I have it easy

I am a slob at both working and eating. If I hammer a nail, I am going to get dirty. If I have lunch, you won’t have to ask me what I ate. I’ll be wearing some of it.

So, as I read through Leviticus’ slate of offerings, I discover that those Levitical priests worked hard! I wouldn’t have wanted their job, not that I am afraid of work, but I read about them knifing animals, twisting the heads off of pigeons, and throwing blood over here or sprinkling it over there. The flies buzzing around, and the stench, would have sent me packing for another employment.

Although, I have read that Aarón and his boys got special fancy-wantsy linen jockey shorts. I am intrigued. I have a silk pillowcase, and I think that is pretty chic, so if I got to wear soft and slippery undies, I would probably never put on Fruit-of-the-Looms again.

But I digress.

Being a priest wasn’t just a matter of collecting the fines, and getting to go into the Holy of Holies once a year. It was more like a cross between being a cowboy and butcher.

Leviticus 6.9 specifies that the priest has to be wearing his linen garments (yeap, with the soft and slippery undies), grab a shovel and clean up the ashes of the burnt offering. Veronica would have forever been on my case if I dressed up in my preaching clothes and then grabbed a shovel. And she had it easy, I was never Lutheran or Presbyterian, so she didn’t have flowing robes or anything like that to throw into our ringer washer.

I wonder if I would have preached better in flowing robes.

But anyways…

Next it says that Aaron has to take off the linens and put something more practical on, grab the wheelbarrow (?) and take the burnt offering outside the camp to a “clean place.” Yeap, you never want to drop the ashes just anywhere. Although it’s hard to imagine a “clean place” stayed clean exceedingly long unless Mrs. Aaron went there afterwards to sweep it up and hose it down.

Leviticus helps me see how easy I have it being just a simple, sloppy missionary, rather than a fancy-wantsy Levitical priest.