Responses to Grace

“But how did Mike Mulligan go to the bathroom?” asks Ramona Quimby in one of my favorite childhood books. (If you know the story of Mike Mul­ligan and His Steam Shovel, you understand why she asked.) It’s exactly what I wondered when reading God’s instructions in Leviticus for his priests’ consecration.

“At the entrance of the tent of meeting you shall remain day and night for seven days…so that you do not die.” (Lev. 8:35)

“But how did they go to the bathroom?” I asked Ivan on our way to church one Sunday.

“Well, I’m sure they had some sort of version of a Porta Potty back then,” he said, practically.

True. I suppose they did.

In past readings of Leviticus, I have often approached with a sense of confusion and skepticism. Why so many laws? Why so strict? This doesn’t make sense! This time though, a barrier has opened in my mind. We all have rituals. And any ritual could seem confusing and arbitrary to someone unfamiliar with it. Imagine explaining a Fourth of July parade, complete with the design specifications of an American flag, to a person from the ancient Middle East.

This time to a greater degree than ever before, I get it. God was not micromanaging; he was helping the Israelites—who for centuries had lived in the shadow of an oppressive, dominant culture—to create their own unique lifestyle and an identity as his special people.

Many of the laws God gave contributed to his people’s health and sanitary conditions. But Marty Solomon, in a BEMA podcast titled “A Kingdom of WHAT?”, says we would be mistaken to believe that is their main purpose. Many of the laws are not connected to health; they simply mark the priests as different among God’s people and God’s people as different from the rest of the world.

“God is different,” Solomon says. “God is not like all the other gods of the world…. God wants you to simply look different, because your covenantal role, your mission, is to be a walking billboard for God, a reminder.”

Being different partly for the sake of being different is a concept I grew up with. During family discussions, my parents connected most of the guidelines in our conservative Mennonite church to issues of moral or spiritual health such as modesty, simplicity, or purity. But there were a few guidelines—the straight-cut suit, for example—we were hard pressed to link to any bigger principle except difference.

Dad taught us that everyone has a culture, and that it’s a good thing, a defensible thing, to live out a distinctly different Christian culture partly for the sake of being different. “If you look like a duck, quack like a duck, walk like a duck, you’re a duck,” he used to say. “If you look like the world and act like the world, you’re the world.”

I understood that Christians were called, in a sense, to be priests. “For you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people, that ye should show forth the praises of him who has called you out of darkness into his marvelous light,” says 1 Peter 2:9. However, I only realized recently, after listening to the BEMA podcast, that God first called the entire nation of Israel to be priests. “You will be for me a kingdom of priests,” he tells them in Exodus 19:6. What the priests were to Israel, Israel was to be to the world.

Marty Solomon lists a priest’s role as fourfold:

• Put God on display
• Help people navigate their atonement
• Intercede on behalf of others
• Distribute resources to those in need

All Christians will not agree on what it means to put God on display. Perhaps most important is simply to realize it is part of our role. And perhaps when we embrace the other three priestly roles, we will find balance in the first. We put God on display not to shut others out but to invite them in.

Solomon points to another foundational concept from the very structure of Leviticus: atonement comes first. The first seven chapters of Leviticus lay out the sacrificial system, as if God is saying, “I want you to rest in the confidence that you are forgiven. Then, here’s how I want you to live.”

I remember reading Ephesians 2:8-10 with an earnest, wrinkled friend. “For by grace are you saved through faith, not of works…”

“Then why should anyone try to be good?” she asked. 

We read the rest of the passage together: “…for we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works.”

“Seems backward, doesn’t it?” I asked her. “It works though.”

She nodded.

Today, as in the desert, atonement comes first. The actions which follow do not justify us; they are only responses to grace.

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This article was first published in Anabaptist World with the title “We Put God on Display.”