Contagion

Pr. Jasmine Waring

May 15, 2022

As my seminary journey comes to an end, I’m reflecting on what a unique and challenging experience it has been going to school full-time, interning part-time, and trying to live a normal life through a pandemic. Much of my seminary and internship experience has been defined by COVID-19, for better or for worse. My professors and supervisors have adapted the curriculum to accommodate and learn from this strange experience. One unexpected resource I found was the Book of Leviticus. The Book of Leviticus is of course everyone’s favorite book of the Bible. This book is an instruction manual for priests, which teaches priests in training how to perform rituals and keep the Law. Some of the instructions found in Leviticus are actually pretty relevant today. Leviticus 13 give instructions on how to diagnose a serious and contagious skin disease and requires those effected to quarantine for seven days. They are also required to wash all of their clothes, their body, and their home after they are healed, along with a sacrifice and purification ritual. Don’t worry, I won’t be performing any sacrifices or purification rituals today! The Torah, or the Law of Moses, which contains Leviticus, is as practical as it is spiritual. It is often misunderstood by modern day Christians. The purity and holiness laws have been misinterpreted by Christians as a judgement on personal morality. We have come to believe that purity is holiness, when in fact they are two separate categories. Purity is manageable. You can become ritually unclean through everyday activities such as being in contact is a dead person or bodily fluids, but there was a process you can go through to be clean again. Although those activities were morally neutral, there were also moral transgressions that would make you unclean, but there was also a process to become clean or right-standing again. Purity was preparation to encounter the holy. Holiness means to be set apart, it is transcendent otherness. The opposite of holiness is profane, simply common, or ordinary, which is not a moral failing. Only God is holy, but God can sanctify, or extend holiness to people, places, and things. If something is holy, then it belongs to God’s holy realm. The reason why ancient Judaism was so concerned about purity/impurity and the holy/ common is because the Torah is a gift from God that brings eternal life. It protects God’s people from the forces of Death. Death was almost contagious, it can infect any part of life and make us unclean. Blood however, was believed to be the source of life, or one’s life-force, and it had the ability to purge sin and the forces of Death. The rituals and commands in Torah helped manage sin and the forces of Death so that the Israelites can be in community with a Holy God. Its very common Christian belief that Jesus didn’t really follow these rules. When we read about Jesus’ healing ministry and how he was touching leapers, dead bodies, a woman with a bleeding issue, and a demon-possessed man living in a graveyard. It is very easy to jump to the conclusion that Jesus came to destroy the Law and get away from “religion” and villainize the Pharisees. These beliefs are anti-semitic, and it is something that I have had to repent from because I didn’t know better. Jesus was devoutly Jewish and faithfully kept Torah. In fact, there is a lot of evidence in the Bible that affirms that Jesus was a Pharisee. Pharisees were reformers! They were the movement that has led to modern day Judaism and Christianity. The conflict Jesus had with other Pharisees was in-group, not pointing his finger in judgement of a different religious group. So when Jesus was seemingly crossing ritual purity lines in his healing ministry, he was not violating the Law. In Christ’s divinity, he was extending holiness. Just like how in Leviticus, the blood in cleansing rituals was used to purge impurities, Christ became a contagion of holiness and blasts away the forces of sin and Death. Whenever anyone came in contact with him, even touching the hem of his garment he was infecting them with holiness. More specifically, Christ extended holiness to the margins of society: widows, orphans, disabled, poor, and sick. In his humanity, Jesus’ blood was shed on a cross, and his life force came into contact with Death, making even Death holy. In the moment when Jesus cried, “It is finished” Death lost its sting when it became infected with God’s holiness. So when we look at our reading today, we see Peter was caught up in a mystical experience that challenged his beliefs and tradition. He saw various animals that were both clean (Kosher) and unclean being lowered by a sheet, and a voice told him to have a snack. He gives a very pious answer, saying that he has never eaten anything profane or unclean. But then the voice replies, “What God has made clean, you must not call profane”. The Holy Spirit is at work within Peter, questioning everything he’s been taught, and it’s causing him to interrogate his tradition. To make matters worse, Jesus isn’t there in the flesh to answer his questions for him! But then Peter’s mystical existential experience became an incarnated reality. He was faced with a choice: To follow his tradition, or follow the voice and include gentiles into the community of God. Peter follows the voice as he is led to the home of gentiles, and the Holy Spirit fell upon them just like She did at Pentecost, and he is reminded of John the Baptist’s words about baptism. Holiness was being extended to the gentiles! Now Peter must take this mystical and embodied experienced back to his faith community, and explain what God is doing. Of course there was push-back, because sometimes God’s holiness extends to uncomfortable and scandalous places. There was a lot of in-group arguing, and probably some biases needed to be checked, and scriptures revisited…but they could not deny what the Holy Spirit was doing. Who were they to hinder what God was doing? Christ is a contagion of holiness, who confronts our experiences, causes us to lovingly critique our traditions, and look at scripture with new eyes. Who or what are you calling profane, that God has made clean? There is so much in-group fighting within Christianity, and even in Lutheranism (believe it or not). Gun control, abortion, transgender healthcare, white supremacy…who is Christ extending holiness to in these spaces? Perhaps you are the one being marginalized and feel unclean or common, even profane. May you receive the life-force of Christ in the wine May you honor your embodied experience in the bread And may you be infected by Christ’s holiness, because you belong in God’s holy realm. Amen