Leviticus 11 - The Regulations on Clean and Unclean

Chapters 11-15 deal with the regulations on clean and unclean, but we are going to take them chapter by chapter because they each discuss different types of defilement and various states of being clean and unclean. The material that describes that which is clean and that which is unclean can be extremely problematic for modern day life.

Chapter 11 deals with food. Right off the bat we might have a desire to push back against the law all the while asking the question, "How can God prohibit certain foods, especially foods that we eat with some regularity?" Going back to what we have learned from chapters 1-10, God called the people to live lives that reflect their creator, lives that are holy. In order to remain holy, they must be "clean" at all times. What we know, though, is that being clean at all times in nearly impossible. God provides a remedy for this by instituting the Day of Atonement. This special day is the time when sacrifices are made for the express purpose of washing away all the moments in the life of the individual where they were unclean.

Do any of you remember the poster hanging in your elementary school cafeteria that read, "You are what you eat!"? That is a good moniker for chapter 11; you are what you eat. We have certainly seen in modern times that food plays an important role in our health. In modern society, we have the benefit of refrigeration, grocery stores, and a huge variety of produce, dairy, grains, and meat to choose from. At the time when Moses received the law, they were living in the desert with zero refrigeration, zero grocery stores, and only the animals and grains that they managed to carry with them, or the food that God provided. Doctors will now tell you that what we eat effects every system in our bodies and can heal or hurt us. Most of us no longer equate food with holiness, but perhaps we should.

It is important to note that cleanliness and holiness, while intimately linked with one another, are not the same thing. You cannot have one without the other--one must be clean in order to be holy. And it must be stated up front that holiness is an inside job; it is about our attitude and outlook upon life and begins with our thinking which ultimately affects our behavior. Holiness cannot be picked up off the ground and worn like an old coat. Holiness is resident in us and calls us to be aligned with God's purpose for all humanity.

This is all well and good, but there is a huge issue with the Leviticus text that leaves me wanting. While the text is clear about what I should not eat in order to maintain this holiness, it does not give me any kind of rationale as to why certain foods are unclean or why they will defile my body. In modern times, scholars have speculated on all kinds of reasons for the prohibitions in Leviticus. Among the most popular, understanding the hygienic requirements for foods. We now know that certain foods contain tapeworms or bacteria that when consumed can cause all kinds of health issues, including death. We also know that the lack of refrigeration made certain items difficult to cure and eat before they could spoil.

Another aspect of God's relationship with the people of Israel is one of separation. God calls the people of Israel his own. He separates the Israelite people from all others in the region and proscribes specific dietary restrictions, as well as many other behaviors, that are designed to set the people apart from those living around them. From this perspective, we see the God of the Israelites as being unique to the Israelite people.

In the ancient world, every distinct group of people developed their own deity worthy of their worship and devotion. Each group of people called their gods by distinct names and imbued their gods with certain attributes. The people of Israel were no different. The God that they called YHWH or Elohim was unique to the Israelite people. Therefore, in order to maintain this separateness, they had to adhere to laws, especially regarding food, that distinguished them from all other people in the region. Food is often one of the few things that can bring people together. In this case, food was used to create a distinctiveness among this people, set apart from all others.

When Jesus is born into the Jewish world, he begins to reframe the law into a more modern context that is applicable to all people. However, he is still teaching and preaching to his own. It is through the teachings of Jesus and Paul, especially, that we make the leap from God being only for the Israelite people to being a God that is universal in nature.

We may never know God's full reasoning for restricting certain foods from the diets of the Israelite people, but we can at least be aware of the foods that were deemed unclean and unholy, with our continued goal to be holy as God is holy.

Leviticus 8-10

As we continue our deep-dive into the Book of Leviticus, we learn more about the people of Israel, the God they worshiped, and maybe even the underpinnings of why we still engage in certain rites and rituals within our churches.

Beginning in Chapter 8, we observe the next leg of our journey through the Law. First, God laid out all the kinds of sacrifices that needed to be made and for what occasions. Next, God taught Aaron and his sons the proper way to make all the necessary sacrifices. And now, Aaron and his sons are going to be ordained to the ministry to which God has called them.

