For the Love of Jesus: Akharey Mot-K’doshim

I don’t have any cute, funny stories to tell this week, just plain trauma. 

And there’s plenty of that, without even counting a pandemic and the latest police brutality and killings just this past week. 

Let’s throw in the condemnation and brutality experienced by the LGBTQ community, along with the misuse of scripture, and we’ve got more than enough to go around.

I wondered out loud this morning with the minyan I lead every Monday; what is the spiritual message to derive from this week’s reading? 

It starts with Aaron being told to continue on as if he hasn’t just lost two sons to a consuming fire, with instructions on how to go about cleansing the community of guilt, and goes on with all kinds of laws on how Israel will set itself apart from the surrounding pagan communities, like whose nakedness you’re not allowed to uncover (incest, bestiality), dietary laws, the privations of Yom Kippur, and leaving a new fruit tree for three years without picking its fruit. 

Aaron’s trauma of suddenly losing two sons is not addressed in the least. 

In the same way, it would be very convenient to ignore the two verses in Leviticus that show up this week---two little obscure verses that have been used over millennia to condemn homosexuality. It happens all the time in synagogues and churches, and probably in mosques as well (“Let’s not open that can of worms”).

And curiously, these two verses point to the one thing, it seems, that people like to be inflexible about in religion (“Well, it says it right there in the bible, clear as day, so I can’t help it”).

No, actually, it’s not so clear at all. And you can help it. 

So, I was searching around on the internet, and I found this really interesting blog post called “The Perversion of Two Verses” (if you’re interested in developing your own knowledge on this subject, I highly recommend this. It’s not long, it’s very well written and easy reading). 

So I’ll leave you with this, since I’ve given you homework (the reading??!!); don’t we always want to avoid talking about trauma? It’s so hard to deal with and so easy to pretend it’s not there, like God expecting Aaron to move on after his personal trauma of losing his sons in one big poof. 

Opportunities to deal with it abound, and we really need to--especially in our houses of worship. 

As the author of that blog post wrote, if you’re going to take a verse (or two) out of context, decide that this is what’s important to humanity in the book of Leviticus, and ignore the rest, like the dietary laws of the Jews, for example, then why couldn’t it be something similar to the universal love and acceptance that came from Jesus? Like when it says to leave some of the yield of your harvest for the poor and the stranger? OR, don’t insult people with disabilities, or bully them by placing stumbling blocks in front of them, and make sure you pay your workers the same day. This, too, appears in Leviticus’ reading this week.

To say that the love of Jesus encompasses all of Christianity would be as dishonest as taking these two obscure verses to condemn an entire sector of the population, and it neither condemns nor cleanses Judaism or Christianity as a whole, but expiation of guilt does need to happen. 

It’s called t'shuvah in Jewish. 

It’s called facing your guilt and taking responsibility for the pain you’ve caused. 

As Jews, we are supposed to do this every day, not just on Yom Kippur. 

Because it’s universal love and acceptance we need, as we are, with no conditions, not condemnation and more trauma in the world.

So let’s try that on for a while, leave that tree of love to develop, and see what beauty blooms and what fruits develop from our work toward the world we want. 

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