. Since 2014.
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Speaker 1:If we haven't met yet, my name is Jeremy, and we are in the book of Leviticus, and we have a lot of ground to cover today. Next week, we wanna get to the climax of the book. That is the day of atonement in chapter 16. But that means that we need to move through chapters eight all the way to 15 today. And at the pace that we've been moving so far, that is clearly not gonna happen.
Speaker 1:Just keep in mind though, that our goal in this series is not really to hit every detail to cover all the details. It's just to get the major themes and movements in the book. However, because there is a lot to cover today, instead of a recap, I'll just mention that our podcast and our YouTube channel are available online. You can find links to them at commons.church, and hopefully you can catch up and access those if you need to. So there and there.
Speaker 1:That said, let's pray and then we're gonna jump straight into chapter eight today. God, we come today into your presence, knowing that we are never out of your sight, and that in moments like these, we are not nearer to you. That we are simply more aware of your beauty and your spirit and your presence that is with us in each moment. May we carry that awareness now into every moment, into every encounter, and into every relationship that we enter. In that, may we come to know the sacredness of the ordinary and the beauty of the mundane because you are present with us in them.
Speaker 1:Help us to learn from these ancient texts and rituals to know that things are very different today, and yet to capture the beauty of what is being communicated in these ancient practices. Help us to make sense of that in our world today. Would you reveal yourself to us profoundly and personally as you have always promised to. In the strong name of the risen Christ we pray. Amen.
Speaker 1:Alright. Today, we need to talk about the priesthood in ancient Israel, and then we need to start to talk about the purity code. We're gonna focus on the dietary sections today, but we will have a chance to come back to the purity code after the day of atonement because there's another section about purity there. So we'll pick up the ideas we missed there. So let's open the text.
Speaker 1:We're gonna go to Leviticus chapter eight verse one where we read that the Lord said to Moses, bring Aaron and his sons, their garments, the anointing oil, the bull for the sin offering, the two rams and the bastard containing the bread made without yeast. You'll recognize a lot of those things from some of the offerings that we talked about earlier in Leviticus. And gather the entire assembly together at the entrance to the tent of meeting. Now, everything we have read up to this point has been God explaining how the rituals are supposed to work. Chapter eight is where the system actually gets inaugurated.
Speaker 1:So nothing has been happening up until now. Whenever we have read about the priests in chapters one through seven, those were theoretical priests. And whenever we read about offerings in the first seven chapters, those were theoretical offerings. It's here in chapter eight that the system actually gets going. And the first thing you need to do to get a system like this off the ground is to anoint some priests.
Speaker 1:So that's what's happening here. Now Aaron here is Moses' older brother. If you go back to Exodus, that's the book right before Leviticus, you'll see how Aaron gets tapped by God to help Moses out. Moses doesn't think he's a good leader. He struggles with public speaking, and so Aaron gets tagged in to give him a hand.
Speaker 1:Here in Leviticus, Aaron and his sons now get tasked with starting the priestly lineage, where Moses leads the community. Now if we pick up in verse six, read that Moses brought Aaron and his sons forward and washed them with water. He then put the tunic on Aaron, tied the sash around him, clothed him with the robe, and put the ephod on him. He fastened the ephod with a decorative waistband, which he tied around him. He placed the breastpiece on him and put the Urim and Thumim in the breastpiece.
Speaker 1:Hold on to that. We'll come back to those strange words in a moment. Verse nine, Moses placed the turban on Aaron's head and set the gold plate, the sacred emblem, on the front of it as the Lord has commanded. Now, couple things here. First of all, Moses brings Aaron and his sons out, and the text says that he washes them with water, puts the tunic on Aaron, ties a sash around him, clothes him with a robe, and puts an ephod on him.
Speaker 1:An ephod is basically just a big ceremonial cloak. Tunic is like your undergarment in the ancient world, and your robe is your sort of normal clothing. But notice here, Moses brings them out, washes them with water, and then clothes them. Now remember, this is literally in front of the entire gathered nation of Israel. Some of you don't like public speaking.
Speaker 1:That was the least embarrassing part about being a priest in Israel. Now I'm not a priest. Sometimes people make that mistake. Regardless, I am very glad that ordination does not work this way today. I would be significantly less comfortable.
Speaker 1:So why am I making a big deal about this? Am I just trying to humiliate poor Aaron? The guy has been dead for millennia, and we are still joking about his delicate moment in the spotlight here. Well, that's not it, at least not completely. There is something important going on here.
