Priests by His merit

I wrestled with a section of Leviticus 21 the other day during my morning reading.  There, the following instructions are given to Moses concerning Israel's priesthood:

No man of the offspring of Aaron the priest who has a blemish shall come near to offer the Lord's food offerings; since he has a blemish, he shall not come near to offer the bread of his God...  he shall not go through the veil or approach the altar, because he has a blemish, that he may not profane my sanctuaries, for I am the Lord who sanctifies them.” (Lev 21.21-23)

As we read earlier in the passage, a "blemish" might include blindness; mutilation; disease; impotence; crippled, lame, or deformed limbs; and hunched backs (21.18-20) -- anything that might render a man physically or mentally inept.  On a practical level, such a restriction makes sense, but when I read a passage like that, my heart reacts because it's difficult to read compassion and kindness into such a law.  In fact, it's (understandably) the exact type of passage a doubter might point to as an example of a biblical contradiction.

"You claim this god of yours is loving, but what about this?"

When I read a passage like this, I think about the way people with disabilities are treated in modern society.  Yes, there are programs, organizations, treatments, and caretakers designated to meet the needs of handicapped individuals.  Yes, every restaurant has special parking spots for folks with blue swing tags.  Yes, restrooms are designed to accommodate wheelchairs.  However, the average person moving at the average pace of American society doesn't have the time of day or the wherewithal to consider those needs.  In fact, we are either more annoyed by the inconvenience these individuals can represent, or we're simply too uncomfortable around them to be properly motivated to serve them.

It's an unfortunate reality that individuals born with physical or mental disabilities have been marginalized in every society.  Ironically, it is only now -- at the current peak of supposed human evolution, where the callous "survival of the fittest" path has supposedly brought us -- that we've reached a point in society where we now have programs and institutions that can effectively care for individuals who fall into the varying categories of special needs.  That is, instead of placing them in neglected, isolated communities; treating them like they're possessed; or ostracizing them entirely (as societies have done in the past), we are actually taking strides to provide the disabled and handicapped with a quality of life unprecedented in past decades.  In evolutionary terms, this can only be defined as regression, not advancement.  And yet, modern sciences, engineering, therapies, and social work altogether geared at assisting people with disabilities reveal a depth of heart that points to the warm fingers of a compassionate Designer -- not the cold randomness of survival.

Considering all this, when I read a passage like Leviticus 21, I desperately want a verse 24 to hurl open the doors of mercy and compassion, welcoming and inviting people with deformities and disabilities, allowing them direct access to the throne room of God.  If anyone should have love and a special place for for the deformed, the lame, and the outcasts, it should be God Himself.  But even though there is no verse 24 here to express that sentiment, that doesn't mean I can jump to the conclusion that there is no room in God's heart for servants with "blemishes."

A couple clarifying points will help.

One, this section of Leviticus is addressed specifically to those in the line of the priesthood -- that is, Aaron's descendants.  And in that regard, the command is only applicable to eligible males in the Aaronic line who would otherwise perform priestly duties in the tabernacle or temple.  In other words, this is no more a blanket statement prohibiting any Israelite with a deformity who wants to serve in the temple from doing so, than it is grounds for the community to ostracize any debilitated individual from worshiping with the rest of the community (keeping in mind that if he has a disease that is contagious, he must subject himself to rules of cleanness and purification).  This law does, however, prohibit those in Aaron's generations who have special needs from serving as priests in the tabernacle/temple.

Two, what seems on the surface to be a passage ostracizing Aaronic descendants with birth defects is actually a statement about the holiness and perfection of God.  In other words, the kind of physical, mental, and spiritual state an individual must be in to appropriately serve as a priest is a writ-small reflection of what God requires of each of us.  The equation is simple: no one is holy like God is.  No one -- not even the perfect specimen of human fitness, physique, or symmetry; not even the most law-abiding, moral citizen.  Even the High Priest himself could only enter directly into God's presence one day of the year to offer sacrifices for the atonement of all the people, and that was only after he performed extensive acts of ritual cleansing and offered sacrifices for his own sins and those of his family.

Across the Testaments of Scripture, the standard that must be met is perfection.  Which is and always has been impossible for humankind.  You must serve God, but to properly serve God you must be perfect, and you cannot be perfect because you are a sinner.  This is the original Catch-22.  And yet, if we study the Word of God carefully and take a deep, long look into our own hearts, we cannot honestly deny that this is a self-inflicted state, not the work of a cruel, merciless deity.

Now, enter Jesus.

Jesus' earthly ministry accomplishes what we ourselves could not do.  His perfection, holiness, and obedience fulfills all the requirements of God's just demands.  Where universal sin had earned death and judgment, He came to drink the cup of the Father's just wrath to its dregs.  In so doing, He took our punishment -- our wages.  And then, His resurrection from the grave verified His power over both sin and death, enabling those of us who believe to have new, restored life.  Instead of being regarded as impure sinners, we can now be righteous in the eyes of God, cleansed thoroughly by the blood of His Son.  Where all of our moral strivings have failed, one act of righteousness has become the salvation we all desperately need (Rom 5.18).

