April 10: Leviticus 1-3; Psalm 31; Mark 4-5

Leviticus 1-3  This is where a lot of people get off the train when it comes to reading through the whole Bible.  Leviticus is full of commandments about how, when, and why to perform sacrifices and make offerings to the LORD.  While there are some general principles here that are applicable to all of us as we seek to offer our very selves to the LORD even in the 21st century, there are many things that feel more like museum pieces.  I think it's okay to read them that way, as instructions for another time.  But when we read that way, we remember that it is the same God who speaks to us and who spoke to them.  And it is useful to look at the roots of our own practices of responding to God's goodness and mercy.  This can be a fascinating glimpse of how people lived and responded to God in a middle eastern culture, moving from a nomadic to an agricultural kind of existence.  Enjoy the specifics!  Just don't feel an obligation to look for any sorts of one-to-one mappings onto our own time and place.   And don't feel guilty if you can't remember the specifics about each sort of sacrifice.  You can read some of this "lightly," but you may be surprised how you get glimpses of God at work that inspire your own spiritual life in our time even in the somewhat arid book of Leviticus.

Another big question to ask yourself as you read:  What does it mean in our time to respond to a God who is holy, and who calls us to be holy?

As you look at specifics, see how the sons of Levi, the priestly tribe who don't inherit property, are provided for through the sacrificial system; and remember that those who offered the sacrifice usually shared in eating it.  So in a time and place where meat was not on the menu daily, sacrifices to the LORD were an occasion for eating and celebrating with family and loved ones.

Psalm 31  Jesus quotes from this psalm from the cross.  (31:5--"Into your hand I commit my spirit; you have redeemed me, O LORD, faithful God.")  Notice the other themes that recur throughout the psalms:

• an appeal to God as a rock and a refuge and a fortress
• God as one who has seen the psalmist's "affliction"
• the Psalmist's desire to see God's face (16)
• gratitude for God's sheltering presence
• the command to "wait for the LORD"(24)  

Mark 4-5
Notice how many of the Kingdom parables that you read in Matthew appear here in Mark.
Here's an interesting thought from the story of the man with the demon whose name was "Legion" (5:1-20).  
What is a man's life worth?
In our time, 2000 pigs--what would they fetch on the market?
I still don't have an exact answer after spending a fair bit of time reading a bunch of blogs and agricultural reports.
Note that Jews did not own pigs.  These swine were the property of someone with a pretty large-scale operation, perhaps a Roman noble???  Certainly not a peasant.  
It didn't really trouble Jesus to send a couple hundred thousand dollars of pork over the cliff in the context of saving the life of one man.   That's pretty different from the calculations of our present economists and policy makers...