Speaker 1:And see, generally, nakedness is frowned upon in the Old Testament post Eden. And so some rabbis have actually argued that this washing must have been done behind a curtain or out of sight. That's possible, but that seems to contradict the plain image that the text in Leviticus gives us. And so different scholars have pointed to different ideas here. In the purity code, you must not have any skin disease if you're gonna enter into God's presence.
Speaker 1:Perhaps, this public bathing was a way of making sure that the community saw, they were confident, that the priest themselves were not going to enforce rules they couldn't live up to themselves. There should be transparency with our leaders. Washing in the bible is generally associated with an inner spiritual cleansing at times. This is where we get the story of John the Baptist in the New Testament. He baptizes or he washes people for the repentance of sins.
Speaker 1:In Judaism, they called this a mikvah. Maybe what we see here in Leviticus is a precursor to that. Our leaders need to be spiritually clean. Personally, I think probably both of those are present to some extent in this ritual, but I also think there might be another facet to this vulnerable public moment. You see, God is setting up a ritual system here that is based on cultural assumptions about the divine.
Speaker 1:Almost every other ancient culture had similar rituals. Every ancient culture had these figurehead religious leaders, a shaman or priests or mediators that stood between the deities and their people. Now Yahweh doesn't need priests. In Jesus, we see that God can come directly to us when he chooses to. And yet, in his graciousness, Yahweh works within these cultural assumptions for a time.
Speaker 1:I wonder, however, if perhaps this naked and vulnerable moment for the priests of Israel, this inauguration where the mediators are laid bare before the people, wasn't at least partly about showing the people that priests or not, we are all still human beings naked before God. So, yes, there is a role for the priests in Israel. And, yes, they will be set apart for a certain task, but no, they are not all that different from you. We are all made in the image of God from the lowest commoner working in the field to the high priest who enters the holy of holies on our behalf. Now there's roles, and there are different tasks in the ritual system.
Speaker 1:God says, may call you to something different from your neighbor, but when you strip away all the position and the privilege and the fancy fancy outfits, you are all human on the inside. See, I think that this moment might actually be a precursor to the abolition of a class system and an ethnic identity. A hint where God points towards the end of all of these barriers that we create to separate ourselves from each other. Is it possible that perhaps this vulnerable public moment in some way even humbly points to Galatians three where later Paul will say that in Christ you are no longer Jew or Gentile, not slave or free. There is not even male or female anymore for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
Speaker 1:See, this washing is a signal that even the most privileged among us, they are not different from us. Now, once the clothes get put on, we read that the Urim and Thumim get placed into the breastplate. Now, this is another one of those strange moments in Leviticus, so let's talk about this here quickly. Urim and thumim respectively mean something probably like the light and the truth. Honestly, we're just not completely sure about the etymology of these words, and so that's why they generally are left untranslated in your English Bibles.
Speaker 1:We just don't know for sure. But what these were were stones that were kept in a pouch on the breastplate of the high priest. And they were used somehow to divine the will of God. So first Samuel 28. King Saul is asking God what to do.
Speaker 1:He wants to know what to do. But verse six says that he inquired of the Lord, but the Lord did not answer him. Not by dreams or by Urim or by prophets. And there are a number of these passages all throughout the Old Testament where people look to God to answer them through the Urim and the Thummim that the high priest kept with him. Thing is, we don't know exactly how these worked.
Speaker 1:There doesn't seem to be any explanation in the scriptures. And so people have speculated about what might have happened. Some have thought that maybe these stones were carved into something like dice with letters on the side, and so you could roll them and then God would presumably spell out words to the high priest. Seems a little convoluted, but perhaps. Others have theorized that maybe there are some type of gemstones.
Speaker 1:And so what you would do is you would ask God a question and then you would hold them out and wait for the light to refract through them. Almost as if they lit up for you. And that's how God would answer or not answer your question perhaps. Well, the bottom line is we just don't know how they worked, but we know that this was a way for God to communicate with his people. Now if we keep reading in chapter eight, we're gonna see how Moses consecrates the priests.
Speaker 1:So he makes the required sacrifices that were outlined in the chapters we've already talked about. Except this time, the blood of the animal gets used not just to purify the space or the entrance to the tent of meeting, but this time, it gets put on the ears and the thumbs and the big toes of the priests. Now, this is a bit strange, but what this is is a symbol of their listening to God, their worship before God, and their actions and their movements being consecrated or set apart for God. Next, Moses is gonna talk about the offerings and he's gonna explain how part of the offering is for God and part of the offering is for the priests. Verse 31 says, to cook the meat at the entrance to the tent of meeting and eat it there with the bread from the basket of offerings as I command.
