Religion Strikes Back
Every club, society and organisation has its own esoteric rules and regulations. Religious people and institutions are no exception. Think of a few things which are crucial to those who believe in them but do little to warm the hearts of others and often appear pointless if not stupid to those who have not been reared on them, but touch them at your peril. Wider horizons must not be allowed to distract us from tradition.
Leviticus is full of such traditions, which may explain why few Christians ever read it, yet the early Christians were thought to be no less peculiar. Scarcely had Christianity been born when Pliny reported to Trajian that they sang hymns ‘to Christ, as to a god’. Elsewhere some were accused of cannibalism because they ‘ate the body and drank the blood’ and even today many would find it difficult to make sense of the Eucharist or doctrines such as penal substitution whilst others would be prepared to go to the death in their defence. That such customs appear incomprehensible and irrelevant to others does not mean that they are, and therefore the reactions of the unconvinced are often summarily dismissed.
In times of rapid social change, however, these are just the issues that cause questions and potential conflict between adherents, raising the basic question as to what such regulations were intended to achieve and how far cultural and temporal expressions have been allowed to overshadow reality. How far, for example, is the emphasis on bread and wine, the accompanying words and the way we serve and receive of the essence of the Eucharist in all places and at all times? Nobody wants to empty out the baby with the bathwater, but must we continue with the bath water if there are other equally satisfactory and acceptable ways of keeping the baby clean?
Leviticus leads us to address some of these fundmental questions. Haggai was at the heart of a situation where such fundamental questions were being raised very forcibly. The questions, or others like them, are still with us. Perhaps this is why Haggai had to say what he did in his sermon (vv 10-14).