What Leviticus Taught Me

It taught me that Jesus was stubborn and impossible.
According to Leviticus, no priest with any deformity could serve in the once a year Holy of Holies ceremony. (Note: said priest would still be part of the priesthood, would still have duties and would still receive their pay. The important factor is that they could not be in the presence of God.) Nothing but perfection could go before the Lord (c.f. the passages describing the requirement of sacrifices: again, perfection – nothing blemished). Priests could not touch any dead body (except for their wife, children, mother, father and siblings, although not siblings by marriage). (Note: this explains the Good Samaritan. The priest in the story wanted to make sure he didn’t touch a dead body, so just in case the body laying on the side of the road was dead, he went around the long ways.) A jug that contained a dead fly would have to be smashed. Carcasses found dead in the fields could not be touched. Nothing that came into contact with this death and decay could be in the presence of God (except for the sacrifices). Anyone who came into contact with a woman on her period or anyone with a hemorrhaging problem would be considered unclean and would have to go through a slew of cleansing rituals.
I want to make sure that I don’t present God as unkind. He also told them to treat the foreigner as one of them (scandalous!), to treat their slaves kindly (unheard of!), and to leave part of their fields unharvested so that the poor could come in and take some (uneconomical!). He called the Israelites to live hospitable and generous lives, too.
But back to Jesus. Jesus touched dead bodies and a woman with a hemorrhaging problem and men with leprosy. Instead of becoming defiled, he gave life with these touches. However, the Pharisees saw a breaking of the law. He’s touching everything God said not to touch. He’s touching everything God said couldn’t be in His presence because of His holiness. And this guy is claiming to be God! Right. Yeah. Except that it goes against everything we believe, the Pharisees said. This guy is immoral.
Leviticus taught me to understand the Pharisees. I didn’t say they were right, mind you. I just said I understand. If a guy acting immorally claimed to be Jesus, I’m not sure I would believe Him either.
Of course Jesus exuded God’s love and redemption, something the Pharisees didn’t understand, something that was supposed to be part and parcel of the whole purpose of the Israelites.
And Numbers (while we’re at the hard books of the Bible to get through): all those countings of all those Israelites. Man, oh, man, can that be boring. But here’s the thing. Over 600,000 men of fighting age accounted for at the time Moses wrote the book. Which means well over 1 million Israelites if you add in all the women and children. All from Abraham, who, after 100 years of infertility hanging on a promise that God would make him the father of a great nation, had one son. 400 years later, voila! A nation of 1 million people.
Here’s the other crazy thing: these Israelites, over 600,000 of fighting age, in tip-top shape from years of hard labor and camping in the wilderness, tremble in their sandals at having to go in and fight the Canaanites. This is after hearing the stories of Abraham and his faith and the time Abraham fought and beat the Canaanites with just over 300 men, and this is after they saw the 10 plagues and God deliver them from slavery and the parting of the Red Sea. Imagine walking through a sea with hundreds of yards of water wall tall on either side, fish and sharks and whales swimming through. But they walked through. They experienced it all. And they whined.
Today’s theme, I think: stubbornness.