Speaker 1:So the priest actually ate part of these offerings that came to the tent. But what I want us to notice here is that these priests who are not different from the rest of the people, who are made naked and vulnerable and human before the people, are now given in the ritual of Leviticus a way to hear the direction of God, the Urim and the Thummim. They are cleansed themselves before God. Blood is placed on their ears, their thumbs, and their toes. And they are then welcomed to come and eat at the table with God.
Speaker 1:Now, why is that important? Because we just did all of this moments ago. When we take the Eucharist, we trust that God meets us there. A communion is not just a symbol. It's a moment.
Speaker 1:It's a sacrament where God meets with us. But we listen to him. We are cleansed by him, and we eat with him. You see, the priests in Leviticus are representatives for the people in front of God. But what they didn't fully understand yet in that culture is that the priests would be representative of all peoples before God in Christ.
Speaker 1:Now just try to imagine being a first century Jew steeped in this culture of Levitical ritual. And hearing this guy Peter show up and say that you also are like living stones being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood offering spiritual sacrifices that are acceptable to God through Christ Jesus. This is game changing stuff to hear. And it's hard for us to imagine just how radically different the story of Jesus was coming out of Judaism after centuries of tradition, all now being upended and transformed. For us, I mean, it all just seems like it's a logical conclusion.
Speaker 1:But those in the first century, all of this story of Jesus was incredibly disorienting. Everything was changing. Now, we we have ridgeless leaders today. Of course we do. Yes.
Speaker 1:Right? And do we sometimes wear fancy outfits? Sure. Once Advent starts, I will be wearing my clerical stole to mark that season. But no longer are there those among us who represent us before God.
Speaker 1:That is not what I do even if I am wearing my fancy scarf. Today, God's spirit is equally accessible to anyone in this room. You do not need magic dice. And God's presence is as open to anyone in this room. You do not need a ritual to come near to God.
Speaker 1:And God's table is waiting for you today to come and sit and eat with God yourself. Now imagine when the early Christians used the language of sacrifice to talk about the death of Jesus, And then they said that they commemorated that sacrifice with a meal. What were they saying in that? They were reinforcing the priesthood of all believers. That we are all in this together now.
Speaker 1:That we are all one before God. That we can all come and eat at the table of God like the priests used to in Leviticus. So it's okay to look up to somebody, and it's okay to trust someone. It's okay to learn from their teaching. That's one of the beautiful parts of community, And that together, we can pool resources to pay someone like me and the rest of our staff to study and research and prepare, and then teach us as a community.
Speaker 1:That's a beautiful thing, and it's a benefit to us, and I am so deeply blessed to get to do what I do for a living. But this is not a different type of connection to God. Not anymore. And so it is incredibly important that our language, our rituals, our practice, and our worship as a community reflect this transformed New Testament perspective when it comes to access to God. Because sometimes, we subtly give the impression that there are some people who are closer and others who are farther away.
Speaker 1:And that's not true. Karl Barth once said, that in the end our greatest theologian will turn out to be some little old woman quietly engaged in bible studies somewhere unknown. That is the priesthood of all believers. And this is what we participate in today. Okay.
Speaker 1:So that's the priesthood in ancient Israel. We still need to talk about purity. And we're just gonna hit the dietary sections today, but this is probably one of those sections that people most readily associate with Leviticus. Don't eat pork. Don't eat shellfish.
Speaker 1:Don't get leprosy. For the record, that last one still applies, at least for the most part. But this is where some of those really bizarre rules come in, and this is where we actually do still struggle to make sense of what we read here in these passages. Now, I know that a lot of us here love bacon. That's okay.
Speaker 1:And we struggle to understand why a gracious and loving God would ever ban such deliciousness from our lives. Sometimes I think that if there was no such thing as bacon or kittens, we would not even need an Internet. Like, what would it be for? For the record, I am a vegetarian, and no, I don't eat bacon. And you'd be surprised how many people talk to me and they say, oh, you're a vegetarian.
Speaker 1:Cool. Do you eat fish? I'm like, no. You eat chicken? No.
Speaker 1:Bacon? I'm like, no. I don't I don't eat any of that stuff. That said, my dietary habits are strange, but they have nothing to do with Leviticus. And so let's quickly look at some of these dietary codes here, which start in chapter 11.
