Author / Annie Newman

Posts by Annie Newman

Radically Liberal Christian. Autism/Girl/Pitbull mom. FarmHER. Incurable maker of things.
by Annie Newman

Leviticus 02 – Why Does God Hate Yeast and Honey?

11 “‘Every grain offering you bring to the Lord must be made without yeast, for you are not to burn any yeast or honey in a food offering presented to the Lord. 12 You may bring them to the Lord as an offering of the firstfruits, but they are not to be offered on the altar as a pleasing aroma. 13 Season all your grain offerings with salt. Do not leave the salt of the covenant of your God out of your grain offerings; add salt to all your offerings. (Read the rest of the chapter, here.)

Spoiler alert: God doesn’t “hate” yeast and honey. In fact, in v. 12 yeast cakes and honey are encouraged to be brought as an offering of firstfruits, they just shouldn’t be burnt on the altar. As throughout much of Leviticus, the instructions for the grain offering found in the chapter are a combination of symbolic and practical.

Symbolic reasons for the rejection of honey and yeast

Let’s start with the symbolic, which, based on my Google research, seems to be two-fold. Bread (or wafers or cakes or whatever) made without yeast is a food that can be made quickly – hastily, even. It is what the Israelites ate as they fled Egypt, because you need to eat something and letting a loaf of bread proof is going to take too long. Also, pre-packaged granola bars weren’t around. This is why unleavened bread is eaten during Passover, as well: in remembrance of fleeing Egypt in haste, under the protection of the Lord.

Leavening, such as yeast or even fermented honey, is also a symbol of pride and corruption. It makes the dough puff up, much like a prideful chest, but if left unchecked turns sour and ruinous. Viewed as such a symbol, it’s not exactly what you want to be offering to God.

It is also possible that honey was used in Canaanite religious rites. As I’ve discussed in a previous post, Canaanite and early Israelite religious practices shared many commonalities, and Israelite leaders were very intentional in separating themselves from anything that might connect them to the Canaanites and their false Gods. If honey did factor into Canaanite religious practices, then it would be important that it not factor into the new, codified Israelite religious practices.

Practical reasons for the rejection of honey and yeast

There are also practical concerns with bread and honey offerings in a time that lacked refrigeration and modern food preservation methods. Bread goes moldy. Homemade bread using homemade yeast and unbleached flour goes moldy even faster. The priests took some of this grain offering for their own consumption. If you have pre-prepared foods as part of your sustenance, you want to make sure that those foods aren’t going to go bad before you can eat them. The shelf-life of unleavened bread is longer, therefore more practical.

As for honey, it’s messy. It’s a sticky liquid that gets even more runny when hot, and it can fuse into a carbonized mass onto wherever it burns. Pouring honey onto the altar was probably just not a good idea from a housekeeping standpoint. So there you have it, practical and symbolic reasons for keeping yeast and honey off the altar.

Some closing thoughts

I don’t want to leave this chapter without pointing out that God makes a special stipulation not to leave salt out of the grain offering. In v. 13 God say three times to add salt. Not once, but three times. This may be partly a practical concern: salty food keeps longer. But it really sounds like God needs some seasoning! No bland food for the altar!

It is yet another subtle indication that God loves the physical world. Xe wants to taste it in all its glory! Much of Biblical scholarship and interpretation has focused on a rejection of the physical world. In fact, one reason offered up regarding the rejection of honey on the altar was that honey is a symbol of sensuality and pleasure, the opposite of devotion and worship. But I want to reject that rejection, because if God wants salt, and fat, both tasty components of food – why wouldn’t God want sweet, too? Maybe it’s not right for the altar, but God still wants it in the form of firstfruits.

I think the takeaway from this chapter is that there are many right ways to worship God. Some are more appropriate sometimes, others at another time. As I mentioned in my last post, God wants to invite us to their table. The grain offering, and the mention of firstfruits offerings, are two more ways for Israelites to join in given in Levitical law, inviting them into communion with God. And now, just think how many new ways we have to join God at their table, since Jesus paved the way with his blood. And how many more ways we have to join in that worship with the advent of the printed word, mass communication, and the internet. God is constantly opening new paths to Xyrself, and that is a wonderful thing! Have a great week y’all, and spend a little time praising God, however you best deem that to be.

