Be Like God

I don’t know if it was boredom or burden that got me to preach from Leviticus, but after 23 years of avoiding it, the time had come to face it. But where would I get some good sermon illustrations for sermons on animal sacrifice or skin infection? I know, what if I get recruit people from my urban, Protestant congregation to try living by the book of Leviticus for a month and see what happens? That should provide some stories to tell.

Here’s the opening paragraphs:

When you’ve been preaching as long as I have, sermons can start to sound a little redundant. Christ is born every Christmas. Christ is risen every Easter. We’re saved by grace most Sundays in between. I preach a lot of sermons about loving your neighbor—and some on loving your enemies. Although I like to light a little Old Testament hellfire and brimstone during the summer (with the steamy weather outside providing reinforcement), mostly I stick to the New Testament. The New Testament seems easier to understand. I typically reserve the Old Testament for Advent and Good Friday, along with some during Lent. A psalm might show up every now and then too. But I find congregations are happy enough hearing the story of Jesus over and over again.

We sometimes forget, however, that Jesus was Jewish; and whenever he preached “the Word of God,” he preached the Old Testament exclusively, since it was, after all, the only Testament at the time. The New Testament may seem to be easier to understand, but to fully understand what Jesus meant when he used words like unclean or holy or blood, you have to understand the Old Testament too. Jesus said that obedience to all of God’s law can be summed up by keeping the two greatest commandments: “Love the Lord your God” and “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Matt. 22:37, 40), both of which originate in the Old Testament. The apostles Paul and James went so far as to say that to “love your neighbor as yourself” counts for loving God too (Gal. 5:14; James 2:8; 1 John 4:20–21). Surprisingly, for such an important commandment, “Love your neighbor as yourself” shows up just one place in the entire Old Testament. You find it only in the book of Leviticus (19:18).

Mention the book of Leviticus to most people, and if they have ever heard of it, what comes to mind is that arcane tome of Torah devoted primarily to the proper (and gruesome) management of sin through animal sacrifice. Others may recall mind-numbing instructions on how to rightly handle infectious skin disease and mildew, along with a mishmash of seemingly random commandments about not mixing fibers and seeds and not sleeping with your stepmother or sister or nephew—commandments deemed either pointless or plain common sense.

Leviticus is that graveyard where read-through-the-Bible-in-a-year plans go to die. Skeptics know it as ammunition for homosexual haters or as a target for animal-rights activists. Many Jews regard it as awkward and outmoded. Its unfamiliar terms and references render it irrelevant for modern readers. To slog through all twenty-seven chapters can be unbelievably tedious.

Preaching about Jesus citing Leviticus is one thing. Preaching Leviticus itself is something else.