Did you know that the Bible repeatedly forbids favouring the poor?
Well, all right, just twice that I can see. In Exodus 23 God's people are forbidden to "be partial to a poor man in his lawsuit"; and in Leviticus 19 Israel's judges are warned against being "partial to the poor". Of course, in the very near context of both these sayings there are prohibitions against favouring the rich, being intimated by the powerful, or taking a bribe. Perhaps the overall attitude is best summed up in Deuteronomy 1:17: "You shall not be partial in judgement. You shall hear the small and the great alike."
The majority concern in Holy Scripture, which recurs in the NT at places like James 2, is the temptation to show partiality towards the rich and powerful. The reasoning behind this is obvious: these are the people who might be able to reward you for your unwarranted favour, or indeed to harm you if you don't show them favour. Human nature being what it is, the temptation to pre-judge in favour of the great is always strong.
But the other stream is also there, founded in the reality that our God is a god of truth, judging impartially. Because this is his character, his people are to show the same equal regard for the privileged and the destitute, the powerful and the weak.
I mention this because I'm a little concerned that some Christians, passionate for justice, are accepting the world's (or at least, the Western-liberal-leftish) definition of what justice is; in particular, the idea that justice means favouring the weak, or pre-judging in favour of the powerless. That isn't what justice is. Where there are systemic prejudices preventing particular groups from justice, that is something we have to speak against and strenuously combat. But the answer isn't to invest those disempowered groups with an automatic (and therefore necessarily imaginary) righteousness.
Now all this is about a judicial context in Israel. But God is still the same now, and his character is still the same, and he rules his Church. That means that in local church life and in Christian interaction with society there should be a concern for impartiality, and therefore a rejection of intersectionality, at least as it is applied today as a practical programme (as a framework for analysis, it remains a helpful tool imo).
Or, in other words, when we say 'justice', let's make sure our idea of what that means and our picture of what it looks like derive from Scripture and not any other piece of philosophical or political discourse.
Showing posts with label Leviticus. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Leviticus. Show all posts
Thursday, October 11, 2018
Monday, April 03, 2017
Be holy
At CCC we reached the end of a little series in Leviticus yesterday with a preach through chapter 19 - one of those chapters which is usefully titled in the NIV "various laws". To be fair to the editors of the NIV, various laws is what it is: no particular unifying theme, no obvious structure, except that the whole of the chapter stands under the heading in verse 2: "You shall be holy, for I the LORD your God am holy."
This is, if you like, the second movement in Leviticus. The first movement is all to do with priests and sacrifices. God is holy - implacably opposed to sin and corruption, irreversibly committed to himself and his goodness. The people of Israel are unholy. So that the holy God and the unholy people can live together, particular individuals are claimed by God and made holy, and the tabernacle with its sacrificial apparatus is made holy, so that holy offerings can be made and sin atoned for. Day after day, and especially year after year on the annual Day of Atonement, the unholiness of the people is dealt with, so that they can keep company with the holy God.
The second movement picks up the holiness language and runs in a seemingly completely different direction with it. The question is no longer 'how can the unholy people live with a holy God?' - and it's hugely important to notice that shift. We're now talking about a different question, something along the lines of 'what will this people be like if they are living with a holy God?' The direction of travel changes. Before, we were standing with the unholy people, looking in to the centre of the camp where the tabernacle stands, and asking how we could get there; how can the unholy approach the holy? Now we stand in the tabernacle, and look out at the unholy people, and ask how they (we!) will have to change, since we are keeping company with this holy God. Before the issue was the corruption of the people, which constantly threatened their relationship with God, and which was dealt with by sacrifice. Now, the issue is the holiness of God, which not only threatens but overcomes the sinfulness of the people, claiming them in their whole lives for God. The 'various laws' of Leviticus 19 represent the holiness of the LORD flowing out of the tabernacle and into the worship, relationships, society, work, and world of Israel.
