Leviticus 27

Leviticus was a bit of a right hook and two quick jabs: painful and sure to give you a headache. Yet there were some insights I never expected to find amoung all the judgement-death-don't-sleep-with-a-relative-have-a-good-harvest stuff. A bit like a roundhouse punch, I suppose. And who would have thought the last of these was in the final chapter.

How much should an employee of a church get paid? Do we expect them to scrape together for meals or must they mingle with the rich and famous? Perhaps the Israelites were asking the same questions in Leviticus 27 when they were given clear instructions on how much 'temple employees' should be paid. Lucky for them, inflation remained stable in their world for at least 200 years at a time, so God could set the price and then get back to more important things. Perhaps that's the problem we see today - what you get paid is more important than the work that you do. I'm extrapolating things here I know, but there seems to be a some serious flashiness in the modern church that makes me (cynically, I'm afraid), wonder why the individuals want to be in those positions. At least the people of Leviticus knew up front what the deal was. Or maybe I'm just one goat short of a burnt offering.......

You can't own your paycheck. Leviticus 25.

This year of Jubilee thing has bothered me for a while as I've heard various church people throw it in to conversations but I've only managed to nod intelligently like I'm supposed to know all about it. It sounded odd to me that after 49 years you had to start giving the things you owned back to their original owners, unless of course you can give back spouses and children? Just kidding....

Then I read Leviticus 25 (yes I'm still trudging through) and it seems to me it's not possessions so much as income that you can't own. A house in a city is pretty much yours, but a field is not - you are buying and selling what that field produces. Crops = Income. Then I thought about money and realised "Hey, you can never own it can you?". You have no control over the value of your money and you can be rich one day and poor the next no matter how hard you try. Then I went further and thought "this whole not worrying about money/income/food/thing is a recurring theme in the bible". Huh! Then I kept having epiphanies about money, greed, charity, living by principles and various deep things until I had to lunge for the television remote and find the anti-epiphany channel called "Supersport" to avoid getting ephinanynitus.

If you want to live a life of value, income will be a poor measure.

Let go of the goat! Leviticus 16

Talk about wading though a sea of do's and don'ts. I'm glad I'm not living as an Israelite during this era as I would know what day to scratch my posterior without getting into deep trouble because I scratched with two strokes instead of three. You put your left foot in....

One little take away for me is a ritual performed on the day of atonement (v20 -22). Everyone gets to lay hands on a goat and transfer all the stuff they did wrong to the goat. The goat then gets led to the wilderness and is given the boot. Don't call the SPCA yet, I'm not in the market for goats: What struck me is the act of letting go. Once your bad stuff is on the goat, you let it go and it doesn't come back. I spend far too much time beating myself up about things I do wrong, and whilst I know I need to improve, I think I would do well to just let it go every now and then.

Guilty before proven guilty. Leviticus 1 - 5.

I hate rules. They seem to kill the question "why", a word of which I am very fond (don't ask me why.......*ahem*........). So it was difficult to start Leviticus without thinking it's anything more than a trudge through tons of boring "Simon says" instructions. But to my surprise I have got something out already - the introduction by Eugene Peterson! You'd have to read it yourself, but “A detailed and meticulous preparation for living “holy” in a culture that hasn’t the faintest idea what “holy” is.” seems like a great start to understanding the context of this book.

And another thing - we tend to look at right and wrong as external things that we're simply measured against, but even in this book of rules it seems to me that intent is more important. If you don't realise you're breaking one of the commandments, you're not guilty even though you are (Chapter 5; 17-19). Or have I misunderstood?

Moses builds the temple: The last chapters of Exodus.

One short observation on the end of Exodus: The nature of the offerings the Israelites gave in order to build the temple. Firstly, the were voluntary (Exodus 35: 5 - 9) and secondly they were told to stop giving when there was enough to finish the task (Exodus 36: 6 - 7). I had a quiet chuckle wondering when I had last heard of a church that asked people to stop giving!

Next stop: Leviticus. Oh boy.

Bells, Smells and lots of blood: Altars. Exodus 25 - 31.

Altar = From Latin word for 'high', an elevated place where people perform religious ceremonies. I checked it out as God seems to take it pretty seriously in the laws he hands out to Moses and the crew. Amongst all these verses of seemingly weird rituals (I was going to comment on each one but decided to punch myself in the head instead), what struck me the most was the holiness of the altar. In some cases the altar remains holy for 7 days and whoever touches it is instantly made holy too.

So what is holy, and where is our altar? It got me thinking about what we desire most (what we "hold high"), as that's probably our altar. If you get to touch that altar, what do you become?

The commandements they forgot to tell you about. Exodus 19 - 24.

Considered a moral code for Christianity, an ideological base for much of the Jewish law and mirrored in verses from the Qur'an, these 10 commandments have received a lot of attention over the years. At least 5 movies have been made about them, which is just one less than movies made about ancient Mayan paw-paw recipes, so even Hollywood thinks they're important.

But what about the other commandments? Besides the laws governing various ceremonies, Exodus lists a whole whack of other commandments that Rabbinical Jews consider as important as the first 10. Ever read them? I did for the first time yesterday, and picked out some whoppers:

• If someone curses their father or mother, the penalty is death (21 v17). Oops....
• If you hit someone with a rock, and the injured person manages to hobble around for a while, you get to avoid the death penalty (21 v18-19). So hit softly with rocks, OK?
• One ox = five cattle, and one lamb = four sheep. Except when they're worth two (22 v1-5). No wonder I failed at maths.
• If you lend money to poor people, do not gouge them with interest (22 v25). Same goes for collateral - give it back before you're paid (22 v26-27). Money lenders must have missed this verse
• Help your enemies out. If you find their stuff - take it back to them (23 v4-5). So if George had found those WMDs, I guess he would have given them back. Lucky he didn't find anything then.
• Don't boil a kid in it's mother's milk (23 v19). I know, it's a goat, but sheez!

I get that these can't be taken out of historical and cultural context, so I know that I am being facetious and that they are intended to build a fabric for justice and righteousness. But I think I prefer the way Jesus put things: Make sure you get things in order and don't mess up your priorities, and then love others like you love yourself (Matthew 22, v37-40). You can build a life on that.