The Park Forum

Links for today’s readings:

Read: Leviticus 18 Listen: (3:46) Read: Acts 14 Listen: (3:54)

Scripture Focus: Leviticus 18.24-28

24 “ ‘Do not defile yourselves in any of these ways, because this is how the nations that I am going to drive out before you became defiled. 25 Even the land was defiled; so I punished it for its sin, and the land vomited out its inhabitants. 26 But you must keep my decrees and my laws. The native-born and the foreigners residing among you must not do any of these detestable things, 27 for all these things were done by the people who lived in the land before you, and the land became defiled. 28 And if you defile the land, it will vomit you out as it vomited out the nations that were before you.

Reflection: Older Than the Old Way

By John Tillman

There’s an argument that the biblical sexual ethic is old and outdated. “That was the old way. Now we must think about sex in a new way.” The truth is more complicated.

Biblical sexuality is the “original” idea from page one of the Bible, but we rejected it on page two and never looked back. There is nothing “new” about the modern sexual climate. Sex has always been abused by the powerful, made a tool of addiction and manipulation, peddled for money, intertwined with slavery, and unlimited in its scope. This free-for-all leaves casualties and abuse in its wake.

Sexual ethics go beyond personal choices. God says the land, the dirt we came from, is affected by our defilement of one another. When we mistreat each other, the land itself gets sick. Creation is not inanimate, unaffected matter. “Cursed is the ground,” God says. And why? “Because of you.” (Genesis 3.17; 4.10-12)

When the only sexual limit is consent, human bodies, souls, and emotions are just hills to be mined or streams to be tapped. Secure the mineral and water rights; take what you want. Strip mine, clear cut, dam them up, dry them up, poison them…who cares? They signed on the dotted line. This is the old way. But older than the old way, is God’s way.

Current cultural sexual ethics are old, but in every age, God carved out for himself people to be different—to return to Eden, little by little. (Matthew 19.4; Mark 10.5-6)

In Leviticus, God instructs his people to be distinct in how they practice everything from handling money to how to treat one another’s bodies. God’s language centers on care for others, respect, and self-control. No one group is singled out. God’s people must be distinct from the pattern of normality all around them. “What is normal for them, must not be normal for you. What seems natural to them, must not be natural to you.”

This didn’t start in Leviticus. Throughout the Bible, there is a consistent pattern of God subverting the cultural norms of sex among those who follow him. God worked gradually and people followed imperfectly. They consistently followed culture rather than him, but God worked with and among them even amidst failure.

We are a part of this people. We may fail at times, but if we continually turn to him, he will continue to undo our curses and make us blessings to our land.

Divine Hours Prayer: The Greeting

Have mercy on me, O Lord, for I am in trouble, my eye is consumed with sorrow, and also my throat and my belly. — Psalm 31.9

– Divine Hours prayers from The Divine Hours: Prayers for Springtime by Phyllis Tickle.

Read more: It’s in the Bible

If we look carefully, we can see God actively disrupting cultural assumptions and human traditions that people in scripture accepted as normal.

Read more: Beyond Consent

May each of us submit every part of our identities, including our sexuality, to God’s calling in our lives.

Links for today’s readings:

Read: Leviticus 13 Listen: (9:34) Read: Acts 9 Listen: (6:05)

Scripture Focus: Leviticus 13:2

2 “When anyone has a swelling or a rash or a shiny spot on their skin that may be a defiling skin disease, they must be brought to Aaron the priest or to one of his sons who is a priest.

Reflection: The Stigma of Disease

By Erin Newton

When my son came home from the hospital, he had a glaring, visible physical disability. There would be no hiding this. We were prepared to have a child with disabilities, but after months of medical treatment, we realized his disease would be a billboard.

Stigma comes with diseases and disabilities. People form conclusions and assumptions without information. My love for our son was no less the day he received his tracheostomy, but I knew the stares and whispers would come the moment we stepped out of the building. I imagined them saying, Who sinned, this boy or his parents? (John 9.1-3)

Leviticus 13, unfortunately, has been misunderstood as support for associating disease with moral failure. A series of scale diseases are listed: things that cause discoloration, shiny marks, boils, burns, even baldness. Long ago, these descriptions were misidentified with leprosy, or Hansen’s disease. Combined with stories of scale diseases inflicted on a person for sin, such as Miriam in response to her criticism against Moses (Numbers 12), modern readers began to assume that God judged all those suffering from Hansen’s disease.

Diseases affecting the skin are not the only ones to carry such stigma. Amy Kenny (My Body Is Not a Prayer Request) details how people in the church have approached her with remedies or assessments of her faith just because of her disability.

