Tag Archives: Leviticus 17

No Exemptions

March 11, 2025 Tom Vander Well Leave a comment

“Say to them: ‘Any Israelite or any foreigner residing among them who offers a burnt offering or sacrifice and does not bring it to the entrance to the tent of meeting to sacrifice it to the Lord must be cut off from the people of Israel.
Leviticus 17:19 (NIV)

A lot has changed in the last 40 years. I among the last of those who will remember growing up in a world without personal computers and smart phones. I have so many great memories of spending entire summers outside with friends, neighborhood kids playing games, and just making up stuff to do. I rode my bike everywhere, including places I wasn’t necessarily supposed to be, just to explore my world. Then there were entire days at the swimming pool. The only screen my family had was a giant console television in the living room. There were a total of four channels to choose from for most of my childhood. I was excited when it rose to five somewhere along the line.

The dawn of the Technology Age changed life drastically. As with all such revolutionary changes in history, the progress comes with fallout. Jonathan Haidt and his team at AfterBabel have been on the forefront of studying and calling out the negative effects that smartphones and screens have had on our children. AI has prompted legislation regarding the creation and publication of fake nude or pornographic photos/videos of individuals which can instantly destroy a person’s life and reputation once they are publicly available on the internet. Technology has also afforded governments the ability to electronically freeze a person out of their bank account with a click and without a court order. When the prophet Dylan sang The Times They are a Changin’ I’m not sure he had any idea how prophetic his lyrics would be beyond his own generation and within his own lifetime.

I have also seen the massive changes in institutional churches. The Technology Age and the cultural shifts in its wake have seen the fracturing and implosion of all the mainline denominations who held sway over lives, churches, colleges, and communities for centuries. Here in rural America, countless country churches have closed their doors. My own local congregation, once a mainline denominational stalwart, has found itself an independent gathering of believers from an incredibly diverse spectrum of denominational backgrounds and traditions. This is forcing our gathering to reconsider everything that many comfortably believed and traditionally experienced in their weekly worship their entire lives. Everything I’ve just described may sound doom and gloom, but I actually see the hand of God in it. The entire Great Story is about a cycle of life, death, and new life. Old things pass away, and new things come. Something is being spiritually born again on a corporate community level, and I’ve been watching it happen in real time. That excites me.

Everything we’ve been reading in our chapter-a-day journey through Leviticus is as equally revolutionary for the Hebrew people as the Technology Age has been for the entire world. For centuries the Hebrew tribes had been doing pretty much whatever they wanted to do, however they wanted to do it. There was no set sacrificial or religious system other than traditions that had been passed down, and that might have looked different from one family to another. Now, the God of their fathers is in their midst. He showed up, made Himself known, delivered them from slavery, and He is always present in His traveling tent temple at the center of their camp. Leviticus is His guide for life and sacrifice.

In today’s chapter, God prohibits old ways of sacrifice. In some cases, Hebrews were making sacrifices to God on their own, in their own way, however they’d chosen to do it. In other cases, people made sacrifices to other gods who they’d learned about in Egypt or other cultures.

That was then. This is now. The Times They are a Changin’. God has told His people how He wants offerings and sacrifices done in His presence at His tent. He is creating a unified people who will be His representatives to the nations of the world. All sacrifices and offerings come to Him, and Him alone at the entrance to His tent. No exemptions.

In the quiet this morning, I see echoes of the same revolutionary recreation that Jesus prompted in His teaching, death, and resurrection. He radically changed the paradigm. The temple that replaced the tent was destroyed. He sent His Spirit to indwell every individual who believes and receives, making our very own bodies His temple. No longer do we go to a central location to be with God, we take God with us wherever we go. In addition, Jesus distilled all of God’s commands that we’re reading about in to two essential regulations. I am to love God with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength, and I am to love others as I love myself. In the same spirit as today’s chapter, there are no exemptions. I am not exempt from loving others. I can’t go along with most of it and then have this little hatred, prejudice, or animosity on the side. Loving God means forgiving others as God has forgiven me. There are no exemptions because Jesus claimed no exemptions when His love compelled Him to willingly suffer and die for every human being.

In my spiritual journey I have had to embrace the truth that whenever I hate another person or refuse to forgive another person, I diminish and profane what Jesus did on the cross. What He did on the cross He did for me and the person I hate, judge, and condemn. My hatred, judgement, and condemnation is essentially me, in my pride, making myself god and pronouncing judgment instead of surrendering myself to Him.

If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.

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Chapter-a-Day

Bloody Thoughts

August 11, 2016 Tom Vander Well Leave a comment

For the life of a creature is in the blood, and I have given it to you to make atonement for yourselves on the altar; it is the blood that makes atonement for one’s life.
Leviticus 17:11 (NRSV)

I grew up delivering newspapers. As a young boy I helped my older brothers on their “paper route.” When I was old enough, I had my own. By the age of eleven I was helping my buddy Scott with his route. Scott delivered both the Des Moines Register (morning) and the Des Moines Tribune (afternoon) to the Veterans Hospital in our neighborhood. When Scott was on vacation, I covered his route.

