To Make...or Break...a Job Description

Consider them holy, because I the Lord am Holy--I who make you holy.  Leviticus 21:8

To Make...or Break...a Job Description
By Rev. William Dohle

I have learned one thing in my 26 years of being a working person... job descriptions are important!

It's important to know what you are responsible for doing...and what you're not.  It's important, not only for your benefit, but also for the benefit of others.

Suppose your doctor believes that his or her job is to do everything their nurse would have done.  Would that be a good use of her time?  Or your dentist who can't find time for your aching tooth...because he has to sweep the sidewalks outside of his office.  Or the teacher...who abandons your child to prepare lunch in the cafeteria.

Job descriptions are important.  It's important to know where you are suppose to be and what you are suppose to be doing.  And if someone growls at you about not doing something, you can just point back to your job descriptions and say, "See...THIS is what I'm suppose to do."

Job descriptions date back even to biblical times.  Even to the book of Leviticus.  Here we have an entire chapter and a half on what the job of a priest is and what they're suppose to do.  Here's what the Bible says about a priest...

• Must not make himself ceremonially unclean. (Lev. 21:1)
• Must not shave their heads or shave off the edges of their breads or cut their bodies. (Lev. 21:5)
• Must not marry prostitutes or those who've been divorced. (Lev. 21:7)
• The high priest must... not let his hair become unkempt or tear his clothes.  The woman he marries must be a virgin.(Lev. 21:13
• Must not have any defects.  Must be perfectly healthy with no skin diseases. (Lev. 21:16-23)

There are others...and reasons for these...given in Leviticus.  The overall reasoning behind why a priest must be this way is...

The priests are to keep my requirements so that they do not become guilty and die for treating them with contempt.  I am the Lord who makes them holy.(Lev. 22:9)

Now, we might look back on these and think they are ancient garbage.  Why should we care how the priests were required to be?  That was thousands of years ago!  Or we might think of them as sacred Scripture...but still not know what to do with them.

Either way, these job descriptions help us understand other parts of Scripture.

Like the story of the Good Samaritan!  Jesus tells a story about a priest and a levi who pass a man robbed by thieves on the other side.  Why didn't they stop?  Because it wasn't in their job description!  Because they were both commanded to not make themselves ceremonially unclean and stopping to help someone who might die on them would defile them  and prevent them from doing their job.  Of course they passed by the man!  They would be breaking God's commandment if they had stopped!

These ancient job descriptions too can help us see our own job descriptions in a better light.  They can help us ask ourselves: "Are the jobs we doing for the glory of God and for the work of his kingdom?  Or are we being required to do something that is immoral or unloving toward someone?"

Job descriptions are not unbreakable laws.  In fact, they can and should be broken when love dictates another way.  When certain German pastors in World War II did not believe their job description imposed on them by the Nazis was life-giving to their Jewish brothers and sisters, they rebelled and acted against it.  Many of them, including Bonhoeffer, a Lutheran pastor, lost their lives fighting against what the Reich considered their job description.

So, how should we take these job descriptions here?  As suggestions?  As an outline?  Perhaps we should keep these in the back of our minds as we read through the rest of Scripture, for every priest from this time through the time of Jesus, knew Leviticus 21 by heart.  Every priest knew how they were suppose to act, according to God's law.  Perhaps we should take this as background knowledge as we explore the ways God's people followed and broke this ancient job description.  Because God's word doesn't end with job descriptions.  This is only the beginning.

God of all, you direct our lives through the Scriptures and in life.  Give us boldness that we might question and discern and so enter into the conversation you have with all of humanity.  Amen.