How do we read Leviticus 13?

The visual aspect of scale diseases resembled skin peeling away. It was a reflection of death; it reminded them of decay. Death has no place in the presence of God. It was not a moral judgment on the person with boils but a recognition that death deteriorates the body. God bestows life and order; death brings decay and disorder.

More than anything, we must read these chapters with eyes heavenward. We are not being given a rulebook on how to judge others based on disease or disability. This chapter points up to God by pointing down toward death.

Diseases should ignite our sympathy, not our stigma.

And what of those that have no “scales” to the naked eye? What reaction will I get when I tell you of my anxiety or my OCD?

Learning to see the world through the eyes of God means being quick with sympathy and slow with accusations. It means knowing the real enemy is the disorder brought on by death and not pinpointing supposed faults.

Divine Hours Prayer: The Call to Prayer

The Lord is near to those who call upon him, to all who call upon him faithfully.
He fulfills the desire of those who fear him; he hears their cry and helps them.
The Lord preserves all those who love him, but he destroys all the wicked. — Psalm 145.19-21

– Divine Hours prayers from The Divine Hours: Prayers for Springtime by Phyllis Tickle.

Read more: Spiritual Twins

Each twin is a perfect donor match to the other. They can heal one another if needed. A better “eye for an eye.”

Consider Supporting Our Work

Our work can only continue with donor support. Small monthly donations, the size of your streaming subscriptions, make a huge difference.

Links for today’s readings:

Read: Leviticus 11-12 Listen: (7:20) Read: Acts 8 Listen: (5:10)

Scripture Focus: Leviticus 12.6-7

6 “ ‘When the days of her purification for a son or daughter are over, she is to bring to the priest at the entrance to the tent of meeting a year-old lamb for a burnt offering and a young pigeon or a dove for a sin offering.  7 He shall offer them before the Lord to make atonement for her, and then she will be ceremonially clean from her flow of blood.

Reflection: Our Purifying Sacrifice

By John Tillman

Ritual impurity or “uncleanness” is not about a “gross” factor. God created women’s bodies, sex, childbirth, blood, and normal bodily functions and is not grossed out by them.

As Lindsey Ponder writes in the notes for the Bible Project podcast episode on the topic, “Ritual impurity is any sign of death, decay, and life outside of Eden (it’s not about a person’s sin). Israel’s laws regarding purity and impurity kept life and death—their own mortality—ever present before them. Because Yahweh is the creator and sustainer of all life, anything dying or exhibiting signs of decay can’t be in his presence.”

When Cain spilled Abel’s blood, the ground cried out, not because it was gross but because death claimed its first human victim. (Genesis 4.10) Blood from the experience of childbirth is also a cry to God. It is the cry of Eve, ever suffering and risking death to bring forth life, anticipating the day that her seed crushes the serpent’s head. (Genesis 3.15-16)

The women “purified” according to Leviticus 12 were purified from a battle with death, not from sin or grossness. Thus Mary, who carried Eve’s seed to term and delivered Jesus, made this sacrifice to celebrate her battle won. (Luke 2.22-24)

Like the Israelites, we live in an unclean world, marked by death and decay. Childbirth is not the only way that we “bleed” in our struggle against sin and death. Our bodies cry out from our first breaths to our last. We “touch” death, or are touched by it, in daily life.

Eve and Mary were called to carry Jesus to the world and so are we. A sword pierced Mary’s soul. (Luke 2.35) We will be no different. When contending for the gospel, standing for the truth, and serving and loving sinners, sin, death, and decay oppose us. They touch us. They can harm us.

Harm may come from enemies or friends who resist righteousness or refuse to see the truth. Suffering insults, frustrations, losses, or deaths, both literal or emotional, we may be embittered, angered, or injured.

We may be tainted by the world’s touch, but Jesus never is. He touches the unclean and cleanses them, speaks to the dead and awakens them.

Whatever harms you encounter, whenever sin, death, or decay touch you, take time to be purified. Be purified in the arms of Jesus, our purifying sacrifice.

Divine Hours Prayer: The Small Verse

Keep me, Lord, as the apple of your eye and carry me under the shadow of your wings.

– Divine Hours prayers from The Divine Hours: Prayers for Springtime by Phyllis Tickle.

Read more: Separateness Not Superiority

The Spirit of Christ is within us and we are his body. We have Christ’s power to touch the unclean and make them clean.

Consider Supporting Our Work

Our work needs your support. For the cost of one of your streaming service subscriptions, you can be a vital monthly donor.