You must keep the Israelites separate from things that make them unclean, so they will not die in their uncleanness for defiling my dwelling place, which is among them. – Leviticus 15:31

Today's Scripture Reading (November 12, 2021): Leviticus 15

We live in the middle of a paradox. Amid our struggles with contemporary life, I think that we have forgotten that. We have tried to make the gospel make sense – we almost take pride in the logic of the message. But in depending on the reasoning behind the biblical message, we also lose some of the mystery. And that loss of mystery can be dangerous. In the darkest moments of our lives, it is not the logic of the gospel that we need; we need the mystery. What we need is for God to miraculously step into our situation, an action that is filled, not with logic, but rather with mystery.

And the laws of God are written the same way. Some of the laws do have a logical bent to them. Some food laws are essential because there is a health benefit or a health danger involved with our food. And in our health-conscious society, we understand that. Some of the laws that govern sexual interaction are once again clearly based on health issues. We think that the sexual bias of the Bible somehow limits our freedom. But, in the back of our minds, I think we should also realize that there are a lot of sexually transmitted diseases that could be wiped off the face of the earth if we would just follow the sexual laws found in the writings of Moses for even just one generation. Sabbath Day laws (laws that say that we should take a day off in honor of God) are not curtailing our freedom but instead a response to our genuine need for a day of rest to remain physically healthy. One of the radical elements of the Sabbath regulations inside the Mosaic Law is that they are extended even to the slave. The idea was that everyone needs that day away from work, regardless of if you are part of the ruling class, middle class, or working class.

But some of the laws were also a bit of a mystery. The cleanliness laws did not see cleanliness as freedom from germs, the way that we might view it. The restrictions that they pronounced were a bit of a mystery. But the basic idea seemed to be that a mysterious God had chosen to live among them, that he was a holy God (holy simply means 'set apart'), and that because a holy God was living in their midst, they would need to be a holy people. And one of the ways that the nations would recognize that they were holy was by being set apart in their practices; in being ceremonially clean.

It is maybe something that we need to recover in our circumstances. Again, as a response to contemporary life, we might find it easy to follow the logic of God. But maybe by following the logic, we demote the rituals and actions filled with the mystery we need. A mystery that we will require in the dark moments when logic no longer makes any sense.

We are to be set apart, which means following laws that we might understand and struggling with those we don't. But if we are willing to engage in the struggle, even in contemporary life, we just might meet God in the middle of the mystery.

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: Leviticus 16