Speaker 1:Verse one reads, the Lord said to Moses and Aaron, say to the Israelites, of all the animals that live on the land, these are the ones you may eat. You may eat any animal that has a divided hoof and chews the cud. Now if we keep reading, we get some more details. The camel, though it chews the cud, does not have a divided hoof. It's ceremonially unclean for you.
Speaker 1:That's out. The hyrax, that's a rock badger. I don't know who eats rock badgers, but anyway. It chews the cud, does not have a divided hoof. It's out.
Speaker 1:The rabbit, though it chews the cud and does not have a divided hoof, so it's unclean. The pig has a divided hoof, but doesn't chew the cud, so it's unclean too. And then after this, we get a section about what fish and birds and insects you can and can't eat, and yes, they did eat insects. But if you have any experience of barnyard animals, or if you can remember back to your days in four h, something may have twigged for you here. Because Leviticus eleven six says that a rabbit chews the cud.
Speaker 1:Now chewing the cud, this is a way of categorizing an animal as a ruminant. A ruminant is an animal that has a special digestive tract. It's designed to extract more nutrients from tough plants. Essentially, they chew the food, they swallow the food, they partially digest the food, they regurgitate the food, and they chew it again. It's all very disgusting, but animals do it.
Speaker 1:Ruminere in Latin just means to chew again. And so if you ruminate on something, means you chew it and you think about it, you reflect on it. Right? Well, what I want you to notice is that here in Leviticus, this text is written in a prescientific culture. Because a rabbit is not a ruminant, and a rabbit does not chew the cud.
Speaker 1:But has anyone ever seen a rabbit eat? I mean, what do they do? Right? They chew and they chew and they chew. And so in a prescientific culture, it makes sense to categorize them together with these other animals.
Speaker 1:The point is, this is an observational text, not a scientific one. And so we need to read it in the context that it was written. However, the struggle has still been to make sense of these strange rules. Now, I'm not gonna settle that debate for us, but what I am gonna do is give us a couple of the major ways that scholars think about this, and then we'll try to land on what I personally think is probably the most important part in this section. So first, people have argued that perhaps these particular banned animals were somehow less hygienic than others.
Speaker 1:So God is protecting his people from disease with these rules. This goes back to a Jewish rabbi named Mammonides, who lived in the twelfth century in Spain. And it's sort of the idea that God had a scientific reason in mind, but he gave it to people who didn't understand the science behind it. Well, for pigs and shellfish, that might be some truth to that. Either animal, if they're not cooked properly, can cause significant health issues.
Speaker 1:The problem here is that as an all encompassing theory for the Levitical code, any meat not cooked properly is going to be an issue. I mean, especially in the ancient world, especially if you are living in the desert. And so banning pigs would not have been nearly as effective in terms of a public health measure as if God had just explained to the people, wash your hands before you eat. That would have been a lot more effective. And so arguing that the Levitical code is all about public health, probably doesn't make sense, at least not on its own.
Speaker 1:K. Next, another major theory was put forward by a scholar named Mary Douglas. Now she passed away in 2007, but her work gained a lot of traction in the scholarly community. We should note though that later in her career, she actually changed her mind. And so if you ever decide that you want to get into the literature on this, I don't know why you would, but if you want to, pay attention to what part of Mary Douglas' career you're looking at.
Speaker 1:Her early theory is different than later in her career. But her early theory is all about categories of creation. So there is a a way that land animals are supposed to be, and there is a way that water creatures are supposed to be, and there is a way that birds of the air are supposed to be. And any animal that doesn't fit neatly and perfectly into the category is unclean. Again, unclean does not mean it's bad.
Speaker 1:It doesn't mean that God doesn't create them. It doesn't mean that God doesn't love pigs. It's just that God wants to teach his people about boundaries. And so, if you're a land animal and you have a split hoof, you're part of the category, but you don't chew the cud, you're not completely in the category, you don't fit, we don't eat you. If you're a water creature and you swim, but you don't have scales and fins, then then we're not gonna eat you.
Speaker 1:If you're a bird, but you land on the ground to eat the carcasses of dead animals, then you don't fit in the category of birds of the air, and we don't eat you. The basic idea here is that God is a God of order. And there are certain lines, certain boundaries, certain categories that he wants us to notice and observe in the world. And I think for a lot of people, this makes at least some sense out of a fairly difficult set of rules. However, ultimately, the reason that Douglas later changes her own mind is because it's not what Leviticus tells us.
