Fr Peter Helman

Dear friends,

Nowhere do I feel the remoteness between the writings of scripture and the world in which we live today than in the book of Leviticus.
 
My university professor of Old Testament studies began his series of lectures on Leviticus by saying it was essentially a devotional guide for the ancient Israelites. I still asked myself, “Well, that might be right, but is that the world we live in?” I had only ever known the book for its tireless enumeration of out-moded laws pertaining to all manner of things unusual and so often offensive to my religious sensibilities. (For a keen example, have a read of the chapter that immediately precedes ours this morning on ritually defiling bodily fluids.)
 
What sort of poetic imagination is required to faithfully bridge the gap between the world of Leviticus and the world of today?
 
That is a big question, and there is not enough coffee brewing in the pot this morning to sustain the inquiry. But perhaps we can at least begin by admitting my professor was on to something. The Levitical holiness code was probably quite strange for the ancient Israelites too, with its manifold ordinances on ritual and ceremonial purity and, like we find this morning, the sacrificial system and atonement. Speaking for myself, there is a modicum of comfort in that the laws are shot through with strangeness. Even if Christians, following St. Paul, are not enjoined to keep the code in every respect as the Israelites were, our catechism ascribes the writings of the Old Testament the authority of divine inspiration (see “An Outline of Faith,” BCP pg. 853). Leviticus remains the word of God to the Church.
 
The shape and scope of the Law is staggering. That I feel overwhelmed by its breadth, which at times, if I am honest, verges on tedium, is good because I remember there is no part of life, no small vestige of self, excluded from the summons of God. The fullness of the Levitical code instructed the Israelites in every facet of their life as a people, how to know and love and approach the God who brought them out of the land of Egypt with a mighty arm, and what is more how to know and love one another in God’s image and fashion of society a city of God.
 
The gaps, being what they appear to be, between the world of Leviticus and the world of today, between the compass of Israel’s devotion and ours, the Levitical code raises an enduring question: “What are we saved to?” “Converted to what?”
 
And here we find the heart of our concern: the reconciliation of all things in heaven and on earth to God, with a divine order that embraces heaven and earth and with its transformation of every facet of human affairs, for heaven as the goal for every person made in the image of God.

We are made to be wholly dedicated unto God, and that is where the joy comes in.


Yours in Christ,
Fr. Peter