Scripture: Leviticus 25:1-24; 35-38
Dear Church,
The summer before I headed off to college, I told my youth pastor that I wanted to read the entire Bible. He said, ‘that’s great–but don’t waste your time with Leviticus, it’s got nothing to do with Jesus.’ In my youth pastor’s defense, I’m certain he just didn’t want me to get overwhelmed by the sheer volume of complicated descriptions of the proper way to hem the garment of the high priest and give up on Bible reading altogether. In a real way, he was right–we really should be focusing first and primarily on the gospels and the words of Jesus.
BUT…
The revelations preserved in Leviticus have everything to do with Jesus. In fact, the words of Jesus’ first sermon, ”The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor’ are a quote from the prophet Isaiah who was himself quoting, you guessed it, portions of the book of Leviticus. Specifically, verses from Leviticus 25 which contains God’s commands to the people about how to use the land, how to treat the poor and powerless and the forgiveness of debt.
In other words, Leviticus gives us a detailed description of God’s economy. And how we use resources, live, work, use money and respond to the poor are some of the things Jesus talks about most. Because God calls us to a faith that shapes all our choices and is enacted in our daily lives. As the scholar Richard Boyce puts it, when the chosen people live by the precepts in the book of Leviticus ‘God’s light shines as brightly in the sales of property as in the sounds of prayer.’
Everything that exists is a gift from our generous Creator. How we think about God is often more accurately revealed by what we choose to do with God’s gifts than by the words we pray and the theology we claim to believe.
The precepts of God’s economy laid out in Leviticus 25 are wild! It’s almost impossible to imagine how different life would be if we took them seriously. Just this week, the Wall Street Journal reported that the United States, which has the most powerful and prosperous economy in the world, is on track to set a new record of 650 thousand unhoused people living on the streets. So it’s worth spending some time soberly contemplating whose version of an economy is actually unimaginable.
Peace,
Pastor Kate
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