If you are learning from what you read here, please follow the blog so you don’t miss what’s next.  Click the folder icon in the upper left corner of the menu, and you can follow via WordPress or email.  Please also consider supporting the blog through Patreon or Venmo.  Thank you!

by Annie Newman

Leviticus 01 – God Loves a Barbeque

7 The sons of Aaron the priest are to put fire on the altar and arrange wood on the fire. 8 Then Aaron’s sons the priests shall arrange the pieces, including the head and the fat, on the wood that is burning on the altar. 9 You are to wash the internal organs and the legs with water, and the priest is to burn all of it on the altar. It is a burnt offering, a food offering, an aroma pleasing to the Lord. (Read the rest of the chapter, here)

The book everyone loves to hate.

Let’s spend a little time with the book everybody loves to hate, Leviticus. About the only thing “in style” about Leviticus right now is spending time refuting it. Two of the six clobber passages (passages used to denounce homosexuality) are found in Leviticus. Almost any compilation of “weirdest rules” or “strangest passages” in the Bible samples heavily from Leviticus.

There’s a pervasive need of modern readers to patronize Leviticus. We’ve all seemed to develop a sense of superiority sitting here looking at it, almost four centuries after it was written. Sometimes, that sense of superiority is factually based in the cumulative knowledge that time has brought, but other times I think it’s just a bit haughty of us.

If we take the time to research Leviticus it not only brings the past – in this case, the time of Moses, to life – but also presents us with (you guessed it) even more examples of God’s unending love for us. A book of rules – very specific rules, at that – seems a strange place to look for boundless love. But I’m happy to report I’ve found a lot of it, and I’m excited to share that with you here. Some of the more perplexing verses can be understood in context: obsessive directives about skin diseases and mold make more sense when you remember that this is a time before bleach and antibiotics. But more than anything it is a book about care: God caring for Xyr people, and those people caring for each other and God in return. It is a book of joyous communion.

God loves a barbeque.

And bless my southern little heart, what is a more joyous communion than a barbeque? If you come away from Leviticus learning one thing, let it be this: that God loves a barbeque. The phrase “aroma pleasing to the Lord,” in reference to the animal sacrifices made on the altar, is mentioned three times in this opening chapter alone. I cannot stress enough: God opened this book of rules with a cooking lesson. How to present the meat, butcher the meat, and prepare the meat is all detailed, similar to how a pit master might do. Come to think of it, another name for the first few chapter of Leviticus could be “this is how we eat together.”

I realize that whole last paragraph might come off as a little trite. But really, these opening chapters are a codified invitation to sit at the Lord’s table. And God makes it available to all: If you can bring a bull, definitely bring a bull. Can’t afford that? No worries, bring a ram, or even a bird. Can’t bring any meat? How about a grain offering? God wants us, all of us, with them. Because what is a barbeque without lots of people?

Practical concerns surrounding sacrificial butchery.

I’m also enjoying these opening chapters because, for those of you that don’t know, I am a farmer in my other life. I have herded cows, castrated pigs, and eviscerated chickens. I have carved a pig head, among other things, and make stock from chicken feet. So reading some of the practical instructions surrounding animal sacrifice is particularly amusing. Today’s winning line is verse 1:16, “He is to remove the crop with its contents and throw it to the east side of the altar, where the ashes are.”

First off, the word translated as “contents” is uncertain, according to my NIV study notes. Some translate it as “crop and feathers.” I don’t need to be a Hebrew or religious scholar to tell you that word means “anything you wouldn’t want to eat on the bird.” Having removed thousands of them myself, I can tell you that crops – the “holding stomach,” if you will, on birds, is stinky. As are their intestines and feathers. You do not want any of that burning on your holy altar – it would not be an aroma pleasing to the Lord. (Imagine diarrhea and burnt hair, and that’s probably a pretty close approximation of what burning bird offal smells like.)

I also like that it is further explicitly stated that said gross stuff be thrown away on the east side of the Altar. There are detailed descriptions of how the Tabernacle should be constructed (we’ll get to them when we read Exodus), and my study Bible has a handy little drawing of how the Tabernacle was set up. Sure enough, the east side of the Altar is the farthest side from the Most Holy Place, where the Ark of the Covenant rested. Basically, God is like “keep that nasty stuff over there.” I’ve smelled a gut bucket full of the offal of 100-plus birds. It is not conducive to communing with the Lord.

