A Virtual Tribe of Levites

Knowing that any attempt to live Levitically required living communally (or at least communicatively), a group of people would be required. And yet when I pitched the idea of Old Testament obedience to my congregation, you’d think I’d asked them to sell all their possessions and give the proceeds to the poor. Nobody stepped up. Undeterred, I laid on the pastoral guilt (they teach us how to do that in seminary). I managed to get 21 people to sign up for the adventure: a lawyer, a video games designer, a quasi-Zionist and couple of scientists, a New York Jets blogger, a college professor, a mom, an opera singer, a few dads and a financial services manager—each with their own reasons for embarking on this journey. Together we comprised a humble tribe whose individual attempts at keeping the law led to as many different outcomes as there were personalities. Of course in this day and age with the general dissolution of geographical community, especially in cities like Boston, being communicative would require the Internet. Taking advantage of Facebook, a popular social networking site, allowed that to happen. And not only that, it allowed our adventure to go public for all the world (wide web) to see, just like the God had intended the Israelites to be “a light for the nations.” Naturally, as with the ancient Israelites, the results of being witnessed varied. The interactions between the participants in the Leviticus project and those who observed are a big part of this story. But a big part of the story is the story of our group too. Often we think of “obedience” as a burden imposed by God. But what we found was that obedience was an incredible means to know God. And by knowing God, we found ourselves knowing ourselves and each other in deeper and more revealing fashion.