Leviticus ends reminding us of where we have come from and what all these prescriptions and proscriptions for behavior are about: once we were enslaved and now we are free. Sure there’s the at-the-time-it-was-written-traditional blessing-curse formula (do this and receive awesomeness, do that and suffer), which today we might wonder a bit more as to how that works with a Holy One setting free people forth to learn how to live faithfully, mistakes and trials included. Don’t get sucked into literal reading here, because to do so means a couple of real theological problems: (1) the idea that suffering and trials are always our own making, so very obviously for most of us not to always be the case, only a sometimes thing; (2) the corollary to this idea which is often referred to today as the prosperity gospel - if you’re living right, nothing wrong will happen and riches will be yours (which places the blame in the whole life has suffering we can’t control reality smack back on ourselves). What is theologically critical here are the two frames at the beginning and the end of the blessing-curse formula: you are a free people to live faithfully and when you mess up, repent and make amends, the Holy is right here, upholding the covenant that already exists, waiting for your return.
Throughout Leviticus, the assembly of writings tries to answer: what does it mean to be a free people who live humbly and faithfully with our G-d? Free people have choices. Serving the Holy is different from enslavement to the Holy because of one major condition: we choose. We choose whether and how to pursue these best understandings of the writers of what it means to be live humbly and faithfully. And, necessarily, we’re probably going to have our differences with some aspects or recommendations and not with others. I have no use for the proscription on same-gender sexual relationships or for the implicit approval of slavery in accepting slaves as tithe offerings but I do find the call to love and protect the resident alien, love the stranger, and love one another, and Sabbath, fallow years, and Jubilee to be enormously compelling in sorting out some of the inequities in society. Why do I feel comfortable, as a free person trying to live faithfully, choosing some of these understandings over others? Because I am applying the reason I’m endowed with to repeated rules that wind through the Torah (the Five Books of Moses: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy), namely the call to compassion and equity and that how we treat strangers and neighbors is how we are treating G-d. In spiritual, emotional, or physical slavery we don’t have choices in what we do, or what happens to our bodies, or how we treat others (as a common tactic of enforcing lack of trust in enslavement is to force people to attack or abuse other enslaved peoples or suffer even more directly or watch family and friends suffer additionally for refusing to comply). But as free people, we do have choices and need to employ those decision-making powers we have, which include consulting scholarship and arguing things out and applying some compassion and heart tests to our actions. And, as free people, sometimes we will choose badly or choose well and execute that choice less skillfully and end up needing to repent and make amends, grateful for the Holy upholding this covenant.
Now this section of Leviticus, 26:3-27:34, like others, presents some other problems to us in our day and age. One of them is the literal devaluing of women as the tithing instructions ending Leviticus tells us. First, if we’re pursuing care of one another as a way we care for the Holy, then we are not going to make offerings of slaves because we are not going to hold people in slavery. (There’s a lot of really interesting Torah and Bible scholarship on this issue, and if you’re wanting to learn more about the limits on slavery and the consideration of indentured servitude or limited periods of service, then dive on in.) Secondly, women are specifically named as less valuable than men as offerings. Also, most of the blessings named in the blessing section and most of the curses specifically fall on what at the time would be masculine pursuits and concerns. Noting, for example, that the staff of life will be broken and ten women’s labors of making bread will not feed you assumes the reader/listener is male and they’re not involved in making bread, or the text would read ten bakers’ labors in making bread. (Again, lots of great feminist scholarship to study on these issues.) How do we read ourselves back into the texts when we’re not explicitly named or when our identity is explicitly named as something less than good enough?
I had two major influences on my approach to Scriptural reading and interpretation before I ever reached high school, college or seminary to study different practices like literary and textual criticism, historical-archeological criticism, and any number of other forms of study and approaches that don’t assume a naive reading of the text will take you very far faithfully. One practice was under the direction of my religious studies teacher, taking the weekly lection in Catholic parochial middle school and turning it into another episode of a soap opera series. At the time, I didn’t even know the genre of soap operas, so I had to watch a few before I understood what was wanted. However, viewing the writings and poetry and stories as at least as meaningful and dramatic as a telenovela or soap opera has continued to shape my approach to studying these texts for meaning in today’s world. The other was reading choose-your-own-adventure stories and playing Dungeons & Dragons in my same middle school years. I name this approach second to the first because once I appreciated how much drama and meaning could be drawn from the texts, I of course was influenced in gaming that. Those games and stories make the gamers and readers authorities in what is happening. Sure, you can’t safely control the outcomes — rather like life — but choices have consequences — rather like life. Perceiving risk, listening/reading attentively for hints of what might occur, and trying and failing only to start all over again is good training for approaching these texts. As adults, we’re constantly weighing and perceiving risk, seeking hints of what’s ahead, and trying and failing (although hopefully not killing our characters or others from poor judgment). As you read through the sacred texts, you’ll notice the same themes: people seek to understand, make choices, and not uncommonly, fail and have to try again.
Approaching these sacred texts as living tales with history, context, and historical meaning was something I learned later, but are excellent models to help us deepen, broaden, and stretch our faithful understanding of these texts. The various liberation critical approaches also regularly invite us to read ourselves back into the texts, especially when we and our experiences are excluded or named as other. Also in clinical pastoral education, I had to name scriptural events and stories that were similar to circumstances I and the people I cared for or worked alongside were experiencing, again seeking the relevance of ancient texts applied to today, which is another good way to find ourselves within the texts. Both approaches make a lot of sense to me because I already knew reading these texts as having sources of meaning and living drama, transmitted and reflected over the millennia by real people. And that rather frequently means reading myself into these texts when I am not named or even directly excluded. Fortunately, that was a skill I had already developed, from listening to popular music and reading books where there would be no characters who were like me. Gaming, choose-your-own-adventure and turning scripture into soap operas taught me to make space in these texts for myself and for others I knew who were excluded. The more academic forms of criticism sharpened those tools and gave me some additional understandings, all of which challenge, deepen, and strengthen my adult faith in relationship with these texts.
We are free people making choices in how we pursue, understand, interpret, and apply these texts to our lives. If we pursue the larger call to justice and equity and loving one another as we love ourselves or the Holy (themes resounding throughout Torah), that means necessarily there’s room for all of us in these texts to show up, reflections of the Holy that is far bigger than any one of us, or any one culture and time, splendid in our diversity. So yes, I’m going to put my queer, wheelchair-using, ordained, knitting, singing, laughing, loving self into the middle of these texts. I’m also loved by the Holy and part of this diverse and amazing creation. You belong there too, however you are, in these stories and practices of seeking to risk faithfully day by day in living humbly, justly, and lovingly, knowing every stranger and neighbor as another face of G-d, wherever we are and wherever we go. If you want these texts to speak to today, they can. If you want to pursue a relationship with the Holy, you can. Don’t let the transmission of these texts or their reflection of a particular historical understanding of what it means to live faithfully with the Holy cast you out of choosing your faithful life. We choose, with heart and with reason, bowing to the spiritual ancestors who did the best they could with their own understanding, and to some of our ancestors who did the worst they could do reading a lot of people out and transmitting those traditions. We choose, taking what we can with our own limited understanding and offering these texts forward to the future for their eventual wrestling, reading, tending, interpreting, and choosing, as free people do.
