Do you play the drum in your worship team? Flute? Harp? Bass guitar? Cello? Or do you sing? Worship leader? On the audio-visual? Maybe the saxophone? Organ? Violin? Rhythm guitar? I usually play the piano, but I very much prefer to play the drum set.
There are more I can’t play or do, or choose not to. I know the basic of flute, violin, guitar, but I don’t yet have enough command of any of these to be able to play them on my own, let alone in a team.
A team. A community. We can’t be every role in every situation. We can’t do every responsibility in every liturgical requirement.
God designs his creation as a community.
His community requires those who have spiritual matters as primary responsibility. Be them vicars, pastors, elders, full-time workers, youth pastors, deacons, mission workers, priests, worship pastors, etc.
Leviticus 2:7-10 instructs the people to ‘present’ their sacrificial offerings to the priest, who then carries out further liturgical actions – burning it at the altar as sweet smelling offering to God. To present the offerings in this case carries the meaning of making a gift to someone more superior or of higher imminence to you, or simply of imminence. It is to present something first belonging to you. There is a lot more we can say about this, but that will be for the future.
I want to focus on the fact that in those days, the priests had the divine (godly) calling and responsibility (to the point of death) of the link between the people of that time and God. Yes, yes, yes, priests were from the tribe of Levites. Why there was such a ‘need’ is subject for books, libraries, some yet to be written as this is age-old and on-going debates.
As recorded in the New Testament, Jesus has fulfilled the Old Testament requirement for priesthood and this arrangement for priest is no longer required or applicable today.
Again, go back, and I want to focus on the mere point that if you were not priest, you hadn’t had responsibility of the priest. If you were a priest, that will be your responsibility: you can dial God in an instance, so will He you. It’s a privilege. A privilege where you had no choice.
The “arrangement” in those days was that you present your offering to the priest who would then burn it up for you. The instruction here is both for the people and for the priests.
There is mountain of literature written that this “arrangement” is part of the law of the people then. I know, this priestly arrangement is legal code. Still, it did not say for example “You must use oil”, or “You must not use yeast”. Perhaps it’s a translation and transmission problem / issue, mutiply that by hundreds of decades of interpretations and debates.
My friend, who has Asperger syndrome, pointed to a block of biblical text and said “it does not say that”. He was not referring to Leviticus, but to a passage in one New Testament epistle. True, the text does not say those ‘additional stuff’ that we were “reading back into the text”. What we said, the “additional information” stuff, was not in the text, and to him, if it is that important, then it would have been in there. Sure, it’s not always as black as white as that (what was obvious then is not obvious now).
Let’s get back to the point, again – with some degree of controversy, perhaps I can simply read it as it is, removing the centuries of stuff, and simply read it as when you prepare that offering, you then take it to the priest who will do the task for you as he is tasked by God to do so.
You don’t expect the cellist to play the euphonium, the worship leader to act in the capacity of audio controller, the Bible reader playing the organ. Except they are able to do it and assigned to do that for that service.