Like Israel, we Christians are constant sinners; unholy to the core. Whenever we remember that, we are driven back to the heart of our faith: God the Son, Jesus Christ, offering himself as the one sacrifice, made once and for all, to take away our sin. But also like Israel, we are claimed by God, claimed for holiness - claimed with greater effect, if you like, than Israel ever was, through the out-poured Holy Spirit. In all of life, we belong to him, stand on his side. These two things are always true of us: totally sinful (but forgiven!), totally holy (but failing!).
When we gather around word and sacrament, like Israel camped around the tabernacle, we look to the God who, in the gospel, has answered the problem of our sin by atonement, and has given his Holy Spirit so that we might ourselves be holy. We enjoy holy time, reminded of forgiveness and sanctification, living those things in our worship. And then the gathering disperses, and we go out to live out the 'various laws', the concrete requirements of God (no doubt somewhat different for us than they were for Levitical Israel) which shape our daily lives in accordance with the gospel we heard on Sunday. This is a requirement: be holy! It is also a gift. This is what it looks like to be privileged to keep company with the holy God. He works holiness in us.
This is, if you like, the second movement in Leviticus. The first movement is all to do with priests and sacrifices. God is holy - implacably opposed to sin and corruption, irreversibly committed to himself and his goodness. The people of Israel are unholy. So that the holy God and the unholy people can live together, particular individuals are claimed by God and made holy, and the tabernacle with its sacrificial apparatus is made holy, so that holy offerings can be made and sin atoned for. Day after day, and especially year after year on the annual Day of Atonement, the unholiness of the people is dealt with, so that they can keep company with the holy God.
The second movement picks up the holiness language and runs in a seemingly completely different direction with it. The question is no longer 'how can the unholy people live with a holy God?' - and it's hugely important to notice that shift. We're now talking about a different question, something along the lines of 'what will this people be like if they are living with a holy God?' The direction of travel changes. Before, we were standing with the unholy people, looking in to the centre of the camp where the tabernacle stands, and asking how we could get there; how can the unholy approach the holy? Now we stand in the tabernacle, and look out at the unholy people, and ask how they (we!) will have to change, since we are keeping company with this holy God. Before the issue was the corruption of the people, which constantly threatened their relationship with God, and which was dealt with by sacrifice. Now, the issue is the holiness of God, which not only threatens but overcomes the sinfulness of the people, claiming them in their whole lives for God. The 'various laws' of Leviticus 19 represent the holiness of the LORD flowing out of the tabernacle and into the worship, relationships, society, work, and world of Israel.
Like Israel, we Christians are constant sinners; unholy to the core. Whenever we remember that, we are driven back to the heart of our faith: God the Son, Jesus Christ, offering himself as the one sacrifice, made once and for all, to take away our sin. But also like Israel, we are claimed by God, claimed for holiness - claimed with greater effect, if you like, than Israel ever was, through the out-poured Holy Spirit. In all of life, we belong to him, stand on his side. These two things are always true of us: totally sinful (but forgiven!), totally holy (but failing!).
When we gather around word and sacrament, like Israel camped around the tabernacle, we look to the God who, in the gospel, has answered the problem of our sin by atonement, and has given his Holy Spirit so that we might ourselves be holy. We enjoy holy time, reminded of forgiveness and sanctification, living those things in our worship. And then the gathering disperses, and we go out to live out the 'various laws', the concrete requirements of God (no doubt somewhat different for us than they were for Levitical Israel) which shape our daily lives in accordance with the gospel we heard on Sunday. This is a requirement: be holy! It is also a gift. This is what it looks like to be privileged to keep company with the holy God. He works holiness in us.
Monday, March 20, 2017
Holy love and holy fire
Whilst preparing to preach Leviticus 10 at CCC this past Sunday, I found Karl Barth's comments on the holiness of God particularly helpful. Barth deals with God's attributes - or as he calls them, God's "perfections" - in the latter part of CD II/1. He divides them into two sections - the perfections of the divine loving and the perfections of the divine freedom, in line with his basic thesis of the first part of II/1 - that God is the one who loves in freedom. Within each section, pairs of perfections are offered - holiness is paired with grace. But Barth is clear that these are not the sorts of things that could be played off each other. He really believes in the doctrine of divine simplicity; in the end, all the myriad perfections of God are really one. They are who God is.
