Week 1 - Worship

Leviticus

Leviticus 6:8–13 CEB

The Lord said to Moses: Command Aaron and his sons: This is the Instruction for the entirely burned offering—the entirely burned offering that must remain on the altar hearth all night until morning, while the fire is kept burning. The priest will dress in his linen robe, with linen undergarments on his body. Because the fire will have devoured the entirely burned offering on the altar, he must remove the ashes and place them beside the altar. The priest will then take off his clothes, dress in a different set of clothes, and take the ashes outside the camp to a clean location. The altar fire must be kept burning; it must not go out. Each morning the priest will burn wood on it, will lay out the entirely burned offering on it, and will completely burn the fat of the well-being offering on it. A continuous fire must be kept burning on the altar; it must not go out.

When you read through the book of Leviticus you will quickly notice it’s theme, holiness. The phrase “holiness of the Lord” is made 152 times within the book of Leviticus. Holiness is a lot of things to a lot of different people. Holiness is right thought for some, it is right action for another. Holiness is being prepared for Godliness for some and that is cleanliness to a lot of mothers out there, oh yeah and to a lot of Jewish faithful.

This week we will begin looking into one of the most complicated, hopeful, messy and insightful books in the Bible, Leviticus. This week we want to start with worship. Worship is different for us today in many different forms and functions. Worship was vastly different for the people of God back in the days of Leviticus as they wrestled with a series of commandments and laws that dictated the relationship of worship with different variants of purpose and need. Some of the ways of worship would be familiar to us, there would be songs sung, scriptures shared and people would pray. Other actions of worship would be different in that people would come to the altar of God not expecting to receive the offering as we celebrate it in baptism or communion but to make offerings of grain or animals.

Picturing the scene of the scriptures today I cannot help but imagine a camp fire. I can almost taste the smoke and smell the lingering fragrance of cooked stakes on a grill. I imagine this with hopefulness as what the scene must have been like yet I cannot comprehend the overpowering nature of the aromas that must have been present to the worshipers due to the large amounts of people who had to come to worship.

Worship is full of Ritual

For the scripture we read this morning it can be a powerfully sensory experience.

I described it how I related to it. For a Jewish person at the temple they might give some of the same discriptors but they will give so much more.

The same goes for our worship.

What do we do that evokes your emotions?

Music, order, candles… easy stuff.

What about the smell of the building, the wooden pews and the hanging lights?

What about the taste of sweet breads and Welches Grape Juice?

Our worship is full of ritual, why?

We use ritual in worship because in the pattern we learn obedience to God. It’s not that God needs us to do any one of these ritual things described in Leviticus, but God does need our obedience in even the mundane cleaning of ashes.

How are you practicing obedience in your life and faith?

Our worship is full of ritual because of the way our sensory connections bring us back…

I found a blanket of a dog of ours Chessey who we had to put down in 2013 about a year later and it still smelled like her and I was instantly brought back to memories of hugging that dog. It was powerful, it made me cry. My senses are rooted in memory. Our rituals bring us back to memories we need and they are powerful.

What happens when ritual changes?

I ask this because I am always making changes, or at least that is the perception. But so to did God. The rituals was made evident in certain times and places for people in those times and places and God would offer new rituals, new traditions and new commandments in Christ at different times. The rituals of the church have changed through the years since Christ as well.

We moved our holidays around other ones because they were powerful to those outside the church and we wanted them to be powerful in a new way… it was to do God’s work.

We have changed worship styles as people and education change. Jesus read and taught in a mode that fit his time. The church invented stainglass in a time when people couldn’t read but needed to memorize the scriptures because the times when children memorized them had changed.

Music changed as new instruments were invented, some just for church and some brought in and now made holy.

Church used to not even have any seats, I imagine that worship was different in that day!

Yet Ritual remained!

Ritual remains because it connects us to God

This morning we will participate in a very old ritual with some very new aspects. We are invited into the newness as we remember our own baptism.

We, having been here live, on Facebook live, or recorded and seen later will have worshiped God and that is the purpose of what is going on here! Now! In that temple all those centuries ago.

For that we give thanks to God.