Something Different This Way Comes

My current vacation has not distracted me from my spiritual practice of daily Bible reading. I am at the moment five days into my least favorite book, Old Testament or New, Leviticus.

What a challenge. Rules for sacrifices of all sorts. Detailed prescriptions for various offerings (make sure you rub the goat’s blood on the right big toe, not the left!). Minutiae regarding women’s menstruation. Tips for distinguishing between leprosy and other skin infections (Hint: Black hairs in the afflicted area, good; yellow hairs in the afflicted area, not good). As I said, what a challenge.

Most of us modern faithfuls have little use for this kind of legislative Scripture. Rules of such specificity have minimal application in a world fundamentally transformed by medical, technological, and social progress.

We don’t want to know the process by which people were declared “ceremonially unclean.” We aren’t impressed, and in fact, are a bit miffed by the exclusion from the Israelite community of people with illnesses not of their own creation. We don’t benefit from detailed recipes for sacrifices no longer practiced. In sum, we’re hard pressed to discern why Leviticus matters to 21st century humanity. . . . More personally, I rejoice that on Thursday I will move on to the scintillation of “Numbers.”

Just when my reactive boredom persuades me to consider striking Leviticus from my spiritual practice’s reading list, the word “holy” makes one of its 77 appearances, none more penetrating than this, found in the eleventh chapter:

“ I, the Lord, am the one who brought you up from the land of Egypt to be your God. You must therefore be holy because I am holy.”

The book’s obsessive-compulsion with ritual and cleanliness and hygiene is explained in a single word: holy. Israel must be different – “set apart” is a phrase oft-employed – from other nations. Any people chosen to represent a holy God must themselves be holy. Any community daring to define itself as God’s light to the world must shine so that others will notice its glow. The rules, the ceremonies, the details in Leviticus are of little practical consequence for us, but the divine demand for holiness is a spiritual necessity.


For the last several years I have experienced a burgeoning passion about good, right, holy living. Not perfection, mind you, but holiness – different from the rest. There is right and wrong (though we probably disagree as to what they are!). What we say, how we respond to need, want, and inclination all matter.

** If the Joneses are bad role models, don’t keep up with them.

** If a course of action is wrong/immoral/inappropriate, regardless of its potential benefits don’t pursue it.

** Worship’s seeming decline as a spiritual practice in our culture is not a permission slip for followers of Jesus to abandon Sunday morning praise.

** Among lies, neither size nor color matters (“a little white...”).

** Whether we hold the door open for the person coming behind us, whether we tolerate racial, gender, or sexual orientation intolerance even a single appearance, whether we’re authentic reflections of Jesus to our world in the next thirty minutes – not just the next time we’re otherwise unencumbered – matters.

It all matters. . . because God is holy and expects holiness from us. God expects you and me to live differently than the surrounding throngs.

Not “asks for”
Not “wishes for”
Not “humbly requests”

Expects. Demands.


Leviticus is an insufferable read, until we hear its central siren: God has made you different. Live that way.

Four more days to finish the book. A lifetime to prove I understood what I read.


Pray with Me:
God, you believe in me more than I believe in myself, which is one component in your demand of more from me than I often offer. Keep after me. Be intolerant of my excuses. Be encouraging of my efforts. Be gracious through it all. In the name of Jesus, Amen.