Here's the hope that we can only see in shadow in Leviticus 21: the perfection that God requires of His priests was fulfilled in Jesus Christ.

This means we don't have to be perfect, because He was perfection for us.

That especially includes people with "blemishes" -- permanent injuries, illnesses, or debilitations.  As a matter of fact, if we look through the pages of the gospel accounts, we'll find that these are exactly the people whom Jesus spent His time touching, cleansing, and teaching.  The helpless invalids -- the spiritual and physical outcasts from their own heritage -- were the ones to whom Jesus ministered specifically.  Those whom the entire Israelite community had rejected on the basis of deformity, illness, or stigma, Jesus drew back into the community, healing their infirmities and demonstrating what life without sin, within the restored fellowship of God others, is like.

According to Mosaic law, no one with a blemish could serve as a priest, and only those of Aaron's bloodline were eligible to be priests anyway.  And yet, even those individuals who were considered worthy to don the ephod needed their own sins atoned for.  In fact, the span of the Scriptures attests to the fact that the priesthood as an institution was ultimately insufficient to completely atone for human sin anyway.  The book of Hebrews elaborates on the profound reality that Jesus' atoning work completed the task of the priesthood, removing any further need for a temporary intermediate.  This is why God Himself, the Son, became our permanent intermediate: He became our sacrifice and He became our priest (see Hebrews 4.14-8.13).  For this reason, Paul makes the case that any distinction among believers based on class or privilege has been abolished (Gal 3.28), and Peter goes on to write that all followers of Jesus Christ, once living in the outer darkness of sin and rejection, have altogether been promoted to the status of the priesthood:

But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.  Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. (1 Peter 2.9-10)

The beauty of this is that those who might once have been forbidden from serving in the capacity of a priest, whether because of a physical or a mental deformity, have now been given direct access to God by the atoning work of Jesus.  We are now able to be ministers to the faith community the way the Israelite priests ministered to the nation, regardless of blood heritage, regardless of disability, regardless of our sinful pasts.

As followers of Jesus, we all have our place in the Kingdom -- a place not determined by anyone's merit but His.

Jesus is the great equalizer.  The cross levels the entire playing field.  In the Kingdom of Heaven, there are no distinctions of sinner or saint.  Those who were once deformed have been transformed.  We are all now priests and esteemed family members, redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ.

This understanding should motivate us to have a greater compassion for both those with special needs, and also for those outside the community of faith.  As members of the royal priesthood, our responsibility is not to offer sacrifices on their behalf, but to proclaim the excellencies of light, truth, and the hope that Jesus Christ is the perfect sacrifice.

As we have been shown grace upon grace and unfathomable mercy by the God of all comfort and compassion (2 Cor 1.3), let us extend the same to the lost -- and especially to those with disabilities.

Slavery, Grace, and Usefulness

Onesimus was a slave who, after robbing his master Philemon at Colosse, fled to Rome, where he met the apostle Paul.  Under his teaching, Onesimus converted to Christianity.  After some time - and probably after some very difficult one-on-one discussions of what Onesimus needed to do - Paul sent him back to his master.  That's right.  He didn't petition Philemon to release his former slave and pardon him.  Instead, he beseeched Philemon to receive his slave back, but to consider him as a “faithful and beloved brother” - as a fellow brother and worshipper of Jesus Christ.  "Onesimus" literally means "useful" or "beneficial," and Paul's advocation on the runaway slave's behalf was that - although he had previously been useless - he would now live up to his namesake by fully offering his services to Philemon's house.  Additionally, Paul also offered to pay Philemon the amount of what had been stolen and to personally bear any other wrong Onesimus had done.

This passage of Scripture doesn't get a lot of attention unless it's from high-minded humanists who point to Paul's apparent support of the slave trade as proof that the Bible is an immoral and socially inapplicable document.  However, to the contrary, this issue of slavery is beautifully tied up in the statement the book of Philemon makes on God's grace.

There is a very real danger that lurks in interpreting Scripture through a cultural lens.  Because of our nation's history, we have a cultural understanding of slavery as an evil and cruel establishment by which the rich prosper and the enslaved suffer unspeakable wrongs, and we would be correct to remember it such.  However, we need to understand biblical slavery through their culture - not ours.  By that, I mean we can't take a cursory read of this passage and immediately judge Paul's actions as unjust because he apparently supported the institution of slavery and we understand it as evil.

There are a number of reasons why.

