Weekly Sermons

 

If you follow my decrees and are careful to obey my commands, I will send you rain in its season, and the ground will yield its crops and the trees their fruit.  Your threshing will continue until grape harvest and the grape harvest will continue until planting, and you will eat all the food you want and live in safety in your land.  I will grant peace in the land, and you will lie down and no one will make you afraid. I will remove wild beasts from the land, and the sword will not pass through your country.       Leviticus 26:3-6

 

Therefore, with minds that are alert and fully sober, set your hope on the grace to be brought to you when Jesus Christ is revealed at his coming.  As obedient children, do not conform to the evil desires you had when you lived in ignorance.  But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; for it is written: “Be holy, because I am holy.”         I Peter 1:13-16

 

 

In mid-1984, Pam and I were accepted to go to a remote part of southern Sudan to serve in a project aiding thousands of refugees from Uganda.  Neither of us had ever even traveled east of the Mississippi River, much less out of the US.  We had very little idea of what we were in for, but we had a clear sense of God’s leading, and we trusted the agency that was sending us.  Soon after we signed on, we started receiving packets of information about the agency’s expectations and the medical, legal, financial, and practical preparations we should make before leaving to live abroad for three years.  They sent us information about the location where we’d be living – its climate and topography, its history, its ongoing rebel war, its people, and their languages and culture. We received descriptions of the kinds of food we could expect to find, and cautions about the scarcity of medical care available there.  One packet detailed the several vaccination/inoculation injections we would have to get before leaving the US, and where to get them.  I’ll probably never forget the day we drove 30 miles into Boise to get the first round of those shots at the health department.  Figuring it couldn’t be that bad, I told the nurse to place one in each shoulder (yellow fever and cholera, I think).  By the time we got back to Pam’s parents’ home, I could barely raise my arms high enough to grip the car’s steering wheel.  I had a lot to learn.

 

Another packet contained luggage allowance information for international travel, and advice about items we definitely should and should not pack.  Back then, we both were allowed to check two suitcases which weighed 70 lbs. each.  That sounds like a lot until you throw in books you want to read, clothing you hope will last, and other items you’d really like to use during the next three years in a place with almost no manufactured goods and no electricity, TV, telephones, and other modern conveniences we take for granted.  We tried to pack wisely, but it was overwhelming trying to imagine what we might need in a new place so different from Idaho and Kansas.  I’m sure there were days when we wondered whether we’d ever get through the many checklists of preparation for living in Africa, and whether the adventure would be worth all the trouble.  After we got there, we quickly learned to appreciate those information packets as “love letters” from people who wanted us to survive and thrive there.

 

I think of that overwhelmed feeling when I read the Book of Leviticus and its intricate instructions to Moses and the Israelites for surviving their trek across the arid, rugged Sinai Peninsula to the Promised Land of Canaan. For people not planning a 300-mile hike through a dangerous desert with a million or two companions, it can be boring reading.  Before we got to Sudan, Pam and I read books and National Geographics, watched videos, and studied maps of the area where we’d live – and despite confidence God was leading us, still we wondered if we knew what we were doing.  In contrast, the Hebrews had only ever known the Nile River delta in Egypt.  There were no books or photos or videos to study — they knew nothing of Sinai or Palestine except the stories passed down from generation to generation for 400 years.  They had witnessed the miracles God had done through Moses to get them as far as Sinai, but still they sometimes thought they’d be better off with familiar things back in Egypt.  They needed an “owner’s manual” for this caravan that was to transport them to the land of milk and honey.  During the year they spent at the base of Mt. Sinai, the Lord gave that manual to Moses and his tribe, the Levites.
 
Leviticus, “Of the Levites”   Brothers Moses and Aaron were Levites, the descendants of Levi, one of the twelve sons of Jacob.  According to various resources, Levi’s descendants were chosen to be Israel’s religious leaders because of the Levites’ “zeal for defending God’s honor,” as seen in the golden calf incident (Ex. 32:26).  When the mobile tabernacle was planned, God told Moses to bring his brother Aaron and his sons to serve as priests (Exodus 26-28), with Aaron as the High Priest.  They would care for all the direct interactions with God, while the many other Levites would support them by caring for the tabernacle, its operations, and daily interactions with the Hebrew people.  It was their duty to teach, implement, and enforce God’s instructions as a way of “defending God’s honor” among the Israelites.  That meant exercising great care in their actions and words to represent Yahweh both as holy, just, pure, and without flaw, and as compassionate, loving, and forgiving.
 
