Strange Traditions...

"Since the water for cleansing has not been dashed on them, they are unclean." Numbers 19:20

Strange Traditions...
By Rev. William Dohle

Have you ever tried to explain your particular traditions to someone else outside of those traditions? Have you ever attempted to do so?

Take something Christians are familiar with: Communion. What are we doing when we take communion? An outsider would hear words like "This is my body" and "This is my blood" and then watch us eat them and assume we are cannibals! After all, that's what cannibals do, right? They eat another person's flesh and drink their blood? What's up with that, they might think.

Being an outsider raises lots of questions. I had that experience once when I visited a Jewish temple on Rosh Hashanna. There I watched them parade a scroll around the congregation. People, dressed in prayer shawls and such, would touch the scroll either with their book or with their shawl, smiling and singing. I still don't quite understand why they did that. Or why they rocked back and forth when they prayed too. That also made me wonder.

Traditions are strange, especially for strangers. And for outsiders, traditions, especially ones that have been institutionalized and made an essential piece of the religious tradition, can be so confusing and overwhelming that, unless they really grasp what the meaning is, it can turn them away. How do you explain to someone that the bread and wine taken at communion IS the body and blood of Christ, though it doesn't taste like it or look like it? And how can one not address the cannibal question if it truly is what we say it is?

Tradition is something that the book of Numbers is talking about as it describes the most odd way of removing uncleanliness ever! The Red Heifer!

Tell the Israelites to bring you a red heifer without defect, in which there is no blemish and on which no yoke has been laid. You shall give it to the priest Eleazar, and it shall be taken outside the camp and slaughtered in his presence. The priest Eleazar shall take some of its blood with his finger and sprinkle it seven times towards the front of the tent of meeting. Then the heifer shall be burned in his sight; its skin, its flesh, and its blood, with its dung, shall be burned. The priest shall take cedarwood, hyssop, and crimson material, and throw them into the fire in which the heifer is burning.  Then the priest shall wash his clothes and bathe his body in water, and afterwards he may come into the camp; but the priest shall remain unclean until evening. The one who burns the heifer shall wash his clothes in water and bathe his body in water; he shall remain unclean until evening.  Then someone who is clean shall gather up the ashes of the heifer, and deposit them outside the camp in a clean place; and they shall be kept for the congregation of the Israelites for the water for cleansing. It is a purification offering. The one who gathers the ashes of the heifer shall wash his clothes and be unclean until evening.

This shall be a perpetual statute for the Israelites and for the alien residing among them. Those who touch the dead body of any human being shall be unclean seven days. They shall purify themselves with the water on the third day and on the seventh day, and so be clean...Numbers 19:2-12

So... what's up with the red heifer? Well... the Christian in me thinks: "That sounds like Christ! Christ is killed and his blood makes us clean! We are washed in the waters of baptism. Yes!" But then I thought that might be a stretch. Kinda a big stretch now that I think about it.

I think to understand this we need to understand the why. Why is this important? The problem in this passage is uncleanliness. How does one become able to be ritually clean when they've become unclean. When they've touched a corpse or eaten with unwashed hands or done any of the things described in Scripture that can make a person unclean. What happens to them?

How do we make an unclean person clean again?

The answer is ritualistic and simple: "To make that unclean person clean again, wash them in some special water. Make the water with the ashes of a special bull and special spices and set it out so that anyone who is unclean might become clean again."

What a cool way to solve the problem of uncleanliness! Wash and be clean!

We might look at this passage and dismiss it for its irrelevance for today, but I see it as a window to what we do in worship. How do our rituals translate to the stranger? What issues do our rituals address for us?How do we communicate how special they are and what they do for our faith to others who haven't experienced them before? How do we explain their meaning?

In Communion, for me, I think about what happens with the food we eat. How, as they say, "you become what you eat." If that is so that means me eating the essence of Christ means that I must somehow become Christ to my neighbor. In that meal I receive forgiveness of my sins, life, and salvation, but I also in some way become a new person, to serve and love my neighbor as I believe Christ would.

So...what traditions do you have? How would you explain your traditions to someone? What are the whys behind what you do?

Almighty God, help us understand each other and our traditions better. Give us eyes to see our own traditions honestly and help us learn and appreciate those of others. Amen.