I don't know about you, but "theology" is not the first word that comes to mind when I think of Leviticus. Legal codes? yes. Instructions? yes. Odd stories? sure. But if we want to talk about theology, surely we would be better served to turn somewhere else - right?
But what is theology, after all? Is it not the study - the -ology, logos, the speaking of or about - the Theos - God? Do we really mean to say that Leviticus isn't about God, isn't about how all readers, in all times and places, can understand and relate to this God?
But what if we don't understand? What if the way that Leviticus does theology is so foreign, so other, so far-removed from our way of thinking that we can't see through the layers of language to understand what it really means?
Then that, my friends, is when the fun begins.
I. Theological Thinking
The theological thinking that informs Leviticus as a whole and should therefore underlie our thinking about it is a sort of symbol system, a right-brained, associative/analogical way of thinking (if you can never remember which side of the brain is which, and I never can, right-brainers are the creative artsy types. I think). Maybe this is why it might not seem much like theology to us, who are accustomed to sequential, linear, discursive ways of thought in all things having to do with -ology. But is that really the only way of thinking logically? What if it were more like a web of thought, in which the whole couldn't be understood from any single point, and the sum is greater than the parts? What if there was something too great to be described with words, but we could instead use words to recall images that communicate at least something about the mystery? What if it were like, as George Herbert exclaims, a constellation - "Oh that I knew how all Thy lights combine / And the configurations of their glorie! / Seeing not onely how each verse doth shine / But all the constellations of the storie."* This is what Leviticus does. Maybe I should have warned you to be sure and stretch instead of buckling your seat belts, because if you really want to learn the language it's going to give your brain one heck of a workout.
II. Symbol Systems
But in a sense, we already know how to think this way. The religious life is essentially symbol-laden, one in which we rely on symbols whenever we are approaching something too big to be explained in rationalistic terms. This is what we do when we hold up bread and wine as the body and blood of Christ. This is what we do when we come through the waters of baptism into a new family, a new community, a new birth. This is what we do when we look to the cross as the locus of our salvation, sing about "the blood of Jesus shed for me," and talk about the Word becoming flesh and making his dwelling - yes, tabernacling (sound familiar?) - among us. The language of Leviticus is precisely what we do when what we want to say cannot be said.
The particular unspeakable that Leviticus is treating is our question of how it is possible for a holy God to be present - to tabernacle - among a sinful people. We cannot pretend that something didn't go wrong back in Genesis 3, that things are as they should be. The God who walked in the garden is also the God whose presence at Sinai requires three days of preparation, of washing and readying, of boundary-fixing, who comes with thunder-sounds and lightning, a heavy cloud and the sound of the shofar (Ex 19ff). This is the God whose kavod Adonai fills the Dwelling so that even Moshe could not go in, who wipes out three thousand people when they make their own gods (Ex 32), whose fire goes out and consumes priests who bring the wrong kind of fire (Lev 10). But just as we cannot go back to the Garden and those cool morning walks, neither can we escape the loneliness, the loss, the longing. Even if this is a holiness that cannot be contained, maybe it can be - hosted? Maybe the Tabernacle can become a Garden.
So Leviticus sets to work on this task of delineating the concrete behaviors that are required to host holiness through 2 Symbol Systems, distinct yet related: the Sacrificial Cult and Purity Regulations. Both are aimed at acknowledging God in a very material way - honoring God through our bodies, through the crops that we grow and eat and wear and build our houses with, through the bodies of the animals that we raise, use, and eat.
Symbols, however, have a way of changing shape - or changing the shapes that they make us think of. The cross certainly meant something different in first century BCE Rome than it meant during the crusades or in Auschwitz or at the little white Baptist church down the road. Which brings us back to our Question: How do we understand the witness of the biblical text, and how do we appropriate that witness for ourselves?
III. Conclusion
So if Leviticus has everything to do with theology, yet insists that this theology be worked out in material, tangible ways, then we are safe to say that the essence of Israel's holiness lies precisely in that steady, material acknowledgment of God that Leviticus outlines. Leviticus belongs at the center of Torah to remind us that there is nothing abstract about holiness - if we read 19.18 just exactly the way it is written,"you shall love your neighbor," ought rather to be, "you shall act lovingly toward your neighbor" (read more about that here). Holiness has hands and feet, and moves about in the space and time that shapes our daily, material lives.
The point then, is this: Leviticus is a kind of symbol system that is a language, designed to make far-reaching and carefully nuanced statements about how the people of God embody and enact holiness. We would do well to bear this in mind as we either 1) Dismiss Leviticus and the Jewish practices it prescribes as ridiculous, or 2) Engage potentially controversial Levitical issues in the church. We must ask ourselves, "Do we understand this language well enough to engage in the conversation, or are we picking out a few phrases like tourists from a phrase book?" Or as Herbert concludes,
Such are thy secrets, which my life makes good,
And comments on thee: for in ev'ry thing
Thy words do finde me out, & parallels bring,
And in another make me understood.
Starres are poore books, & oftentimes do misse:
This book of stares lights to eternall blisse.
- George Herbert, "The Holy Scriptures II" from The Temple (1633)
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