So anyway, holiness.
God's love is holy, meaning that "it is characterised by the fact that God, as He seeks and creates fellowship, is always the Lord." God does not give himself away in his love, he does not make himself subject to the people with whom he seeks and creates fellowship. He is always God in this relationship. And what that means is that "He condemns, excludes and annihilates all contradiction and resistance to" his love. In his genuine love, he is genuinely Lord. The logic of pairing grace and holiness, then, is that they both "point to the transcendence of God over all that is not Himself." In both grace and holiness, God is the Lord.
And grace and holiness must be mentioned side by side. It seems like they are contradictory: "To say grace is to say the forgiveness of sins; to say holiness, judgment upon sins." But in fact they go together. "That God is gracious does not mean that He surrenders Himself to the one to whom He is gracious. He neither compromises with his resistance, nor ignores it, still less calls it good." In fact, it is only as he draws near in grace that God's holiness is shown and made known. Holiness in the abstract, which is not the holiness of God's opposition to sin in the very act of his gracious drawing near, is not the holiness the Bible describes. "Therefore, the one to whom He is gracious comes to experience God's opposition to him." When God creates fellowship with sinful human beings, they necessarily come to experience his opposition to them as sinners, even as (and only as) they come to see his grace in forgiving sin and creating that fellowship.
A brief aside on what this means for our understanding of Law and Gospel - "In Scripture we do not find the Law alongside the Gospel, but in the Gospel, and therefore the holiness of God is not side by side with but in His grace, and His wrath is not separate from but in His love."
"The holiness of God consists in the unity of His judgment with His grace. God is holy because His grace judges and His judgment is gracious." Barth adds, not without reason, "In this sense Jesus Christ Himself is the Holy One of God." Where do we really see God's holiness? Isn't it at the cross of Christ, where God judges sin and sinful humanity, and in judging overcomes sinful humanity and makes it fit for fellowship with him?
In Leviticus 10, God's desire to have fellowship with his people is threatened by the carelessness of his priests, who imagine that they can approach God casually, perhaps thinking that the newly en-tabernacled God is tamed and at their beck-and-call. If this line of thought were followed through, fellowship between God and Israel would be impossible. God will and must be himself; he will and must be Lord in the fellowship which he creates with Israel. Therefore, Nadab and Abihu must die. But this is not opposite to grace. It is grace. It is God in his grace creating, maintaining, and defending his fellowship with sinful Israel.
And of course it points forward. If sinful humanity is to have fellowship with God, the fire of God's holiness must burn away our sinfulness; the fire of his love must oppose and overcome everything in us which is unlovely. And where did the fire of God's love and holiness burn the brightest, consuming the one acceptable sacrifice?
So anyway, holiness.
God's love is holy, meaning that "it is characterised by the fact that God, as He seeks and creates fellowship, is always the Lord." God does not give himself away in his love, he does not make himself subject to the people with whom he seeks and creates fellowship. He is always God in this relationship. And what that means is that "He condemns, excludes and annihilates all contradiction and resistance to" his love. In his genuine love, he is genuinely Lord. The logic of pairing grace and holiness, then, is that they both "point to the transcendence of God over all that is not Himself." In both grace and holiness, God is the Lord.
And grace and holiness must be mentioned side by side. It seems like they are contradictory: "To say grace is to say the forgiveness of sins; to say holiness, judgment upon sins." But in fact they go together. "That God is gracious does not mean that He surrenders Himself to the one to whom He is gracious. He neither compromises with his resistance, nor ignores it, still less calls it good." In fact, it is only as he draws near in grace that God's holiness is shown and made known. Holiness in the abstract, which is not the holiness of God's opposition to sin in the very act of his gracious drawing near, is not the holiness the Bible describes. "Therefore, the one to whom He is gracious comes to experience God's opposition to him." When God creates fellowship with sinful human beings, they necessarily come to experience his opposition to them as sinners, even as (and only as) they come to see his grace in forgiving sin and creating that fellowship.
