Mother God’s Little Laws
Sermon by Sandra M.
Thomas
February 11, 2007, Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill
Exodus 39:32-43 and Leviticus 4:27-31
Hebrews 9:1-15
“When Moses saw that they had done all the work just as the Lord had commanded, he blessed them.”
If you are reading through the Old Testament with this congregation, prepare yourself for a difficult couple of weeks. Most people who try reading the
entire Bible, quit soon after the Ten Commandments are given…not because they lack faithfulness to the project, but because the materials become
[yawn] boring. As a little book titled The Presbyterian Handbook points out, none of the “60 Essential Bible Stories” come from the last half of
Exodus or any part of Leviticus. And four of the five “weirdest” laws in the Bible are from this section.
Think of it as pages and pages and pages of architectural drawings for a beautiful, portable, very functional worship space in the wilderness; followed by
pages and pages and pages of instruction for worship and for life, including:
- Wash your hands;
- Don’t eat worms
- Stay away from sick children
- Be friendly to guests
- Don’t get involved with strangers
- Share with others
- Put money into the offering plate, don’t take money out
- Don’t rip into birthday presents—save the wrapping paper
(and still you gently ease the scotch tape off presents and smooth out the paper, even though you own stock in the Hallmark Company!)
- Sleep with your hands on top of the quilt, even on the coldest night of the year
- And in the summer, when it’s 110 degrees, don’t run down the street naked
These little laws—and others passed from mother to child—help us learn to be safe, healthy and get along with others in our community. This is Leviticus!
Mother God’s little laws for living safe, healthy, happy, worshipful lives in community.
If you can endure two chapters a day, this week and the next, you will wade through more words about construction, decoration and animal sacrifice than it
took the writers of scripture to describe creation, call, flood, and the lives of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph altogether! As you find yourself
thinking “What’s the point?” recognize that the sheer volume tells us there must be a point….but what it is???
I think about those Biblical literalists, who revere every single inspired word of the King James Bible….and delight in quoting brief phrases to fit any
situation….and they don’t quote these verses….relegating them to mere descriptions of wilderness worship. As a Presbyterian however, I
have to believe that in the whole we will find the point.
What I hope you will discover this week is that these descriptions are preserved as visceral expressions of what it means to be God’s people. (And I might
add – if among us today there are members of animal rights organization – all I can say is please – I can’t defend God on this one. I too
draw back from hymns such as “There is a fountain filled with blood” and “Nothing but the blood of Jesus”. It’s not my theology.
At the same time I have to say, we are not a society that doesn’t like blood! We just don’t like it in church. We fill our eyes and ears with bloodshed on
television, both news and drama and video games. We are glued to war in living color, play by play, death after death after death. And it is not
redemptive.
We sacrifice the blood of life daily, as
- We listen with astonishment to the news of yet another murder in South Philly and check to see that our security system is armed
- Around the coffee pot at work we hear stories of people going for the jugular, “blood-letting” in divorce court and we cheer or console
- Our blood runs cold when a customer interrupts the flow of work by speaking a different language or wearing unusual clothes signifying to us
everything that is wrong in this country
- Our communities wash away the lives of the mentally ill, who live in prisons and homeless shelters rather than treatment centers, and
- As we toast in front of our fireplaces, the reality that 7000 Philadelphian families had no heat last night doesn’t faze us.
In the wilderness, as God forms a people, God institutes a way of life that doesn’t allow individuals to “not know”. God’s people live in a community that
does not allow some to recline in private luxury while others live in public shame. Mother God’s little laws command us to all together rest on one day and
all together work during the week; to live together with profit or together with loss; to travel together; to eat together; to rejoice together; to suffer
together. It is a community where behaviors have consequences and laws are upheld.
In Mother God’s community, we must recognize our role in the great achievements and our role in the pain; to see the chaos our sins have enable; to place
our hand upon the heads of very real victims and know that somehow we are part of this. Worship in the Presbyterian Church offers us weekly opportunities
to “fess” up to our sins, but seldom in these few sentences do we fell the injustice and injuries we heap upon family, community and world. Here, in these
chapters from Mother God, is a running dialogue that goes something like “Tell her you’re sorry……don’t whisper it, cross the room and look her in the eye
and tell her you’re sorry.” “I can’t hear you.”
Just when you thought you’d outgrown a meddling mother, you discover that worship in this new environment means:
- Selecting your finest asset
- Parading it through the streets on your way to the tabernacle
- Standing in public with your ox, or finest goat or a mere pigeon (depending on the gravity of your sin or the balance in your bank account)
- Placing your hand on the head of that animal, your kippur
- Rubbing into it the penalty for your behavior
- Looking it in the eye and watching as its life blood is poured out for you.