God relays specific instructions to Moses, who then conducts the ordination process, by first calling the entire congregation to stand at the entrance to the tent of meetings. There were several items necessary for the ordination, which they took with them to the tent: vestments, anointing oil, the bull for purification offering, two rams, and a basket of unleavened bread. Devoting these specific items indicates that there is a method or procedure for ordaining priests. This isn't a ritual to be taken lightly. It must be witnessed by the whole congregation and must be carried out per God's instructions.

First, Moses washed Aaron and his sons with water. This act of cleansing is present in many religious traditions and signifies the desire to present oneself before God as holy and pure. As representatives of God and servants of the tent, Aaron and his sons had special garments that they wore. These garments were much more elaborate than what we wear today and included a tunic, a robe, an Ephod (an ornate, sleeveless outer garment made of fine, twisted linen decorated with gold, blue, purple, and scarlet material), shoulder pieces and a belt made of the same material, a breastplate (also made of the same material and adorned with 12 precious stones to represent the 12 Tribes of Israel), and pockets in the breastplate that held Urim [lights] and Thummim [perfections] (presumed to be precious stones that aided in receiving divine instruction from God, especially when inside the Holy of Holies where the Ark of the Covenant resided). Some scholars have suggested that these two substances were crucial in protecting the priests inside the Holy of Holies, believing that the Ark of the Covenant was made from radioactive material.

Once Aaron and his sons were fully clothed in their vestments, they made several sacrifices beginning with the bull of purification. This act was to purify the space, blood from the bull was placed on the altar and at the base of the altar with the remainder of the bull being burned outside the camp. With each act of sacrifice, they were performing a part of the ritual as prescribed by God. The whole process feels long and drawn out, but reveals the importance of the occasion and the seriousness of being ordained. As the congregation witnesses the rites and rituals of this ordination, they are joining with God to covenant with their spiritual leaders. They are acknowledging their spiritual leaders and their authority over them to provide leadership among the people. The sacredness of this moment is palpable and signifies a unity of the people by their God to 'be holy as God is holy.'

Once ordained, their is an eight day waiting period at which time the ordained is inaugurated to their position. The process of inauguration was as extensive as that of the ordination. This was the moment in which Aaron would officially perform, for the first time, the sacrifices of the community. After all had been completed, the text tells us that, "Fire came out from the Lord and consumed the burnt offering and the fat on the altar, and when all the people saw it, they shouted and feel on their faces."

There is a recognition by the congregation of how important the rites and rituals were, and how they were designed to connect the people to God. The people saw it, they felt it, they experienced the presence of God in a way that was unmistakable.

The difficult part in reading the institution of the law is when we realize that God was visible, in the form of fire, to the people of Israel, but does not remain so throughout their history. The Ark of the Covenant is lost in future generations, and God's presence is no longer centered in the tent of meeting, or the Tabernacle. In fact, God doesn't reside in any man-made object or structure. Maybe God never did.

What, then, was the purpose of the existence of the Ark, the construction of the tent, and the ordination of Aaron and his sons? The text isn't explicit here. We have to make a few assumptions, which could be entirely wrong. However, based on what was written about the Israelite people and their desire to be separate and apart from those who occupied the land around them, the best way to establish your identity, especially at that time in history, was through your religious devotion and the claiming of sovereignty of your God.

The rituals, practices, and rites instituted by God were designed with one purpose in mind, to show the people how to be holy, fully consecrated to God. It is likely that the Israelite people, like most of us need a demonstration of power in order to believe in the unbelievable. God, or at least the God of the Israelites, revealed something of God's self to the people so that they would grasp the importance of being human and being chosen. This is also the moment God reveals his sovereignty over the people.