A brief aside on what this means for our understanding of Law and Gospel - "In Scripture we do not find the Law alongside the Gospel, but in the Gospel, and therefore the holiness of God is not side by side with but in His grace, and His wrath is not separate from but in His love."
"The holiness of God consists in the unity of His judgment with His grace. God is holy because His grace judges and His judgment is gracious." Barth adds, not without reason, "In this sense Jesus Christ Himself is the Holy One of God." Where do we really see God's holiness? Isn't it at the cross of Christ, where God judges sin and sinful humanity, and in judging overcomes sinful humanity and makes it fit for fellowship with him?
In Leviticus 10, God's desire to have fellowship with his people is threatened by the carelessness of his priests, who imagine that they can approach God casually, perhaps thinking that the newly en-tabernacled God is tamed and at their beck-and-call. If this line of thought were followed through, fellowship between God and Israel would be impossible. God will and must be himself; he will and must be Lord in the fellowship which he creates with Israel. Therefore, Nadab and Abihu must die. But this is not opposite to grace. It is grace. It is God in his grace creating, maintaining, and defending his fellowship with sinful Israel.
And of course it points forward. If sinful humanity is to have fellowship with God, the fire of God's holiness must burn away our sinfulness; the fire of his love must oppose and overcome everything in us which is unlovely. And where did the fire of God's love and holiness burn the brightest, consuming the one acceptable sacrifice?
Saturday, March 11, 2017
Cast me not away from your presence
We've just started preaching through Leviticus at CCC for Lent - last week: many sacrifices, much blood. Some of the keenest vegetarians in the church were absent, I assume not deliberately.
I take it that the whole of Leviticus is the answer to Exodus 33:1-3. The setting is the foot of Sinai, after the incident with the golden calf. Having relented from his initial threat to destroy Israel, God responds to the intercession of Moses by declaring that he will send the people up to Canaan - but he himself will not go with them. They are just too sinful. If God were in their midst, he would destroy them. For Israel, this is a disastrous word, and Moses gets back on his knees: if your presence won't come, don't send us at all! Better to be without the promised land than to be without God's presence.
So Leviticus is the answer: the formation of a strict world of symbol and sacrifice which is designed to keep Israel God-centred and holy. The sacrificial system, in particular, is geared towards ensuring that Israel's sin is acknowledged and then (symbolically) dealt with, so that God can be with them without breaking out against them in judgement.
But I guess it's not hard to see how this could be misunderstood. As soon as the focus stops being on God and his presence, the sacrificial system - with the rest of the Levitical code - could become just a treadmill of self-righteousness. It becomes about dealing with my guilty conscience, or demonstrating that I am in the right. Look at all the sacrifices I made!
Reading Jeremiah 7 this morning, I'm struck by another way it could and did go wrong. When the people forget that God's presence is problematic for them - or rather, when they forget that their sin is problematic in the presence of God! - they assume that the temple-presence of God is just automatic. They can sin and sin, and it will still be okay because God's temple is right there. He will surely rescue them, even if they basically ignore him and his word.
Either way, God's presence is not prized. In the one case, God's presence becomes a theoretical side-issue in a quest for personal righteousness and security; in the other, God's presence becomes a tool to secure a safe and happy life. In both cases, you imagine people would jump at the chance of going to the promised land without God!
I take it that the whole of Leviticus is the answer to Exodus 33:1-3. The setting is the foot of Sinai, after the incident with the golden calf. Having relented from his initial threat to destroy Israel, God responds to the intercession of Moses by declaring that he will send the people up to Canaan - but he himself will not go with them. They are just too sinful. If God were in their midst, he would destroy them. For Israel, this is a disastrous word, and Moses gets back on his knees: if your presence won't come, don't send us at all! Better to be without the promised land than to be without God's presence.
So Leviticus is the answer: the formation of a strict world of symbol and sacrifice which is designed to keep Israel God-centred and holy. The sacrificial system, in particular, is geared towards ensuring that Israel's sin is acknowledged and then (symbolically) dealt with, so that God can be with them without breaking out against them in judgement.
