“He Will Make Atonement”

A sermon based upon Leviticus 16: 15-22

By Rev. Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, BA, MDiv, DMin.

Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership, 

Easter Sunday May 10th, 2020   (2/10. How Jesus Saves.)

  

Mother’s Day is very sacred to us.  There is a ‘sacred space’ in our hearts for our mothers who, like Christ, gave us life, who sacrificed for us, and who, when we were most vulnerable, gave us their selfless love. 

We all need sacred spaces in our lives.   Unfortunately, I fear many are losing a sense of what should be held as sacred, special, or could I dare use the word ‘holy’.   

Today public use of the word ‘holy’ outside of church sounds strange.  It even conjures up negative images for some. 

Even stranger still is a movement to change Mother’s Day and Father’s Day into one single ‘Special Person’s Day.’  What has been untouchable and sacred is not only in danger of being profaned, but could be exchanged to accommodate the current mood of the day.  Is there still a need to have a sense of the sacred, untouchable, and unchangeable in human life?

ATONEMENT FOR THE SANCTUARY?  (v. 16)

An encounter with the ‘sacred’ and ‘holy’ is what this strange book of Leviticus is about.   And it is a certainly a strange book to us.  Who has offered up ‘burnt offerings’ lately?   Once I saw an ash can posted up on a brick wall at a church labeled in jest ‘For Burnt Offerings’.  On another occasion a fellow from a Christian-Jewish religious group invited me to a ‘lamb sacrifice’ on Good Friday, but I turned it down.  Outside of that, I’ve never encountered religious practices like we find here in this text.  I’ve never had any body decontaminate a church before or after I preach.  Maybe they should have.

 

In this passage we read about a High Priest dressing up to enter the ‘holy of Holies’.  Here we might imagine the Pope all dressed up at a Christmas Eve Service in Rome, but it’s doesn’t sound like it has any real meaning for us.  It’s strange, it’s archaic, and it might be appropriate for a museum, but not for our daily lives.  However, in spite of all this strangeness, and maybe even because of it, a book like Leviticus still has something very important to say to us.  And most of it is found in this word found here in this single strange idea.  This very strange idea is an unforgettable image of a Priest ‘making atonement’, not only for himself and for the people, and even for the the very sanctuary or tent where they come to meet.  That’s certainly sounds strange, doesn’t it?

Why all this strange ritualistic practice in this book known to us as Leviticus?  And what should this strange, almost forgotten word ‘atonement’ mean for us?  We will get to that, but it all starts with the original title of Leviticus, derived from its very first line in Hebrew, Wayikra, meaning, “And the LORD called”.   Leviticus is about God calling the Israelites out of an impure, polluted and unclean world.   Out of such a broken, corruptible ‘free-for-all’ world, God called forth a people to have religious, social and legal boundaries, giving shape to a new, restored way of life.  At the very center of this way of life, was a Holy, righteous, redeeming God.   Through the Exodus, this saving, holy God called Israel out from how things were to become a people they now could be, not only for their own good, but for the good of the world.

  

But for this ‘good’ to be realized in their world, Israel had to be ‘holy’ as God was ‘holy’.  To have a holy God present among them in their lives, meant that they would have to learn how to live differently.   And to live differently meant they would need to look at and see things differently.  To see things differently meant they must do things differently.  To see and do things differently than the world around them meant, most of all, that they would have to become a completely new and different kind of people.   They had to not only do the work of holiness, but they had to become a people who are holy just as their God is holy.

Now, here comes the strangest part.  If Israel wanted this Holy God to dwell and abide among them, they had to build him a house, that is a Tabernacle –or a Sanctuary, and they had to ‘make atonement’ for that space and also create within in it a center that was untouchable an uninhabitable by the people.  This was the space were where on ‘Ark (container) of the Covenant’  was placed upon which a ‘mercy seat’ was built to represent God’s abiding, forgiving, gracious presence.  This space was named ‘the holy of holies.’  This holy of holies was a sacred space in a unclean world which Israel reserved for a Holy God.  And if they wanted this Holy God to remain with them, they had to become a holy people too.   This meant they had to deal with their own uncleanness and sin, making confession, making atonement and purification so that this holy God would stay with them

WHATEVER THEIR SINS HAVE BEEN

Besides a daily practice of confession and cleanliness, one day each year they purified themselves and this holy space from sins that were unknown to them.   This day was called ‘Yom Kippur’, ‘Day of Purification or Atonement’.   It became the most important day on Israel’s calendar.  On that day the people would decontaminate themselves and the holy space from even all unknown and hidden sins, so that nothing would hinder God from remaining with them.   The ‘day of atonement’ was the ultimate reminder that they were called to be a holy and unique people, becoming holy because their God was Holy. 

