Narrative Lectionary Key Verse for Today
“If she cannot afford a sheep, she shall take two turtledoves or two pigeons, one for a burnt offering and the other for a sin offering; and the priest shall make atonement on her behalf, and she shall be clean.”
NL Daily Devotion for Thursday, December 31, 2020
by R. M. Fergus, Clergy Stuff
I have issues with women’s purification rituals in the Hebrew Bible. However you explain or justify them, they’re oppressive and seek to keep women in a subordinate role to men. But, of course, that’s not why this reading is part of the daily devotional list.
This directive of offering two turtledoves for atonement points to the fact that this is what Mary and Joseph did when Jesus was eight days old. It tells us that (a) Mary and Joseph—and therefore Jesus—were poor, and that (b) they were solidly Jewish.
These things establish that Jesus was a particular person at a particular time, which to me points to his humanness. I need to remember that God walked this earth in Jesus—ate and slept and followed his religious traditions. It reminds me that Jesus gets it. Gets that I can be ornery about Old Testament purification rituals and still love God. My humanness isn’t a character defect. It just is. And God loves me anyway.
What does it mean to me that God became human in Jesus?
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