Blood and Water (Denim Faith #2)

2015/08/16
Christ Church, Mountain Top

Series:
Denim
Faith: The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, The Lunch Pail Crowd, and Leviticus

Call
to Worship, Psalm 133

Children, Mark 4.21-23 (kids, parable of the light on a
stand)

Message,
Leviticus 8.1-36

Nitty
Gritty Dirt Band song, “Will the
Circle Be Unbroken”

Particular

      Great detail around ordination to
priesthood

      Song: specifics of the one we have lost –
Mother Maybelle’s songs

Analogical

      Part for the whole

      Song: one person the entire “circle”,
experienced at

            Funerals

            New members

      Book of Hebrews – analogy by contrast,
Aaron vs. Jesus

      Other Scripture, both OT and NT, analogy
by part/whole

Romans
11:16   If the part of the dough
offered as first fruits is holy, then the whole batch is holy; and if the root
is holy, then the branches also are holy.

Exodus
19:6 but you shall be for me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation (NIV)

Well
is the church named ecclesia
[“assembly”], because it calls forth and assembles all men, as the Lord says in
Leviticus: “Then assemble the whole community at the entrance of the meeting
tent.” It is worthy of note that this word assemble
is used in the Scriptures for the first time [in the Greek translation of the
Hebrew Scriptures, the “Septuagint”] in the passage when the Lord established
Aaron in the high priesthood.

      Cyril

      Representative

      Leviticus tradition – analogy by common
ritual

            With the sacrifice

            With the Tabernacle and its
furnishings

            With the entire people, the
“assembly”

            With God, the holy LORD

            With the excluded

Unity of the vulnerable

      Not the unity of the same; share something
in common

      Vulnerable
to God

      Before Aaron can put on the ephod, with
the names of all tribes:

            Stripped (traditionally behind a
sheet)

            Washed

      Sacrifices washed and, some, skinned or
“flayed”

            Paterius, ACCS OT III,  163: “remove
the illusion of virtue”

      Eustace, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

            Shed his skin as a dragon to become,
again, a boy

            Only possible with the touch of God
(Aslan), and PAIN

      Vulnerable
in our pain
      My ordination: the miscarriage

      Unity
and Anointing (Psalm 133)

      Behold how good and pleasant it is when
kindred life together in unity!

      It is like the precious oil on the head,
running down upon the beard,

            On the beard of Aaron, running down
over the collar of his robes

      Anointed with the Spirit when united

Holiness of the excluded

      Turban: “Holy to the LORD” (Ex 39.30)

      Ordination separates you from others;
clergy loneliness

      A function of holiness is separation

            Consecrated to something;
consecrated from something

            “Are you determined to employ all
your time in the work of God?”

                  (Wesley’s historic questions
for those to be ordained)

      Blood
on the right lobe, thumb, big toe

            Word

            Work

            Way

      Same
ritual to cleanse lepers! (Leviticus 14.14)

            Like the priests, excluded from
typical society

            Transformation of holiness
categories by this “unification”

            Expanded mission to welcoming
outsiders

Baptism