First of all, the biblical type of bondservant-hood to which Onesimus was committed was a gracious institution.  Slavery was designed to provide employment and protection for the poor - so that an individual owing an insurmountable debt could pay it off by working for his debtor (without pay) for an allotted period of time.  The grim alternatives included going to jail (possibly for life), having to sell members of his own family to fulfill the debt, and begging on the streets, where the individual could contract disease, be physically and emotionally abused, or even robbed of what meager possessions he still called his own.  Obviously, the options weren't good either way, but although the slaving lifestyle wasn't necessarily desirable it did provide a way for debt-forgiveness.

Before you say, "But doesn't the Bible teach an overall message of forgiveness?" remember that it also teaches personal responsibility: owning of our mistakes, confessing our wrongs, righting broken relationships, and repaying our debts.  There is as much responsibility on the part of a debtor to repay what he owed as there is on the slave master to be kind to his servants.  That is was why a better word for "slave" in the Bible is "bondservant," literally a committed slave.  Of course it would be convenient for everyone who was owed a debt to forgive it without being paid.  But realistically, not everyone is in the financial position to simply say, "You don't owe me anymore" - then or now.  There were no government bailouts in the biblical era, and therefore slavery was a means by which unpayable debts were handled.

Additionally, Mosaic law contained all sorts of provisions for protecting Jewish slaves from unfair treatment.  For example, a slave permanently maimed by his or her master was to be freed (Ex 21.26–27).  A fugitive slave was not to be extradited (Deut 23.15–16).  Foreigners could be enslaved permanently (e.g. through war, debt, etc), but they had the right to circumcision (Ex 12.44–48), Sabbath rest (Ex 20.10), and holidays (Deut 16.11, 14).  A slave owner who beat his slave to death was to be punished (Ex 21.20–21).  Furthermore, the law included the Year of Jubilee, in which "every Israelite who had sold himself because of poverty and remained unredeemed was to be freed along with his children (Lev 25.39–46).  The Year of Jubilee prevented the Israelites from oppression of one another (Lev 25.17) and gave everyone a chance for a new start.

Was the system harsh?  The answer is undoubtedly yes.  However, it exists for the same reason God allowed the Israelites the right to divorce, even though He hates it: they were going to do it anyway, and so there had to be rules to protect the individuals involved.  Of course, each system was still abused, and that was why many of the New Testament epistles include admonitions to slave owners to treat their slaves with kindness, but the fact of the matter is that man has always lived by the adage "rules are made to be broken."  Good things become bad things very quickly when we have no regard for the laws governing them.

Furthermore, slavery is very much a precursor of the modern-day employee/employer relationship.  We are all slaves to one thing or another.  You are a slave to your mortgage or your job in the same way one Israelite was slave to another for owing a debt.  Perhaps we have the choice in the modern era to quit these types of responsibilities, but even if that seems liberating it is only to our own personal detriment.  Bankruptcy, going upside-down on a home, failing to pay our taxes - these are harmful to our credit and our finances, and can result in mountains of fines and even jail time.  There's really not that much of a difference between our modern institutions and those of Mosaic slavery, save in the terminology.  Not unlike slave masters were often cruel to those in their ownership, we too are demeaned by unfair bosses, often have no say over deadlines and projects, are tasked with jobs we dislike, and can't choose to quit without risking financial instability or irreparably damaging our career.  In the most basic terms, we have a financial need that we cannot meet, so we sell ourselves to unfavorable conditions in order to obtain means that will satisfy that need.  In sum, slavery.

All that being said, here's the picture of grace which Onesimus' story - and slavery in general for that matter - provides.

We were dead in our trespasses before Christ gave us new life and purpose.  We owed him everything - a debt we could never repay.  Yet instead of laboring faithfully, we ran away, choosing to live as enemies with no interest in correcting the animosity between us and God.  We thought we were running to freedom, but really we were enslaving ourselves to a cruel taskmaster: our own sinful desires.  But then Christ came, offering himself as the full payment which we owed, bringing us Jubilee and setting us free of our bondage if we will only return to Him and give Him ourselves in wholehearted service - not because a debt still needs paying, but because we owe Him our lives anew.  In the same manner, Paul returned Onesimus to Philemon as a brother, redeemed, paying the slave's debt on his own account.  Just as the runaway slave was restored to his master, so are we restored to being part of God's kingdom.  Onesimus returned to his master's house, this time voluntarily, choosing to serve Philemon as before - except now for entirely different reasons.

"I appeal to you for my child, Onesimus, whose father I became in my imprisonment," Paul wrote to Philemon, who - by the way - was the a leader in a church body that met in his own house - the very congregation to which Onesimus was returning.  "Formerly, he was useless to you," Paul continued, "but now he is indeed useful to you and to me.  I am sending him back to you, sending my very heart."

We can get lost in arguments about social morality and why Paul would allow slavery to remain in Christian homes.  But that's not the point.  The point is that, despite our injustice, God remains faithful to us.  He meets us in our weakness and forgives us for robbing Him of our very hearts.  Now that we who believe have been redeemed - literally, "bought back" - we give our lives to Him in service.  Like Onesimus, we have become useful to Him through the stripes on the back of our Savior.