It was the mid-1970s. Veterans Hospital was filled with aging World War II veterans as well as young men who had only recently endured the horrors of Vietnam. I would carry an armload of newspapers to the ward rooms at the end of the corridor on each floor. The giant rooms held 10-12 beds. I would shout “Paper!” and wait to see if any of the patients indicated they wanted one.

For a young kid, the experience was chalk full of intensive life lessons. Delivering papers at “Vets” was a crash course in harsh realities. Old men lay naked on beds, shaking, and crying out in hallucinations. Former soldiers suffering from various mental issues were tied to beds to protect them from themselves. “Hey kid! There’s a hundred dollar bill in that drawer over there. If you untie me, you can have it.” Men coughing up mucus and blood. Men speaking through the strange robotic device that allowed speech through the tube protruding from their trachea. Then there was the time Scott showed me the splattered blood and chalk outline on the pavement just outside the hospital’s back entrance where a veteran had jumped out an upper floor window to his death.

I’ve always found it odd when people pass out at the sight of blood. I’ve never been bothered by it. Perhaps it was those early experiences at Veteran’s hospital. Perhaps it’s because blood has been consistently present in my family’s back story.

My twin brothers were born at a small town hospital in Le Mars, Iowa. They were born breach (feet first) and my mother experienced severe internal hemorrhaging in the process. The hospital needed blood to keep her alive. The local radio station put out a call for donors. Farmers came in from the field. Shopkeepers left their stores. Their sacrifice kept my mother alive. I’m here because of their blood. My father made a commitment to be a regular blood donor in gratitude of the blood sacrifice others made to save my mother’s life. I grew up watching my dad bring home t-shirts, coffee mugs and lapel pins that announced his ever, increasing count of gallons of blood donated.

The ancient Levitical sacrificial system was based on blood. Blood carries oxygen through our bodies and with it, life. The loss of blood means the loss of life. Blood is integral to God’s story. The consequence of sin is death. The spiritual solution is sacrifice. The blood sacrifice brings life from death.

This morning I’m thinking about blood, life, and death. I’m remembering blood splattered on the pavement in a gruesome scene of death. I’m thinking about the sacrifice of blood that gave my mother life years before I was even a thought in my parents minds. I’m thinking about the time, energy and blood my father shed over the years in gratitude and the desire to pay it forward. There is a hymn from my childhood running through my mind…

Would you be whiter, much whiter than snow?
There’s pow’r in the blood, pow’r in the blood;
Sin-stains are lost in its life-giving flow;
There’s wonderful pow’r in the blood.

Chapter-a-Day

Chapter-a-Day Leviticus 17

May 23, 2011 Tom Vander Well 1 Comment

: Image via Wikipedia

This is so the Israelites will bring to God the sacrifices that they’re in the habit of sacrificing out in the open fields. Leviticus 17:5a (MSG)

We are creatures of habit. In fact, we’re selfish creatures of habit. We want things the way we want them, and in a largely consumer-driven economy, we’re used to getting what we want, when we want it, how we want it served. I found out recently that our local body of Jesus followers is eliminating the worship service which Wendy and I have faithfully attended the past several years. It’s become our worship home and an integral part of this leg of our faith journey. We’ve built community there. We’ve connected to God and others there. We’ve grown spiritually and matured there. We’ve served God and others there. Now, our service is being eliminated and two services will be offered at two different times in its place.

The news creates a heady mixture of emotions in me. Frustration and anger are easily identified emotions on the surface, but as I trace the emotions to their roots I find grief and the pain that comes from feeling slighted. I don’t think that this is a bad decision. In fact, I can see that it’s likely to be a good decision long-term for our church as a whole. Nevertheless, like a child I tend to react negatively when decisions are made inconsiderate of how it affects me or makes me feel. We are selfish creatures of habit in a consumer driven society. I’m used to having my feelings and expectations considered in surveys, discussed in focus groups, and catered to in products and services. When something is taken away from us irregardless of our feelings, we tend to get annoyed. Just last night Wendy complained to me about her facial scrub which was recently removed from the market by the people at Neutrogena and replaced with something she doesn’t like. We like what we like and we don’t want someone taking it away.

Even as I process these feelings I am fully aware that a change of course, whether freely chosen or forced upon me, leads to a change in scenery, a new perspective of the landscape, and new vistas which open up on the horizon. I will grieve what I leave behind, but am grateful for the rich seeds of faith this stretch of the journey has planted in me. Those seeds will continue to germinate and bear fruit in the months and years to come. A new course creates new opportunities, new challenges, and offers new promise. That’s exciting.

I think about these things this morning as I imagine the people of Israel who’ve lived their entire lives with no religious structure but those they developed on their own. Their lives in Egypt offered them an open market of gods and idols, sacrifices and practices to choose from. They had gotten used to worshipping whichever god they chose to worship in their tents, in their fields, or among their flocks. They were used to worshipping whichever god they wanted whenever and however they wanted. Now, Moses had forcefully delivered God’s religious rule book and it demanded that they only offer sacrifices to the one true God, whose name was so holy it could not be uttered, at one specified place in the prescribed fashion. I’m sure there was a large and angry outcry from among the people. We are, after all, selfish creatures of habit.

Today, I am at once grieving the loss that change brings and excited for the opportunity which it promises.