Well I have been absent from my contributions to this blog for a number of years. I got stuck in my watershed wanderings at Leviticus. Perhaps it was apprehension about running this stretch of river again that starts with Entrails and Animal Legs and finishes with dietary recommendations about road kill. It is time to get back on the water and refloat these rapids and see if there are new lines to run and insights to glean.
One reoccurring theme in Leviticus is doing things simply because God directed us to do them. Even when those tasks seem onerous or hard. In the case of Aaron and his sons the task seems somewhat crazy – to wash entrails and animal legs as part of the atonement process of the sacrifice. When I wrote that post I was pretty sure this was about us doing hard things, but as I am rereading it there is someone else who had to do the ultimate “hard thing” and He did it for us. Which would be harder to wash entrails and animal legs or allow yourself to be placed on a cross and crucified?
Leviticus contains one of my favorite posts called “Stripped Down to the Soul“. This post delved into a decidedly New testament concept, the cleansing and redemptive power of water. It is interesting, and to be honest still a bit confusing, how two such different ways of using water can coexist side by side. The cleaning of bloody animal parts and the redemptive cleansing of souls.
Leviticus 8:1-10 contains a description of what was essentially a baptism of Aaron and his sons performed by Moses. The atonement here in the old testament is unlike the atonement that modern God followers expect in that this atonement was part of a sacrificial culture heavily rooted in performing rituals. The atonement God promises the faithful through the sacrifice and baptism of Jesus is a “one and done” atonement. The atonements and sacrifices of the old testament were more like a daily bath.
There is a tension here between two things that are quite different but are true at the same time: 1) All our sins are forgiven once and for all when we allow Jesus to cleanse our souls; and 2) the process of cleaning up our lives of behaviors and habits is messy and may happen on a daily basis. Perhaps the reason these two truths must coexist it n tension is that if we focus too much on the daily struggle to be “good” we lose site of the fact that in the end God wins regardless of how well we navigated the acceptance of our atonement and “clean up our act”.
Leviticus then moves into several water related posts that delved into such topics as spreading and defiling molds. Molds are not typically a topic of Sunday school conversation, but maybe there would be value in discussing their metaphorical meaning a little more. The conclusion I came to while mired in the molds of Leviticus was that these are not a bad metaphor for ways that our faith communities can become contaminated and, well “moldy”. For mold problems in houses we typically disinfect and provide additional ventilation. This is probably not a bad approach when our faith communities become defiled by broken trust and the myriad of ways these communities can be broken to the point of needing to split and form another community.
The next several passage delved into how one might Clean House (Leviticus 14: 48-53), and how we might keep the “house” clean in a post called Why is Clean not always Clean? Efforts to clean house are sometimes thwarted by people with a negative attitude unable to see the possibilities and power of a “clean house”. These individuals have what I referred to as having Limburger Cheese on their Nose (Leviticus 15:1-23). The consequences of having a house full of soot is that we can get Soot on Our Souls (Leviticus 16:1-5) which is infinitely worse than a dysfunctional community.
Ultimately the solution to all the messy road kill, sacrifices, and mold of Leviticus is the being clothed by the Grace of God that was to come in the future through a young man from Bethlehem named Jesus. Well that was hard, but I am glad I eventually stuck with my Watershed Wandering through Leviticus and I can move on to more appealing reaches of the river.
Prayer: God it has been hard to revisit this book of the bible, just like it is hard to revisit some aspects of our lives to allow you to change them. Help us to offer up these hard parts for you to remake them in your image.
Walking on Water 