JOY & COMFORT
The gospel brings about joy and comfort in our lives. As the body of Christ, we praise him, we worship him. The gospel of Jesus Christ lives in us to grow in our faith, and lives through us in conveying joy and comfort to others.
Conveying the gospel cannot be all left to “chance”. Some helpful habits can be very…. helpful. From avoiding bad habits to adopting good manners. Many situations could open up conversation and / or causes for a supportive action in the name of Jesus.
It is this way of meditation on Leviticus 6:14-15 that I believe a strong message that is a habitual repetition, with intended meanings.
Ritual
A ritual can be explained as a repetitive pattern where its execution and our involvement gives us an added realisation of the “ever-present presence” of God. Usually, our words, actions, and thoughts are directed in a worshipful manner to God. Care needed in the words here, that ritual does not lead to or create the “presence” of God. God and his being omnipresent is a statement of fact unchanging; we in our condition and the world we live in change, to the extent sometimes we don’t or not able to “remember” God as we are doing something else, or we don’t want to relate to God anymore. It’s like picking up a pen to write a note to a friend, the friend always exists (from birth to death, and maybe beyond in our memory), and your relationship stands long before, and long after you penned the note. God being omnipresent, timeless, is that which surpasses understanding, and his love and sacrifice for us, is one reason we respond in worship, even if the act / style / structure worship is “repetitive” – ritual.
At one level, the text of Leviticus 6:14-15 repeats an earlier section (see Leviticus 6:2-3), almost word by word. On first noticing this, a reader might wonder this was an editing mistake, or there was something much more fundamental in the repetition, or indeed whether it ought to be regarded as a “repeat”. Which brings us to –
At another level, the notion of “repeat” has different significance in:
- different contexts (e.g. preparaing for exam),
- different periods in time (e.g. warfare techniques during Medieval period), and
- different domains (e.g. exact repetition of measurement in civil engineering design to uphold reliability)
A third aspect is the numerous instructions. Now that we are in chapter 6, the instructions are looking over-used and over-exposed, and somewhat losing our attention. There are meanings to the actions, positions, and sequence in the ritual. Some are purely to convey God’s holiness, some are for cleanliness, some are procedural, and some might be a combination of the above.
An important point here might be that we ought to have some repetitive procedures, customs, or habits, that are geared towards indicating that we live as disciples of Christ: to experience and express joy in our lives, and to bring about comfort in other people’s lives through words and actions we do, to bring a sense of satisfactioin in their spirit. A satisfied soul, finding rrest in God, is only possible with God.
