Narrative Lectionary Key Verse for Today
“Accept the Levites as substitutes for all the firstborn among the Israelites, and the livestock of the Levites as substitutes for their livestock; and the Levites shall be mine. I am the Lord.”
NL Daily Devotion for Saturday, January 2, 2021
by R. M. Fergus, Clergy Stuff
The Levites were the priests of the Israelite people. God had commanded that all firstborn males were to be dedicated to God, which carries the connotation that they would all serve God in some religious capacity. But now God says that all the Levites will stand in for all those first-born males, I guess so that the priests could do their priest things and all those boys could go on to work the family holdings and inherit them, thus carrying on the line. (Interesting historical note: for centuries in Europe, it was common practice for the youngest son in the family to enter the priesthood, in a kind of reverse observance of this dedication of the first born to God, since the youngest son wouldn’t inherit anyway).
Do I have a point? Not really. Just wondering about God’s setting aside of an entire tribe to lead the others in God’s ways, so that the rest of God’s people could go about the business of building a society, without having their spiritual needs neglected. It was kind of genius for the time, but I wonder if it’s had some negative repercussions on our participation in our own spirituality. I think we have a tendency to want to hold clergy apart, or above, so that we can go to worship on Sunday and be fed by them, and then get back to our “real lives” and not have to think about any of it. What if we were to dedicate the first fruits of our time to attending to our relationship with God, as though it were our first born, instead of having a dedicated tribe of clergy relieve us of that obligation? Just a thought.
How do I deepen my spiritual connection to God and my faith tradition?