But I guess it's not hard to see how this could be misunderstood. As soon as the focus stops being on God and his presence, the sacrificial system - with the rest of the Levitical code - could become just a treadmill of self-righteousness. It becomes about dealing with my guilty conscience, or demonstrating that I am in the right. Look at all the sacrifices I made!
Reading Jeremiah 7 this morning, I'm struck by another way it could and did go wrong. When the people forget that God's presence is problematic for them - or rather, when they forget that their sin is problematic in the presence of God! - they assume that the temple-presence of God is just automatic. They can sin and sin, and it will still be okay because God's temple is right there. He will surely rescue them, even if they basically ignore him and his word.
Either way, God's presence is not prized. In the one case, God's presence becomes a theoretical side-issue in a quest for personal righteousness and security; in the other, God's presence becomes a tool to secure a safe and happy life. In both cases, you imagine people would jump at the chance of going to the promised land without God!
Sunday, March 08, 2015
Lent 3
Leviticus 16 - the Day of Atonement. Two goats, one for the LORD, and one for Azazel. One to be killed as a sin offering, the other to be taken away into the wilderness and released.
Mark 1:9-13 - Jesus is baptized and then tempted. In the river, he goes symbolically down into death, and the Spirit drives him out into the wilderness.
I take it that the dead goat points to the need for the sinner to die. In his baptism, Jesus signals that he himself will fulfil this sign. He identifies with sinners, and will die for sinners. Unlike the goat, his encounter with death will end with his triumph in the resurrection, symbolised his emergence from the water of baptism.
The live goat seems to symbolise primarily the removal of the sin of Israel. Their sin is taken away into the wilderness - to Azazel, A demon? So tradition has interpreted the passage. Certainly the wilderness was considered the haunt of demons in some sense. Jesus is driven into the wilderness, as the goat was driven away from Israel. Unlike the goat, he takes on and defeats the devil in his own domain. He not only bears away the sin of his people, but he responds to temptation to win with perfect righteousness.
Tuesday, July 29, 2014
Sanctus
The concept of holiness is all about the existence of boundaries, and the enforcement of those boundaries. Leviticus is perhaps the book of the Bible which most clearly illustrates this. The Tabernacle set up, with its Most Holy and Holy Places, symbolises the fact that God is separate. The Priestly system reinforces this. At the same time, the Levitical legislation separates Israel as a people from those around them, and creates and enforces a number of boundaries within the people, between clean and unclean.
There appear to be three main boundaries: firstly the boundary between God and not-God, or the Divine and the created - this boundary is implicit in Leviticus, and brought to the fore in the Deuteronomic and prophetic denunciation of idolatry; secondly, the boundary between Righteous and unrighteous - this is really the same thing, but viewed from the perspective of fallen humanity, and therefore if you like ethically rather than ontologically; and thirdly, the boundary between the dedicated and the ordinary - this can be positive (a thing is positively set apart for God and therefore not for ordinary use) or very negative (as in the judgement on the peoples of Canaan, in which some peoples are found to be so corrupt that they are to be devoted wholly to the Lord by destruction rather than treated as 'ordinary' enemies of Israel and Israel's God). This third notion of holiness - instrumental holiness, if you like - runs through Old and New Testaments, but isn't what I'm talking about here. I have in mind the distinction between God and creature, and between Righteous and unrighteous.
When we say that God is Holy, we mean both that he is inherently the reality denoted by these boundaries - he is God and not creature, he is righteous and not unrighteous - and at the same time that he is the active enforcer of these boundaries - he will be God and not creature, he will be righteous and not unrighteous. Tied up with this latter is the idea that God will be seen to be God, and the Righteous One. He will vindicate himself by enforcing these boundaries.
