An Invitation into God's Presence
The hard truths Leviticus still invites us to
Our weekend at St. Jacob’s starts on Friday night, when we light our Sabbath candle and remember that Christ first loved us and brought light to our lives. We then say a particular phrase that has come to define much of my faith, “God loves us because of who we are, not because of what we do or don’t do.”
We are loved. Before we can do anything, before we take our first gasp for air, before we even know who God is, He loves us. This come first. He doesn’t alter His love for us because of what we do, or fail to do. His love is constant and eternal.
Our actions and behaviors are never about changing God’s mind about us — His mind is made up. Our behavior is how we return that love, how we demonstrate it back to God and to each other. Our actions are meant to keep changing our minds, which are a mire of angsty gorey rebellion and distrust.
This last weekend we started the book of Leviticus. It’s sometimes the book that hangs people up on their journey as they read through the Bible. We just finished some great narrative of Genesis and the first part of Exodus but now…. it’s easy to get bogged down in the details of the tabernacle build (second half of Exodus) and then this “weird” book full of instructions for sacrifices.
One of the commentaries mentioned that it would be akin to finding a book of liturgical rites from the Catholic Church if you’d stumbled out of the woods and never been to such a service. The book of instructions for how to perform those rites would most likely seem dull and overly detailed — you wouldn’t have the feelings or experiences associated with such a worship. And so it is to read Leviticus.
It’s a bare bones account of what worship in this ancient time would look like. A lot of it involves killing animals and sprinkling their blood all over the alter. It’s foreign to us, to say the least. How does this all help people worship? How does it help people understand God more? We can often leave Leviticus feeling confused with the off-putting thought that what God really wants is more BBQ — “It is a pleasing aroma to the Lord” is mentioned about every fifth line.
Is that what God wants from us? More roasting meat? More blood? Egads!
History is a tricky thing, it’s hard to understand because we’re always looking at it through our own times, our own culture, our own understanding. We can’t get out from behind our glasses. So it’s tough to understand this book of worship rites and practices. And yet, here it is, still considered a seminal book in our most holy and set apart library of texts — obviously it’s been deemed important and valuable. Thousands of generations could be wrong, but it seems like we’d have recognized that by now.
As we started this book (we’re only three chapters in as of last week) I tried again to put myself in the shoes of a person bringing a sacrifice. It’s interesting that these sacrifices are voluntary. And when you bring your finest animal you don’t just hand it over to the priest, you yourself lay your hands on it and kill it — you feel the life go out of it. The priest assists with the butchering and cutting out the designated parts but you do the killing.
I think it’s crucially important to recognize that this book (or any book in the Bible) is not about figuring out how to get God to change His mind about us — but rather, how we might change our minds, hearts and bodies about Him. We are the ones that get off track, we are the ones that need to Trust Him and believe that He is trustworthy and truly loves us.
We must understand what our rebellion from the source of life does — it kills. What God told Adam and Eve in the garden, “When you choose this other way, you will die” is actually true. We’re great at finding “loop-holes” of justifying why and how we’re not “ACTUALLY” wrong, but eventually we find ourselves in bad shape, on a path we never meant to take, on the way to death.
We no longer sacrifice animals, we no longer feel the death leave almost anything. We’ve insulated ourselves from death very well in our age. It might be part of the problem for us.
Christians will often say, “Leviticus is part of the old way, we don’t need that anymore because we have Jesus on the cross — he’s the ultimate sacrafice.” I think we should be very careful with how we over simplify without really thinking about what we say or mean. Yes, Jesus is the ultimate sacrifice but he doesn’t change God’s mind, he’s aiming to change our minds for us to truly see what rebellion against God does — it leads to death.
As we come to the feet of Christ, and gaze upon Him on the cross, we are reminded of this kingdom of death. He did nothing wrong, and yet here He is, still suffering, because of this awful Kingdom we’re a part of. And His heart breaks for us, knowing we would murder him, he still comes to us.
God’s love and new life are always near to us, we always have access to them, but more often than not we ignore it and live in our own dreary “kingdoms”. They’re dilapidated and messy, poorly lit with a lot of half-dead landscaping. But we’re familiar with life here, it feels “good enough”. At the very least, “I’m in charge”! Better to be king/queen of a dump than just some minion in a better place — we errantly believe. We’d have to risk a lot of familiarity to get to God’s kingdom, which is unknown to us — even though it’s close enough to reach out and touch. Christ has paved the way, He has reminded us that there is access to a God who always loved us, we only must leave our wreck and follow.
Leviticus too reminds us that there is another way — for its message is the same as Christ’s. God is inviting us to enter His kingdom, but He also reminds us that we must take seriously the problem of our rebellion. We must be cautious, for God’s not “safe” but He IS good (as C.S. Lewis aptly describes Aslan). You don’t just go climbing over the fence of a electrical sub-station, because that level of power can easily kill you if you’re not careful. If you try to trespass into God’s kingdom casually, and without understanding the seriousness of the power there in, things will go poorly. You can’t get access to God’s kingdom without truly wanting to live there.
This isn’t because God doesn’t love us, but because we must actually accept His love for us and allow that to change our minds hearts and bodies. Love is not easy, it’s not soft and sweet and enabling — love requires us to strip down, to be seen, and to be known. It requires that we will leave behind our trash, and be made whole. It’s a terrifying process, and anyone who’s glimpsed it will agree.
Being loved is FAR from safe, but it is the only way.
Have you read the book of Leviticus lately? I’d love to hear your thoughts! And if you plan to read the Bible in whole this year don’t get bogged down! Keep going, it will all make more sense each time you travel through.
Some other thoughts for which I have no real answers but am mulling over: How might we enrich our confessions and forgiveness time so that it feels more substantial? // How do we practice loving people who aren’t interested in traveling to God’s kingdom? // How do we love people who don’t love us? // How do we lay down all our baggage and let ourselves be loved?
Bits & Bobs
Every year I’m sure I’ll be more ready for December (I mean it shows up every year, you’d think we’d have a handle on it by now!). There is just so much, and I’m very much more is more is more better! I love it all, but it’s a lot — from being a parent, to creating every special moment, to trying to come up with all the best things to preach and say and remind everyone of during this full and busy season as a pastor. But every year I collapse into the New Year exhausted and drained. This year I had high hopes for navigating it all with aplomb, but some stuff derailed and weighed on me and here we are, just as tired and worn out as ever.
But I DID make it. Nothing gets me wanting to get back to boring old routine quite like December. Lent and Easter loom far away, in a year where things get to be later rather than earlier (here’s looking at you March 31 Easter!). Soon we’ll pack up the fripp and froth that we’ve covered the house in (it was wonderful and much needed while it lasted) but January has me longing for cold sparse minimalism again.
One year ago I wrote:
The Truth I MAY Be Ready to Hear
To ourselves we are just normal, so it’s sometimes hard to understand what’s true - isn’t this how everyone is, deep down?
Two years ago I wrote:
Do We Worship a Smiting God?
A friend recently asked me about forgiveness. “What does forgiveness look like and how are we supposed to do it?”