Speaker 1:What she realized was that her theory made sense to her. And it makes some sense to me, but ultimately she's forcing it onto the text. I mean, it would be great if Leviticus said, here's the rules and here's why I want you to follow them, but it doesn't. And so at some level, any reasoning that we do is always going to be us taking our modern perspectives and our modern categories and trying to force them back onto an ancient culture. We just can't think about the world like they did.
Speaker 1:And so this is where I would want to turn to some of the rabbinical literature when it comes to Leviticus. Because interestingly, the rabbis did not always feel the same pressure to make sense of Leviticus the way we do. In fact, one of the things that we struggle with is to say, well, why did God choose these rules? What's the rationale? But in the Talmud, the Jewish commentary on the Torah, many of the rabbis would just simply say, well, who cares about that?
Speaker 1:The point isn't to know why God said this. The point is to know that God said this. So there's no reason to avoid bacon. There's no reason to hate shellfish. Perhaps God just simply wanted his people to be different and these are the rules he gave them.
Speaker 1:Now that's tough for us, but for the rabbis, a lot of them, that was enough. Now I happen to believe that it's probably some combination of several of these different ideas that play in these rules. The specifics seem to be primarily cultural, but the theology behind it, the thinking behind it seems to be driven by this idea of separation. And as simplistic as that might sound, that's actually the only reason that the text of Leviticus gives us. At chapter 18, which introduces the next purity section reads this, the Lord said to Moses, speak to the Israelites and say to them, I am the Lord your God.
Speaker 1:You must not do as they do in Egypt where you used to live. And you must not do as they do in the land of Canaan where you are about to live. Do not follow their practices. Follow mine. So we are all priests now, and we all have access directly to God.
Speaker 1:We can all come and eat at the table with him, and we can have bacon there if we want to. But if the real theological underlying point of the Levitical code was this distinction, this signal of difference, this marked cue that said, these people belong to me. Then the specifics might change, but the simplicity of that concept is no less operative today than it was in the ancient world. And what does Jesus say the marker is now? John thirteen thirty five, Jesus says that by this everyone will know that you are mine.
Speaker 1:If you love one another. And so regardless of how you read these passages or what you think the rationale behind them was, if you really want to honor the story of Leviticus in the light of Jesus, then forget the shellfish and find someone who is hurting in your world. Because all of this dietary code, as strange as it seems, this was about God pulling out from their surroundings a people for himself. And the fact that you are here, whether you are bought in and sold out for God or whether you are still exploring and contemplating and wondering about the divine in your life, The fact that you are looking for God means that God is looking for you. And the way that you signal he has found you, The way you say, I am different because I've had this encounter with grace.
Speaker 1:This is not about what you eat anymore. It is about how you love in the light of that story. So here's where this hits the ground. We might not have an issue with bacon today, but we have all kinds of crazy diets that would seem just as bizarre to an ancient Israelite. Gluten free, low carb, keto, vegan.
Speaker 1:You know what the hardest part about being a vegan pastor with an adopted son is? Figuring out which one to awkwardly force into a conversation first. But if people are surprised by my diet before they are blown away by the way that I love them, then I need to forget about the former and start to work on the latter. Because the point of the Levitical purity code was to signal a people that were set apart for Yahweh. And once upon a time that looked like ritualized religion and rule following.
Speaker 1:But today, Jesus tells us what that looks like. It's counter cultural boundary crossing surprising love that looks like Christ. And shocks the world into noticing just how near God has come to them. That is how you are set apart. May you come to know today that you are a royal priest, set apart from the moment of your creation to experience God profoundly, that you are unique and strange among your peers.
Speaker 1:And that because of this, you have been prepared to love in ways that will surprise and confound and point to something beautiful. May the perfect love of God be made complete in you. And with the world around you notice. Let's pray. God, help us engage these rituals, these texts, these practices that seem very bizarre and very distant from us.
Speaker 1:But to understand that somehow, even in this ancient world, you were planting the seeds that would blossom into the story of love and grace and your son in the world. God help us recognize that everything we see in the priests of the Levitical code is now present in our access to you. That we can hear you, we can meet with you, we can come and eat with you without anyone in between us. That we are separate and set apart. That we are distinct and different in this world, but now it has nothing to do with our diet.
Speaker 1:Has nothing to do with the rituals we engage in, and yet it has everything to do with the ways that we engage those around us. God, would you be present by your spirit so that your divine love would flow down to us and into us and then out through us to those around us. May we be different and unique. And when people look at our lives, would they notice not our diets and the things that we eat, but the ways that we love in surprising fashion. In the strong name of the risen Christ, we pray.
Speaker 1:Amen.