Again, becoming a holy people of a holy God was not a one time process, but it was both a daily, annual, and continual process fulfilled through this ritualistic practice in Leviticus also known as The Holiness Code.   While most ancient peoples had tribal taboos, and they sometimes transgressed these taboos, they each practiced some type of ritual cleansing before their deities.  What made Israel’s Code of Holiness unique was not only its attention to great detail, but that it was also a practice, not only for God’s sake, but was a holiness practiced for the sake of their community---that is communion with God and communion with each other.   For example, in Israel, if one person broke the Holiness Code it didn’t just jeopardize the individual,  it jeopardized the whole community.  If one person’s sin remained hidden and unconfessed, it affected everybody, bringing everyone under God’s judgement (Joshua 7).   Why?   Why would a fair, just, and righteous God bring judgement on everyone because of the unconfessed, unpurified, and unatoned for sin of just one person?

  The answer is simple, really.   It’s as simple as the modern idea reflected in the phrase ‘We’re are all in this together’.   This helps us begin to unravel this ancient code, but the rituals go even deeper, or should I say ‘higher’ than this.   Leviticus follows a very simple spiritual logic that if one, single, unatoned for, unclean, polluted sin contaminated the ‘camp’ the people’s very existence was threatened.  In community life, one person’s unconfessed, un-atoned-for sin was like them having a very contagious disease, but still going around shaking hands with everybody.  We might also imagine it like one person wearing a suicide vest in room filled with people, or like someone carrying radioactive uranium around, where others were being exposed to the poisoning, not just that one person. 

When we lived in Germany, we had just returned from a working trip to Berlin, when we heard on the news that two people were found dead in a rest area.  These people were found dead because other people who stopped in that same rest area were getting sick.  When police investigated, they found these two dead persons to be Russian Thieves.  They ad stolen raw uranium, fully unaware that it would kill them, or that it  would also sicken and possibly kill everyone around them.   The scariest part of that news report is that we had just stopped in that rest area a few days before them.

This very idea that the whole people of God were threatened by the contamination of one single sin might, at first, sound very unrealistic, even childish.  But this contaminating effect was not only about what sin could do to a person, it was also a way to depict how holiness was incompatible with sin and uncleanness.  How can Wellness and sickness dwell together?  A saving, redeeming, and healing God would certainly not be present where contaminating uncleanness and sin abides, unless there was some resolve or, as it is called here, an atonement.  The New Testament  confirms this again, asking: “For what partnership is there between righteousness and lawlessness? Or what fellowship is there between light and darkness?...  What agreement does the temple of God have to do with a temple of idols? …Come out from them…Touch nothing unclean and I will welcome you!  (See 2 Cor. 6:14ff.)

All that has changed from the Old to New Testament is that the proverbial shoe is now on the other foot.  It is God who is sending out the invitations.  What is still the same is that this God who is holy and healing does not abide where there is sin, not because he would cease to be God but because he would cease to be the very holy, healing, and saving God he is.  And where God is no longer present, the people’s whole existence becomes threatened and the world is also threatened.  Without the acknowledgement and atonement for sin, God’s holy, healing, and saving presence no longer dwells among his own people, nor even in his own world.   This is the kind of spiritual logic that made and still makes atonement necessary.

This whole idea of uncleanness, pollution, or the social, spiritual and sickening contamination of sin has become incredible today, just like this book of Leviticus has.   And while we certainly don’t need to live by the letter of these ancient Levitical rules and laws, it is still very important for us to take seriously the spirit behind them.  

A good example of what atonement means and why it’s still relevant surfaced in a book that was made into a movie by this very title; Atonement.  The story isn’t religious, but was written by a woman who had, in her youth, ruined the blossoming relationship between her cousin and a young man. Before the wrong can be made right the young man goes off to war and is killed.  Her deed was unforgivable, but she tries to make some amends.  But in her writing, which comes years later, she writes as if she’s still seeking some kind of atonement; a way to right this terrible wrong that can’t be, but should somehow be made right. 

The idea of atonement is about how God’s holy presence enters this world to bring healing and wholeness for broken lives.   The same Holy and Healing Spirit who called Israel to learn holiness, is still calling out a people of wholeness and healing today.   That’s what the word ‘saved’ means— ‘to receive God’s wholeness and healing’.   But God cannot ‘put his Spirit’ in a people who remain contaminated with rebellion and sin.  For God’s saving presence and purpose to reside in us, we, who are God’s living tabernacle and temple today, must be purified, and our sins must be atoned for.  We must be made holy through an ‘atonement’ of sin.   This is the part of the holiness code that is still carried over through the preaching of Jesus’ death on the cross.

THE GOAT WILL CARRY ON ITSELF ALL THEIR SINS

We receive the language of holiness and atonement from the book of Leviticus, but how does the ‘making of atonement work?’  in this ancient text, on the Day of Atonement,  the High Priest would purify the holy place by sprinkling blood everywhere humans might touch.   It sounds morbid and gross.  How in the world does shedding and sprinkling blood make an atonement for any kind of sin.  It our world today, killing the bull, the ram, the lamb, or a goat would be the unforgivable sin.  How in the world does taking a life, spare, forgive or save any life?  

