Day: February 28, 2021

“For this is the will of God, even your sanctification”

The Book of Leviticus is the least read and least known book of the Scriptures. And to be sure, it is a daunting task to make one’s way through its myriad of regulations and directions many of which are quite puzzling, though, perhaps, rather intriguing. What does it mean, for instance, “that they shall no more slay their sacrifices for satyrs, after whom they play the harlot”? (Lev. 17.7). In the Canadian Prayer Book lectionary system, readings from Leviticus are very few; never in the Sunday Office readings, and only four times in the appointed readings for the Daily Offices; three times in the week of the Fourth Sunday in Lent (Friday evening, Saturday morning and evening), and once in Holy Week on the Wednesday evening of Holy Week in the story of the proverbial scapegoat understood as an symbol of Christ bearing our sins in his Passion.

Chapters 17-27 of Leviticus is known as the Holiness Code, best expressed in Leviticus 19. 2. “You shall be holy, for I, the Lord, your God, am holy.” The Holiness Code is a collection of injunctions dealing with a wide range of behaviours and actions: social, moral and ritualistic. Set within the context of Israel as God’s chosen people, they express the sense of Israel’s separation and uniqueness over and against other peoples and nations. Yet, while some of the injunctions seem culturally dependent, others are universal and ethically compelling. The injunctions about not trimming beards and not being marked with tattoos may seem trivial and irrelevant but other injunctions seem ethically compelling and binding for all times and in all places, such things as behaving honestly, treating workers fairly, the rights or duties towards those with disabilities, doing justice, loving your neighbour as yourself, working as much for others as for yourself, and fair trade. In the light of those injunctions other things such as reproving and correcting your neighbour and allowing not only the poor and destitute but also the resident stranger to gather the gleanings after the harvest offer an ethical vision of what belongs to the good of all over and against the interests of the few.

As one theologian (Mary Douglas) puts it, the code is the idea of holiness as order not confusion, as rightness or rectitude of behaviour, as honesty and straight-dealing in contrast to the forms of contradiction in double-dealing, theft, lying, false witness, cheating in business, dissembling in speech, degrading and putting down others, hating your brother in your heart; in short the contrast between what we seem to be and what we are, the hypocrisies that belong to all our lives.

(more…)

Print this entry