Alright enough about bird guts, for now. But be prepared: we’re going to talk more about animal entrails in the not too distant future. My writer’s block seems to have cleared, Leviticus is thoroughly enjoyable, and I’m looking forward to sharing chapter two with you all next week. Remember that you are always welcome at God’s barbeque, for God loves us all.

If you are learning from what you read here, please follow the blog so you don’t miss what’s next.  Click the folder icon in the upper left corner of the menu, and you can follow via WordPress or email.  Please also consider supporting the blog through Patreon or Venmo.  Thank you!

by Annie Newman

Luke 04 – Writer’s Block

At daybreak, Jesus went out to a solitary place. The people were looking for him and when they came to where he was, they tried to keep him from leaving them. 43 But he said, “I must proclaim the good news of the kingdom of God to the other towns also, because that is why I was sent.” 44 And he kept on preaching in the synagogues of Judea. (Read the rest of the chapter, here.)

I love this little Jesus utterance at the end of the chapter. It sounds a bit wistful, like a divine version of “I really want to have another drink with you guys, but my Dad needs my help at the shop in the morning.” Think about it: Jesus has just been tempted by the devil and then driven out of Nazareth by an angry crowd. In Capernaum, he is able to perform miracles and save people’s lives – something I’ve never done myself but it sounds like a pretty nice high – and people actually like him for it. They liked him so much they tried to keep him from leaving. Even if he never had any intention of staying there forever, I bet that the idea of setting down roots in such receptive soil appealed to Jesus, even as just a passing fantasy.

I’m not Jesus, but I do feel compelled to proclaim the good news of the kingdom of God. The problem is, I seem to be suffering lately from a bit of writer’s block, my friends. I feel like I am just…waiting. That whatever this time is in my personal life, it is a period that must just be lived through, because living into it is too overwhelming. I am eager to get on with my work, but maybe it’s not quite time to do so, yet.

At thirty-four I like to think of myself as still young – very young, hopefully, with many, many productive decades ahead. I have to remind myself often that this (“this” being the blog, parenting, marriage, life…) is not a race. In yet another instance of when I felt like Alice Walker was writing just for me, she dedicates a whole poem to “young writers who itch, usually before they are ready, to say the words that will correct the world.” (I encourage you to look up the poem, entitled Reassurance, which is in both In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens and Revolutionary Petunias.) Maybe I’m just not ready yet, and this is God’s way of slowing me down until I am.

Maybe right now I need to take my cue from the earlier part of this chapter. Jesus had his patience tried by the devil and by man before pushing through to Capernaum. I’m not saying roll over and take abuse, but patiently enduring less-than-desirable situations is part of the journey. Indeed, waiting can be every bit as important as doing. It is – or at least, does not have to be – wasted time. In another one of my favorite books, God of Earth, Kristin Swenson dedicates a whole chapter to the idea of waiting on God. “Waiting is different than resting,” she says, “waiting has an energy of its own. It presumes attendance and attention. It’s a kind of action, even as it is a forced inaction.” In other words, when it comes to our relationship with God, there is an action implied in waiting, an active listening, if you will. So even when it feels like God isn’t with us, like we’re waiting on God to return to us, God is there. No one likes to be told to wait, no one wants to be uncomfortable or unsure, but I feel I must grudgingly admit to myself that sometimes you’ve just got to push through, endure, and patiently wait. If it was necessary for Jesus, then it is probably necessary for me, and for you.

So for now, I’m going to pray, and endure. And would you look at that? By pushing through, I’ve managed to write 700 words. It’s not my best entry, and no where near my longest. It took a false start on a different chapter, eight different revisions, but here I am, still proclaiming the Good News even when I don’t know what to say. Know that God is with you, no matter what. I pray that your way may be made clear, as well.

If you are learning from what you read here, please follow the blog so you don’t miss what’s next.  Click the folder icon in the upper left corner of the menu, and you can follow via WordPress or email.  Please also consider supporting the blog through Patreon or Venmo.  Thank you!