So you’ve come to Leviticus in your yearly reading of Scripture. You’re tempted to skip it & go straight to Psalms. You can’t get into washing kidneys & measuring grain for offerings. I get it. But don’t stop. The Day of Atonement is here. “Love your neighbor” is here.
“Be holy as I am holy” is here. The Year of Jubilee is here. The right ordering of worship we call “liturgy” is here. The roots of so much of the Gospels, Hebrews, & Revelation are sunk down deep in this soil. There are so many gifts presented here in -for us - oddly shaped boxes
Sometimes the very weirdness of the Bible is just what we need. It’s a reminder to us that we are priestly people, exile people, never fully at home in this age; that, yes, there is a proper strangeness to our worship & lives. There is nothing “usual about this Cross-Shaped Faith
It should still astonish & amaze us that a scapegoat appeared in history to bring about an everlasting Yom Kippur as a Lamb that took away not only the sins of Israel but those of the whole wide world. Leviticus feels like it’s written in blood & it’s messy. Then again...
... our world really is a mess - and so am I - and what we needed most turned out to be the sacrifice of love that would purge our violence of heart and transform us because it has forgiven us. So don’t give up on Leviticus.
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