That is why an encounter with God in his holiness is a terrifying thing. Think Isaiah before the altar. As the Seraphim sing out 'Holy, Holy, Holy', he can only respond with 'Woe is me! For I am lost!' The fear is not unjustified - to come before the Holy One in an unworthy manner is death. This fear is also the reaction to Jesus amongst those who understand who he is. The God who will be God over against his creature, and who will maintain and display his righteousness over against sinners - this Holy God, the God we encounter in Christ - he is to be feared. God's holiness seems to demand separation.
And yet...
Throughout Isaiah's prophecy, God is 'the Holy One of Israel'. As the Holy One he is, God binds himself to unrighteous Israel. In just the same way, as the Holy One he is, God binds himself to his fallen creation. He will be Holy in our midst, not Holy without us.
Where is the logic?
In John 17, Jesus declares that he sanctifies himself - sets himself apart as Holy - so that his people might be sanctified. He enforces the boundary between God and creature, and between Righteous and unrighteous, by bringing them into the closest connection and yet being consistently God and consistently Righteous. I think it would be fair to say that at the cross he is the boundary. His existence is the Holiness of God, God in his active Holiness maintaining his right over against his rebellious creation.
It is just like Leviticus said it would be. Why build this tent to keep God apart from the sinful people? It was so that he could go with them! The boundary is enforced because without it God cannot be with his people. God maintains himself over against us so that he can confront us and relate to us.
God's Holiness in Christ should make us first fearful, and then thankful.
There appear to be three main boundaries: firstly the boundary between God and not-God, or the Divine and the created - this boundary is implicit in Leviticus, and brought to the fore in the Deuteronomic and prophetic denunciation of idolatry; secondly, the boundary between Righteous and unrighteous - this is really the same thing, but viewed from the perspective of fallen humanity, and therefore if you like ethically rather than ontologically; and thirdly, the boundary between the dedicated and the ordinary - this can be positive (a thing is positively set apart for God and therefore not for ordinary use) or very negative (as in the judgement on the peoples of Canaan, in which some peoples are found to be so corrupt that they are to be devoted wholly to the Lord by destruction rather than treated as 'ordinary' enemies of Israel and Israel's God). This third notion of holiness - instrumental holiness, if you like - runs through Old and New Testaments, but isn't what I'm talking about here. I have in mind the distinction between God and creature, and between Righteous and unrighteous.
When we say that God is Holy, we mean both that he is inherently the reality denoted by these boundaries - he is God and not creature, he is righteous and not unrighteous - and at the same time that he is the active enforcer of these boundaries - he will be God and not creature, he will be righteous and not unrighteous. Tied up with this latter is the idea that God will be seen to be God, and the Righteous One. He will vindicate himself by enforcing these boundaries.
That is why an encounter with God in his holiness is a terrifying thing. Think Isaiah before the altar. As the Seraphim sing out 'Holy, Holy, Holy', he can only respond with 'Woe is me! For I am lost!' The fear is not unjustified - to come before the Holy One in an unworthy manner is death. This fear is also the reaction to Jesus amongst those who understand who he is. The God who will be God over against his creature, and who will maintain and display his righteousness over against sinners - this Holy God, the God we encounter in Christ - he is to be feared. God's holiness seems to demand separation.
And yet...
Throughout Isaiah's prophecy, God is 'the Holy One of Israel'. As the Holy One he is, God binds himself to unrighteous Israel. In just the same way, as the Holy One he is, God binds himself to his fallen creation. He will be Holy in our midst, not Holy without us.
Where is the logic?
In John 17, Jesus declares that he sanctifies himself - sets himself apart as Holy - so that his people might be sanctified. He enforces the boundary between God and creature, and between Righteous and unrighteous, by bringing them into the closest connection and yet being consistently God and consistently Righteous. I think it would be fair to say that at the cross he is the boundary. His existence is the Holiness of God, God in his active Holiness maintaining his right over against his rebellious creation.
It is just like Leviticus said it would be. Why build this tent to keep God apart from the sinful people? It was so that he could go with them! The boundary is enforced because without it God cannot be with his people. God maintains himself over against us so that he can confront us and relate to us.
God's Holiness in Christ should make us first fearful, and then thankful.
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