There is this single moment of grave disappointment, however, and it comes in Chapter 10 when Aaron's sons Nadab and Abihu decide to operate outside of God's instructions; they were killed. It is hard to imagine God taking the life of a minister for not performing a particular duty correctly. This seems entirely out of character for God. But in the beginning, God had a lot to prove. The way we conduct religious ceremonies has also changed dramatically. What can we learn from our past that informs our present?

As we continue in the Book of Leviticus, we'll discover more about the nature of God at this time in history, and even more so, the nature of the people and the land in which they flourished.

Leviticus 6:7-7:38

This section of material is so fascinating to me. So often we have no context for the priesthood, nothing concrete enough to say, "This is how folks become ministers of God." But here we have a unique glimpse into the sons of Aaron (Moses' brother) and how they become the priestly line that will be in charge of the tabernacle.

If you remember from last week we talked about all the different types of sacrifices and what they were used for, now we get to the place where we have to have someone to administer the sacrifices, someone to be in charge of all the activities that occur in the tabernacle. There were daily sacrifices going on--perhaps far more than we can imagine. The writers of Leviticus outline how these sacrifices were to be carried out by the priest and that their pay, so to speak, was a portion of the sacrifice. This might seem odd, but it is how the system was established in the beginning. A ram would be sacrificed and the offal and fat would be used to create smoke on the altar, the meat would be cooked and partly consumed by the priest, and unleavened as well as leavened bread would be consumed. There was also a ton of oil that was used in all of these activities.

With this kind of system, it raises many questions for me?

1. Slaughtering that many animals would have produced an enormous amount of blood. Where did all the blood go?

• The text tells us that they scattered blood on the ground around the altar, put some of the blood on the tips of horns of the animal, and more blood was thrown onto the curtain that hung between the Altar in the Inner Chamber and the Holy of Holies where the Ark of the Covenant was stored. But this doesn't account for all the blood. It would have smelled like a slaughter house inside the tabernacle.

2. And then there are the bones, which would have piled up rather quickly. Where did they put all the bones? The truth is, we just don't know. The text isn't explicit enough to give us those kinds of details.

3. There is also the issue of understanding all the rules regarding the slaughtering of an animal and the technical aspects of doing it correctly. We have the benefit of reading the law in print form, but they were taught on the job without an employee handbook. How were they able to accomplish this? I know I would have messed up on multiple occasions. And since they were making these sacrifices on behalf of the people who had violated the law, their sacrifice could could be nullified if not done properly, which means that the individual in need of forgiveness or redemption was out of luck if they happened to get forgetful Frank who couldn't get the procedure right.

4. There were also special garments that they were supposed to wear while performing the duties of priest. I cannot imagine what these garments smelled like after a period of time. How many changes of clothes did they have? Where was the water source that allowed them to scrub their clothes clean? How did they not risk contaminating their water source with all the blood spilled from these animals?

There are far more unanswered questions than there are answered questions. However, what we do know is that this system was put in place by God to place boundaries around his people. He wanted them to operate under certain guidelines that clearly separated them from all other people that lived in the region. This tracks with the notion of holiness and how God called us to set ourselves apart in order to maintain our holiness. We often define holiness as the act of being set apart for God.

Another way to look at holiness, though, is transparency. God is revealing to the people a side of himself that they can only see through becoming a sacrificial people. I used to think about how barbaric is to slaughter all those animals, but in the early days of forming the Israelite people, God needed them to understand what it meant to sacrifice for their faith. It wasn't just about the forgiveness of sins, but it was also about their ability to live in community with one another, something they struggled to do since the beginning. They always found ways to violate covenant and community through all manner of selfish and self-centered behavior. Creating a sacrificial system pulled their focus toward what they must let go of and give up in order to follow God.

In today's society, we are reluctant to give up anything for God. It is rare that we actually sacrifice anything of value to claim the faith by which we live. Over the years, we have altered our perceptions of the law and its full meaning, but we cannot deny that there is something powerful about physically making an effort to right the wrongs we have done to others and to God. If we were more conscious of our violations, and more sickened by what it took to right the wrong, we might actually be willing to change our ways and treat each other with the dignity, respect, and holiness God is calling us to live by.