You have to have a strong stomach, or perhaps the mind of Mel Gibson, to read Leviticus without a wincing shudder. Detailed instructions on how to carve up dead animals, with blood flowing all over stone altars, blood cast into the fire, blood on the hands of priests and worshippers: it's ghastly - but do we simply dismiss blood sacrifice as primitive, embarrassingly prehistoric and no longer valid? Superficially, the God who asks for shed blood appears to be a petty autocrat whose game is guilt. But when we read deeply, we discover three essentials in the life of faith.
1. Old Testament prayers never say "thanks," a mere word being too cheap. If your flock of sheep prospered, you expressed gratitude by killing and burning the most stalwart male (not the runt), the one that if you're smart you know you need for next year's breeding. Yet if you trust God, this is the sheep that you give up - proving you know the sheep and your future belong to God in the first place. My paycheck, my stuff, my time: maybe I miss the point if I forever think it's all "mine" instead of letting some blood be shed and give it back to God, who gave it in the first place. If you sense a distance between yourself and God, most likely the problem is that you are hanging on to your stuff, your lifestyle, your arms loaded down with what you prefer to keep for yourself, and you will never get close to God until you learn the beauty of renunciation and make genuine sacrifices.
2. And who gets to eat the meat? The poor, the unlucky whose flock got devoured by wolves. If all that is good belongs to God, it's not mine to keep, but a decent share of it belongs to those who have nothing. Worshippers were not permitted to interrogate those who had no sheep so they could be blamed and not helped. The needy came and ate, for it all belongs to God who unfailingly shows mercy.
3. Ancient Israelites believed the healing power of God was hidden in the blood of livestock. When our relationships are broken, no matter how hard we try, we can never fully repair the damage. Some residue of guilt lingers. My soul, our marriage, a fractured community - the mythical bleeding never quite stops. The Old Testament understood, and believed that only God's power, God's healing energy, released by the sacrifice of something precious, could bridge that gap and finish the healing. We cannot fully solve our own problems; but there is power in the blood.
At Passover, the day Jesus died, perhaps as many as half a million lambs were slaughtered in a veritable bloodbath. Jesus' followers, struck dumb with horror and grief over his crucifixion, made sense of it in the light of their age-old practice of blood sacrifice, understanding the value of giving up what is most precious, caring for the needy, letting the healing, the forgiveness begin - but the death of Jesus will be another email on another day...
James
james@mpumc.org
The complete email series on Bible Questions can be found at
http://www.mpumc.org/mpumc/dr__howell_s_ebible_questions_series
eBibleQuestions22 - Who were the Prophets?
eBibleQuestions23 - Did Israel believe in life after death?
eBibleQuestions24 - What was going on between the Testaments?
