A Different Use for the Book of Leviticus

By Mark H. Andrus

The Book of Leviticus has enjoyed a revival of popular interest since our General Convention. Many people I've listened to on the subject of human sexuality since General Convention reference prohibitions against homosexual practice in Leviticus. Deeper conversations often reveal a fairly surface reading of the cited texts, and this is true for people holding a variety of opinions on the subject.

A look at our Eucharistic lectionary might help us understand this lack of understanding regarding meaning and message in Leviticus. Only one text from Leviticus is read in the setting of the Sunday Eucharist in Episcopal parishes: Leviticus 19:1-2, 9-18.

Jean-Luc Marion has argued that the Eucharist is the primary and best locale for the interpretation of scripture. That is, in the faith world of the Eucharist, the scriptures are proclaimed and interpreted as living messages, having the character of sacrament about them, so different from the private, scholarly or devotional reading one might do in solitude or the classroom.

We never encounter these vexing texts on abominations of various sorts, never have the opportunity for the community to be uncomfortable with them, to interpret, understand, receive, argue with. . . The great bulk of Leviticus represents a lacuna in scripture proclamation within the Episcopal Church.

So we never encounter these vexing texts on abominations of various sorts, never have the opportunity for the community to be uncomfortable with them, to interpret, understand, receive, argue with. But this is not only true of these texts on prohibited behavior. The great bulk of Leviticus represents a lacuna in scripture proclamation within the Episcopal Church.

The Leviticus text we proclaim from the Eucharistic lectionary has to do with the Jubilee, a powerful, formative idea even if, as some scholars hold, it is impossible to ascertain to what degree it was ever practically observed by ancient Israel.

This brings us to the real center of this essay. Leviticus 25 contains not only more teaching about the Jubilee, but in that same area some of the most radical teaching on stewardship of the Earth to be found in the Hebrew scriptures, or in the New Testament. Like the material on prohibited behavior, this extended teaching on the Jubilee is unavailable to the Christian community in the Episcopal Church for reflection and for the shaping of our individual and corporate lives.

Leviticus 25 parallels in part the teaching of Leviticus 19 on the Jubilee concept. (I am using the term Jubilee in a more general sense than that of a time of leveling and fresh starts, by including the related idea of making provision for the poor and the sojourner at all times. In this way Leviticus 19 can be thought of as lying within the world of Jubilee.) But whereas Leviticus 19 is completely centered on human needs, whether of the poor, the foreigner, or the rich, Leviticus 25 steps off into what appears to me to be a radical theology of stewardship of the Creation.

Here is the relevant teaching: “The LORD spoke to Moses on Mount Sinai, saying: Speak to the people of Israel and say to them: When you enter the land that I am giving you, the land shall observe a sabbath for the LORD. Six years you shall sow your field, and six years you shall prune your vineyard, and gather in their yield; but in the seventh year there shall be a sabbath of complete rest for the land, a sabbath for the LORD.”

How breathtaking that God recognizes the dignity, the standing, of the land, and by extension the whole of Creation and its constituent parts. The content of human stewardship of Creation receives definition from this passage: we are to provide the means by which the Creation may worship God, we are to provide the Creation with its sabbath rest.

In those parables it is only the distorted thoughts of the bad tenants that conceive of the vineyard as existing for their self-centered purposes alone. How much, in comparison, of our own talk about stewardship of Creation is for the Creation's flourishing before God, and how much is to ensure that the Creation continues to produce for us?

To steward the Creation for the sake of helping its life before God to flourish is immediately recognizable as genuine stewardship, in keeping with the parables of stewardship told by Jesus using the image of the vineyard leased out to tenant farmers. In those parables it is only the distorted thoughts of the bad tenants that conceive of the vineyard as existing for their self-centered purposes alone. How much, in comparison, of our own talk about stewardship of Creation is for the Creation's flourishing before God, and how much is to ensure that the Creation continues to produce for us?

Bringing this teaching into our own world demands creative thought. Giving the land its sabbath rest must be understood now in a context in which the vast majority of people are not farmers. How might we translate this teaching into something we can appreciate in our urbanized, globalized, technological world? How might I, how might we give the Creation sabbath rest?

Perhaps we could bring this question into the midst of our Eucharistic community, and receive new directions under the influence of the Holy Spirit on how we are to steward God's Creation.

The Rt. Rev. Mark Handley Andrus is bishop suffragan of the Episcopal Diocese of Alabama. He is the coordinator of The Healing Relationships Between Humans and Our Animal Friends: The Spirituality Connection , a conference being held at the Kanuga conference center in North Carolina from June 20-25, 2004. Mark may be reached by email at mandrus@dioala.org .