Here, we need to call in for help from our mothers, or at least from my late mother.  I’m certainly not talking about having a séance to conjure up spirits, but I do want to appeal and refer to something my mother was quite a ‘stickler’ about.  When I was growing up, my mother was very serious about making me wash my hands when I came in for supper.  She was also a ‘stickler’ at making sure I took a bath every evening and that I combed my hair and put on clean clothes each day for school.   And when I got older she made sure I would put on deodorant and that I made myself presentable, not just for everyone else, but also for her, for her own sake.  She knew that any poor judgment on my part would reflect upon her.   That’s the kind of world I grew up in, and if you are about the same age as me, I’d guess most of you grew up in that kind of ‘good mama’ world too. 

The word my mother often used to remind me to be well groomed and clean was: ‘cleanliness is next to godliness’.   That’s not a line out of the Bible, but the idea is there.  In the ancient world, and especially in the Levitical world, uncleanness was a big ‘no, no’.   Even ancients recognized that ‘uncleanness’ caused problems, both physically and spiritually.   Uncleanness became a big ‘no no’ for Israel because this eternal God is also holy, and those who want his healing and redeeming must reflect God’s holiness which is the same as God’s purity in order to receive his healing gifts.

But the great problem is that we aren’t gods.  How can human beings who do unholy things, reflect and receive God’s healing and holiness?   As the prophet Isaiah once said, “We are an unclean people with unclean lips!”  How can humans be made holy, cleansed and make whole.  This is the very need that must be ‘atoned’ for.  Somehow, an unclean, unholy, sinful human, must be cleaned up to enter into God’s presence or be able to receive the gift of God’s holiness.

This awareness of Israel’s sin and uncleanness became especially prominent and painful when they ‘landed’ in Babylonian, which is exactly where this phrase, cleanliness is next to godliness’ has been found; in the midst of Babylonian and Hebrew writings.  It was in that distant land of exile, where ended up because of their own unconfessed and unrepentant sin, that this Holiness Code was first published.  Then, this Code was published not just for Priests or Levites, but for everyone to take seriously. No one in Israel wanted to experience this moral and religious failure again, so upon the return from exile, Sadducees and especially Pharisees took God’s laws and codes even more seriously.  They made sure people lived by even stricter codes.  That’s how they thought they could accomplish atonement and maintain holiness.

While their intentions might have been good, this whole idea of preventing sin in Israel didn’t work out very well.   Humans, and even priests, are not able develop ways to force people to prevent  sin.   When you look back at how legalism developed into harsh, cruel, and cold calculations, this was a misuse of the law which led to great abuse.  Jesus’ way of including sinners in God’s love, proved that God didn’t ever intend the Holiness Code to prevent human sin.  

The Apostle Paul, a Jew himself said the Law even made him want to sin.   While following God’s moral law can help us avoid sin, it was never intended to prevent sin, but in the sacrificial system,  God gave His people a way to take sin seriously, both revealing and removing sin by forgiving sin; which was a gift of grace given through priests, who had the power to atone for and cleanse them from all their sin.  This gift of forgiveness was not cheap, without cost, that’s why there was purification by shedding of blood.  That’s also why sacrifices were taking place every day.  And on one big Day of Atonement each year, God’s plan was not to prevent sin, or he would destroy human life, but his plan was to forgive sin, and to remove its effect, so things could be made right again.    

So, what is the divine plan of atonement and of making things right?   Well, the divine plan goes back to Leviticus, and then moves forward to the redeeming, saving work of God in Jesus Christ.  This Bible is called Holy because it reveals what sin is, and it also reveals it is this God’s plan to make atonement and to ‘forgive’ human sin.  God doesn’t prevent sin, or we’d all be dead, or worse, but God forgives sins.  Sin has been atoned in the death of God’s son, our Savior And Lord Jesus Christ.

One last thing must be said, which helps us understand how God revealed his desire to forgive all sin.  On the day of atonement, the last thing Aaron the priest would do, and all the Levites, the sons of Aaron would do, was to symbolically lay his hands on a goat, symbolically confess all the sins of the people, and then to release this sin-bearing goat into the wilderness to reveal that God remembers their sins no more.  But did you catch one important symbol?  The Priest commits no violence upon the sin-bearing animal, but releases him to go away on its on. 

In the same way, God did not have to kill Jesus to forgive us.  Jesus the Son wasn’t murdered by God the Father, nor did Jews or Romans murder him.  Did not Jesus himself clarify, ‘No one takes my life, but I lay it down of my own accord.  I have the power to lay it down, and I have the power to take it up again.’ (John 10:18).  The death of Jesus was not commanded by the Father so God would or could forgive sin, but the Father gave his own power and put his own heart in the Son, so that the depth of sin would be revealed in the very same moment God forgave all our sin. 

This mystery of God’s faithful, unfailing love, which a mother's own unfailing, sacrifical love may relfect too, is how God himself, through Jesus Christ, made atonement for all our sin.  What God started in the wilderness, God finished on Golgotha, where God’s lamb, the one who takes away the sin of the whole world, became like this goat taking all our sin to only God knows where.  That’s the unforgettable image of how a holy God still makes atonement, giving us his mercy, his forgiveness and his peace, when we put our faith in him.   Amen.