You guys. We did it. This is the last parsha of the book of Leviticus. I can’t even pretend that I’m not thrilled to move on, because I am, I am thrilled. Like most people, I find Leviticus very tedious, cumbersome, repetitive, and simply difficult to get through. But we did. We came through it, this is our final week on the Book of Leviticus, before next week, when we pick up in the wildness narrative, and move onto the Book of Numbers.
This weeks double parsha (another double parsha!) deal with laws for the land, the Jubilee year, and laws on conducting business with your neighbor. All is good, all is fine. One line really stuck out to me in chapter 25: Do not wrong one another, but fear your God; for I the ETERNAL am your God (25:17)
I love that because it’s so incredibly obvious, do not wrong one another, but also, maybe it’s not. Because we wrong people all the time. We wrong our loved ones, when we lash out, or make careless choices. We wrong our friends when we’re flaky or don’t reach out as often as we should. We wrong our community when we walk by trash we find on the street or shop on Amazon instead of the local businesses in our neighborhood. We wrong a stranger in a coffee shop when don’t return the smile or the warm greeting. And these are just small potatoes faux pas incidents. Just something that stuck in my mind.
And finally, it was hard to sit with the final stretch of Leviticus, mainly because chapter 26 is really tough to read. God is saying that if we do not obey His laws, His commandments, some pretty terrible things will happen, He will inflict misery upon us; fevers, enemies to dominate us, the land will not yield produce, and beasts to wipe out our cattle. Oh, and discipline seven-fold for sins. And pestilence. It’s a pretty grim warning, and I don’t know how to process it.
What I do know, is that God is desperate – for a lack of a better word – to have a close relationship with us. I think about the parent child relationship, all we want is a close, loving relationship with our children, right? Every parents dream. And that is how God feels about us, our sinning, awful selves. He loves us, and wants nothing more than to be close to us. So I think it’s important to keep that in mind when we read chapter 26. Because as a parent, what I want most is closeness with my children: for them to trust me, to live well, to grow into kindness, responsibility, and awareness of others. Not obedience born out of fear, but a relationship that is rooted in love and trust.
And so I struggle with the idea of fear as the primary motivator here. If a child only follows rules because they are afraid of punishment, that isn’t really the relationship I’m trying to build. My hope is that they grow into people who choose goodness because they understand it, because they are shaped by it, because they trust the home they are being raised in.
That tension is where I am left with this chapter: between consequence and relationship, between fear and love. And I don’t think I’ve resolved it yet.
Thanks for sticking with me as I fumble my way through Leviticus. See you next week. Shabbat Shalom!