The Price of Redemption

My lips will shout for joy when I sing praise to you--I, whom you have redeemed.  Psalm 71:23

The Price of Redemption
By Rev. William Dohle

We have a certain cycle in my family.  A way things usually go...

It's starts like every day begins... with my children, content with playing with their toys and video games, enjoying their leisure time.
Then comes the interruption... we ask them to do their chores.
Then the response... my children decide to disobey and ignore what we ask them to do.
Then...the consequence!  Their toys are taken away.

After this, there is usually a time of reaction by my children.
Followed by their promises... "Please, daddy!  I won't do that again!  Please!!"

At this point in time, their toys are up for ransom.  They have not done what they were suppose to.  They are paying for it with the time they could have spent with their toys and gadgets.

How do they get them back?  How do they redeem them from their father??

There is a price to pay.  A price for redemption.

I usually am pretty gracious.  I set the price at a day's worth of chores with NO complaints!  Sometimes the price is higher, depending upon the cost of their disobedience, but usually the price is paid when everything that we ask them to do is done to our satisfaction.

Then...and only then... are their toys redeemed.  Then they can have back what was theirs.

This is the pattern, not only for the redemption of toys in the Dohle household, but also the redemption of people, property, animals, homes, and the like in ancient Israel.

In this final chapter of Leviticus the rules for redemption are described.  And the price is set.

If it is a person between the ages of five and twenty, set the value of a male at twenty shekels and of a female at ten shekels. (27:5)
If the owner wishes to redeem the animal, he must add a fifth of its value. (27:13)
If the man dedicates his house as something holy to the Lord, the priest will judge its quality good or bad.(27:14)
If the man who dedicates a field wishes to redeem it, he must add a fifth to its value and the field will again become his. (27:19)

These things are redeemed from the Lord, not because they belong primarily to God(God claims the firstborn and the tithe as his in Leviticus, not everything in this case), but rather because they were vowed to be given to God.  From this vow, a price is paid to "get back" what was vowed before.  These are those prices.

And though we do not work that way in our world today, we find it a window into ourselves and into our ancestors.

We find that life was marked with inequality back in that day.  Men were worth more than women, hands down.  The young more than the old.  The genders and the age groups are divided out based on their worth.  And though we might disagree with the Bible on this account and want to make all genders and ages equal in worth, it just worked that way back then.

We discover this inequality...but we also discover something that draws us into our own faith.  This idea of redemption, as payment for something, to take back from another.  In the Gospel of Mark, Jesus applies this to us too.

For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many. (Mark 10:45)

The theology of redemption, first established in Leviticus, is brought forward in the New Testament in a new way.  Here Jesus redeems us from "sin, death, and the devil" rescuing us to become children and heirs of God.  God redeems through Jesus his precious possession, namely us, so that, through Jesus redemption, we can truly live for God!

We are God's treasured possession.  And God stopped at nothing to take us back from even death itself!

Thanks be to God!

Blessed are you, Lord God, king of the Universe, for you do not abandon us to the grave but rescue us through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus the Christ.  Amen!