Mother God knows how hard it is to get our attention. Forgiveness may be free, but it is not cheap, not easy, not quick and not painless. In these little
laws, which we don’t want to read, mother God is saying to us: there are no victimless crimes and no isolated individual achievements. You have been
supported by the assets of this entire community….and when you sin there is a victim and it is your brother, your sister, your child, your neighbor, your
community and your world.
Today…..still……in this place of worship, we gaze into the eyes of one whose blood was shed for us and we see there – warmth and love; acceptance and the
words “Your sins are forgiven” and we know without a doubt that our lives and our behaviors have eternal significance.
Big Jerry groaned when his wife told him he had to go to the store.* It was the Sunday morning of the Super Bowl and the grocery store would be Grand
Central Station. But when he hears that one of the missing ingredients was an onion for the chili, he nods reluctantly.
“How could you forget the onion?” he muttered.
Then his wife yelled from the upstairs bedroom, “Take Little Jerry with you,” and Big Jerry knew how she could forget the onion. This was all part
of a bigger plot.
Lately Big Jerry’s wife had been on his case. He wasn’t spending enough time with his son. “He needs you, Gerard.” Always “Gerard” when there was
a lesson to be given. “Just because he’s gotten older, doesn’t mean you two have to be so far apart. He’s only eleven, you know.” Always “you know” when
she thought he didn’t know. Big Jerry did not like these chiding lectures. It made him feel that he was a bit of a fool; and anyone who had done as well
as he had in business was no fool.
Big Jerry stuck his head into the den.
“Want to go to the store?”
Little Jerry buttoned the television dead, and was at his father’s heels.
Big Jerry knew that sometime tomorrow Little Jerry’s mother would probe, “What did you and Jerry talk about when you went to the store?” She was
hoping for something significant, like the facts of life or the value of a buck.
So Big Jerry tried to get a conversation going.
“How’s school?”
“O.K.”
“How’s your basketball team doing?”
“Lousy.”
“What were you watching on T.V.?”
“A movie.”
Big Jerry put his foot on the gas. This is normal; he thought to himself, this is normal.
At the store the onion – a whole bag of onions in fact – was scooped up. They also found nuts, chips, dip, diet Coke, pie crust mix, apples and
something called nutmeg.
When they turned out of the last aisle, they saw the people. The line at the Quick Mart check-out counter was over ten people long.
“Grand Central Station,” muttered Big Jerry.
“What?” asked Little Jerry.
“Lots of people.”
“Yeah.”
The cashier was a teenage boy and he was carrying on a conversation with the neighboring cashier, a teenage girl. It was about a party both had
been to and both had hated. To Big Jerry’s ears every other word was “boring” and “dah.”
More work and less talk, thought Big Jerry. He noticed the other people in line were giving each other exasperated looks. Big Jerry began to
mumble under his breath. He noticed the cashier had a bad case of acne.
By the time they got to the front, Big Jerry was steaming. But he said nothing. He just put a fifty dollar bill on the counter.
The cashier, happily gabbing away, rang up a $19.95 charge. When Big Jerry saw how much it was, he picked up his fifty and put down a twenty.
The cashier did not notice the switch and gave him $30.05 in change. Big Jerry hesitated. This kid deserved to be taken, he thought. Little Jerry
was at his side.
“I gave you a twenty,” Big Jerry said.
“No you didn’t. You gave me a fifty.”
“I gave you a twenty.”
“I saw the fifty,” the cashier insisted.
“Look in the drawer!” Big Jerry’s words came out as a growl between clenched teeth.
The cashier checked. “Oh yeah.” He took all but the five cents back.
In the parking lot a man came up behind Big Jerry and his son. “You should have taken that jerk for the thirty.”
In the car Little Jerry said to his father, “That was cool, Dad.” And he began to talk – about school, about basketball, about the movie he was
watching on T.V.
Big Jerry tried to listen, but he didn’t hear much. Two insights, in rapid succession, filled his mind:
1) If Little Jerry hadn’t been there, he would have grabbed the thirty bucks and walked.
2) His wife was wrong. Little Jerry didn’t need him: he needed Little Jerry.
As they walked into the house, still chatting, Mom….busy in the kitchen, knew that something had changed.
*story by John Shea (modified for the season) in The Spirit Master (out of print)
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