The Park Forum

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.”

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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.

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Links for today’s readings:

Read: Leviticus 10 Listen: (3:25) Read: Acts 7 Listen: (8:49)

Scripture Focus: Leviticus 10.1, 19-20

1 …they offered unauthorized fire before the Lord, contrary to his command. 2 So fire came out from the presence of the Lord and consumed them, and they died before the Lord.

Reflection: Much Given, Much Expected

By John Tillman

Some twist the deaths of Nadab and Abihu to condemn actions they want to condemn.

For example, some use it to critique any innovation or change in modern liturgies or worship, some point to 10.9 to try to make this a passage supporting teetotalism, etc. But this passage is not here for us to use to condemn our pet peeves or support our moral preferences.

In scripture, the simplest answer is usually the best, and the simplest explanation of what happened to them is not some secret hinted-at sin, but simply willful disobedience by those who should know better.

They go before the Lord, together, when only one is supposed to enter. They go before the Lord in place of Aaron, their father. In place of fire from the altar, they use fire from another source. Scripture emphasizes this “strange” or “unauthorized” fire as the main reason for their deaths. They do all this knowingly and willfully.

They had just been through (and we have just read) an extraordinarily long and complex ritual training which included warnings that this exact thing could happen. (Exodus 19.22)  Nevertheless, they ignored all they had just learned, and did things in an unauthorized way.

All sin falls under the same spiritual punishment, but not all sins bring the same severity of consequences in our earthly lives. Willful, purposeful sin is treated differently in scripture than just “being sinful” or committing “unknowing” sins. Anytime we know what is right, yet knowingly, purposefully do something else, we exponentially multiply our commitment to sin and rebellion against God.

The severity of the penalty Abihu and Nadab suffer is related to the level of knowledge and revelation they had and the level of position and responsibility they were given. Jesus said to the Pharisees, “If you were blind, you would not be guilty of sin; but now that you claim you can see, your guilt remains.” (John 9.41) To whom much is given, much is expected. (Luke 12.47-48)

If Abihu and Nadab were given much, how much more have we been given?

We serve a greater High Priest, who offered greater sacrifice, for a greater temple, so we bear a greater responsibility.

We, as priests under Jesus Christ, have been given more than they.
May we knowingly obey rather than knowingly rebel.
May we minister in ways that honor all that we have been given in Jesus.

Divine Hours Prayer: A Reading

Then he went into the Temple and began driving out those who were busy trading, saying to them, “According to scripture, ‘my house shall be a house of prayer’ but you have turned it into ‘a bandit’s den.’” — Luke 19.45-46

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

Read more: Wandering Sin

“Wandering” or “unintentional” sins must be dealt with once one becomes aware of them, otherwise, they become “rebellious” sins.

Read more: Much Demanded

God judges those with little lightly and those with much heavily. This should be sobering to us who are greatly privileged.