A Matter of Perspective      To us looking back 35 centuries to the events of the Exodus, the Book of Leviticus reads mostly like a dry, repetitive statute book covering a lot of picky rules, details, and warnings we’ll never need to know, and perhaps others we assume we already know.  To the recently-freed Israelites who wanted safely to reach the Promised Land, however, Leviticus could and should have been seen as a “love letter from God” — that “operator’s manual” for their caravan.  First and foremost, they had lived 400 years surrounded by Egyptian polytheism and knew less and less of the one God of Creation, of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Also, any knowledge they had of the causes and cures of infectious disease was primarily folklore.  They were in new territory and likely did not know which plants and creatures were edible and which ones would sicken or kill them.  They had lived only under harsh Egyptian laws.  Now they had to decide how to live together in a community of laws which reflected the holiness of God and protected oneself and one’s neighbor.  In his love, God spelled out a better way.

 

A Love Letter of Majesty and Mercy      The first ten chapters of Leviticus give detailed instructions for several different types of animal and grain sacrifices the Hebrews were to make to God.  Some of them were to be made as regular, consistent offerings of worship and thankfulness in recognition of the Lord’s sovereignty, majesty, and goodness.  Those involving sacrificial animals usually were to be made as confession of guilt for sin and in seeking forgiveness.  In Leviticus’ descriptions of those ceremonies, the sinners placed their hands on the head of the animal as it was sacrificed.  That symbolized the person’s acceptance that it was him or her who should die for the sin being punished – but God in mercy has accepted the death of the animal in his/her place and has granted forgiveness.  To us looking back, that sacrificial system looks barbaric.  According to historians, however, it was a giant step towards civility in a region where lawbreakers were routinely executed with no chance of redemption.  It tells us that God longed to forgive, not to destroy.  It was God’s love letter moving his people towards the holy witness he desired, just at the snail’s pace with which civilizations change.

 

A Love Letter of Protection     The next several chapters of Leviticus give details of the plants and animals in the desert which could be safely eaten, and of those which could not be.  There also are instructions for safely handling and preserving food, and warnings against unsafe practices with tools and utensils.  Long before medical tools and medicines were available, several chapters of Leviticus offer instruction for avoiding and combatting all sorts of infections and other medical problems, usually through careful attention to cleanliness.  Leviticus 17:11 spells out God’s instruction for not eating animals’ blood “because the life of the creature is in its blood” — which for me is an encouragement towards reverence for life itself as a gift from God, especially in a world that so easily violates that priority.  Leviticus 18 goes into considerable detail warning against sexual practices which God knew would cause harm to his people’s bodies, minds, emotions, families, and communities.  The Lord wanted his people to arrive in Canaan healthy and safe, and ready to tell the Canaanites of their loving God who got them there.

 

A Love Letter of Provision      Leviticus 19 seems to be a recounting of the Ten Commandments, followed by a miscellaneous collection of instructions regarding God’s provision of their needs during their journey, then after they reached Canaan.  There is guidance for growing fruit trees that will produce abundantly, about business practices which will serve the common good, and about treating aliens with compassion and dignity.   It is in 19:18 that the people are told to “love your neighbor as yourself,” the second of the two greatest commandments Jesus cited to a teacher of the Law.  God was not intent on controlling his people like they were robots.  He was lovingly telling them the best way to live in order to have their daily needs — for food, social justice, fellowship, and accompaniment — divinely met.  Leviticus 26:3-6 beautifully summarizes and affirms God’s loving promises for both protection and provision, if only we will follow his decrees and obey his instructions.

 

Be Holy, as the Lord your God is holy.     That phrase occurs at least six times in Leviticus and is considered the central theme of the book.  All of Leviticus’ other various instructions and “laws” should be considered linked to and part of the fulfillment of that command.  Leviticus 8:23,24 tells of Moses’ dedication of Aaron as High Priest by slaughtering a ram, then smearing its blood on Aaron’s right ear, right thumb, and the big toe of his right foot.  That ritual expressed Aaron’s complete dedication of his entire being to the service of God.  When I thought about that, it seemed God was indicating that we must dedicate all our senses (ear), everything we do (hand), and everywhere we go (foot) to his purposes.  Knowing that some people get nervous being told they must be holy, I suggest a slight paraphrase, that “we are called to hear and understand the Lord wholly, and to obey him wholly.”  Either way you say it, we are called to be like Jesus.  And it’s a love letter, not a law book.  Let’s be his Friends.

 

 

 

 Queries for Reflection and Worship-Sharing

1)  When was a time you sense you were protected in some way by the Lord, but only realized it later?

2)  How do you understand God’s frequent instruction to “be holy, as he is holy”?  What does that require of us?

3)  What is your initial reaction when reading Leviticus?  Why might it still be important and meaningful to us today?

4)  Why is being wholly committed to the Lord essential to being holy, as God is holy?