Our Priority: Conservation or Contagion?

Parashat Emor, Leviticus 21:1–24:23

Russ Resnik, UMJC Rabbinic Counsel

Years ago, I worked at a Bible-based residential drug treatment center located on the site of a former Catholic boarding school. One day, a man from the neighborhood showed up at my office and asked if he could talk with me. I welcomed him in and he asked, “Are you a father?” I said yes, because I had four children, and he said, “Well, Father, here’s my story.” For my neighbor, “Are you a father?” meant “Are you a priest?” I had to tell him that I wasn’t, but we had a good conversation anyway.

As I thought about it later, though, I realized that in Messiah I actually am a priest, called to stay close to God and represent him among those around me. I possessed quite a bit of what my neighbor was looking for. Without claiming to fill the specific office he had in mind, I had something to offer through staying in touch with the Almighty, being filled with the Spirit, and keeping myself separate from the manifold pollutions of everyday life.

The qualities of priestly service laid out in Parashat Emor, however, don’t seem so attractive to our modern sensibilities. The priest or cohen puts a lot of energy into guarding his holiness, so that he’s limited in how he mourns the dead, and is banned from marrying the wrong sort of woman. Through Moses, the Lord instructs Aaron, “None of your descendants who has a defect may approach to offer the bread of his God. No one with a defect may approach — no one blind, lame,” or possessing any number of flaws (Lev 21:17–18). Even if the priest is free from these “defects,” he becomes unclean, and temporarily barred from priestly service, if he has tzara’at (so-called “leprosy”) or a bodily discharge, or touches another person made unclean by a dead body or a discharge, or “who is unclean for any reason and who can transmit to him his uncleanness” (Lev 22:5). Becoming unclean is temporary, but entering the holy place in an unclean state is a grave offense, so the priest must remain on guard.

The focus in this week’s portion, therefore, is on guarding and conserving the holiness required of a priest. Since all Israel is called to be “a kingdom of cohanim” for Adonai, “a nation set apart” (Exod 19:6), conservation of holiness becomes a priority for the people as a whole. When Messiah Yeshua appears on the scene, however, he acts in ways that may at first seem to challenge this whole priestly system and its stringent requirements. But a closer look reveals how Yeshua upholds the Torah, even as he expands its redemptive impact.

In one of the first scenes in Mark’s account, for example, we see a man falling on his knees and begging Yeshua to cleanse him of his tzara’at. Yeshua reaches out his hand, and touches the man, saying, “Be cleansed!” Now, Yeshua does a lot of touching throughout his entire healing ministry (as in Mark 3:10; 5:27–31; 6:56; 7:33; 8:22–23) . . . but one afflicted with tzara’at is unclean and will render unclean anyone who touches him. When Yeshua touches this “leper,” then, many readers and scholars see him as rejecting the whole purity-holiness code of Torah. The code, however, doesn’t specifically forbid touching such a person, but it states that such touching will result in at least temporary uncleanness. Yeshua’s holiness, however, is not corrupted by contact with the unclean as would normally happen; rather it “uncorrupts” the unclean and makes it pure. Touching a leper normally makes one unclean; but when Yeshua touches this leper, the leper becomes clean. Yeshua manifests a “prophetic, invasive holiness that needs no protection, but reaches out to sanctify the profane,” as Mark Kinzer describes it, a holiness that is “contagious,” as scholar Matthew Thiessen puts it in his book, Jesus and the Forces of Death. This contagious holiness reflects the power of God’s Kingdom pushing back against the forces of death that have corrupted the created order, at least since Adam and Eve defied God’s command in the garden. 

Lest we think that this contagion of holiness is overturning the priestly system, Mark lets us know that Yeshua sends the man to the priest for confirmation of his cleansing, in accord with the Torah (Lev 14:1–32). The priest cannot cleanse tzara’at—that is the work of Adonai alone—but he has the authority to certify the cleansing when it happens, and Yeshua endorses that authority and its role in providing “a testimony to the people” (1:44). The genius of Mark’s account, reflecting the genius of Messiah himself, is to affirm both the conservation and contagion of holiness.  

As a preacher and teacher, I’m tempted to draw a contrast in our treatment of holiness between conservation and contagion. Are we mostly concerned with preserving our spiritual status quo and protecting our community from the corrosive influence of an increasingly secular and lawless culture? Are we aligning with the stereotype invoked by those who are disenchanted with God, religion, and religious people, that is, defining ourselves by what we’re against and what we don’t do, rather than what we are for? Or are we ready to spread around the spiritual benefits bestowed on us—confident that whatever holiness we might have is contagious?

So, it’s not so much a matter of contrast between conservation and contagion; we need both. The stability and separation of a healthy religious community provides a platform for influencing the surrounding culture. So let’s not be afraid of touching and lifting up those around us who might seem lost or hopeless. We might be afraid of catching something around them, but they might actually catch something good from us. Let’s be ready to touch those our culture might think of as unclean.

When Yeshua sends the cleansed man to the priest, he warns him to say nothing to anyone else about what has happened. The man, however, goes out and freely spreads the news (and we don’t even know whether he ever makes it to the priest), so that Yeshua can “no longer enter a town openly but stayed out in the country” (1:45), ironically reflecting the conditions of the so-called leper, who has to stay away from the towns and dwell apart (Lev 13:46). But the people still find a way to get to Yeshua and continue “coming to him from all around.” And so the contagion of holiness spreads.  

Scripture references are from Complete Jewish Bible (CJB).

Russ Resnik