11. Guilt Offerings: Transgression

The LORD said to Moses, "If any one commits a breach of faith and sins unwittingly in any of the holy things of the LORD, he shall bring, as his guilt offering to the LORD, a ram without blemish out of the flock, valued by you in shekels of silver, according to the shekel of the sanctuary; it is a guilt offering. He shall also make restitution for what he has done amiss in the holy thing, and shall add a fifth to it and give it to the priest; and the priest shall make atonement for him with the ram of the guilt offering, and he shall be forgiven. . . ."

The LORD said to Moses, "If any one sins and commits a breach of faith against the LORD by deceiving his neighbor in a matter of deposit or security, or through robbery, or if he has oppressed his neighbor or has found what was lost and lied about it, swearing falsely--in any of the things which men do and sin therein, when one has sinned and become guilty, he shall restore what he took by robbery, or what he got by oppression, or the deposit which was committed to him, or the lost thing which he found, or anything about which he has sworn falsely; he shall restore it in full, and shall add a fifth to it, and give it to him to whom it belongs, on the day of his guilt offering. And he shall bring to the priest his guilt offering to the LORD, a ram without blemish out of the flock, valued by you at the price for a guilt offering; and the priest shall make atonement for him before the LORD, and he shall be forgiven for any of the things which one may do and thereby become guilty."

Leviticus 5:14-16; 6:1-7

Guilt offerings for defilement showed us the way to turn to God for healing of the unclean feelings which seem to appear in us from no deliberate intent of ours. As we encounter what is filthy in the world, we find the parts of us that understand the filth. We know our need for cleansing, although the occasion seems to come from circumstances outside ourselves. Now, finally, we come to our transgressions, the overt acts that we have done against our God or neighbor.

The first part of the text deals with transgressions committed unwittingly against God. We may commit a "breach of faith" and sin "unwittingly in any of the holy things of the LORD." These "holy things" include the giving of tithes or other offerings due to God. They are the symbol that all we have is a gift from God. The Lord loves all people tenderly and generously. There is no depth of affection the Lord would not give us to enrich our lives, and no breadth of wisdom the Lord would not give us for our delight. The change of attitude that sees the presence of God's goodness not as a gift, but as something we have done, does, always, seem to be unwitting. The effort that is part of any spiritual growth appears mysteriously as credit in our ledger. Consciously we know that pride in truth received means loss of light, that good things done with reliance only on ourselves, fail through lack of steady love or through complacency. But how much of God's grace can we receive without unconsciously shifting our position to one of bargaining or of deserving?

The Lord alone loves steadily, with majestic intensity, and at the same time with absolute modesty and respectfulness. The Lord alone, knowing all things, can value wisdom solely as a means of embodying love for others. It is not an arbitrary law that requires regular looking to the Lord for good, and acknowledgment of the Lord in the good we receive; it is the principle of life. And the failure we experience when we do not look to the Lord is not an arbitrary penalty; it is the fact of life.

And so we are to bring silver shekels for the amount of tithe or offering withheld, adding an extra fifth, and a perfect ram from the flock for a guilt offering. Gold and silver are solid knowledge left with us by experience, gold by experience of the goodness of God, silver by experience of the truth. We bring silver, representing an intelligent knowledge of God's gift and of the mistake of crediting it to ourselves. The fifth is two tithes, symbols of all of the goods and truths from God stored up in our inner selves, to represent the full acknowledgment that God is the source of life. The flock are those who love and follow their Lord, and so the ram symbolizes an innocent desire to know God's will and do it. To bring this offering is to bring ourselves into the pattern of reality, to be open to the one source of all life and energy, so that we may live.

The second part of the text deals with the final kind of transgression, deliberately dealing false with our neighbor. This too is a "breach of faith against the LORD," a sin against the Lord's love for all, as well as a trespass against our neighbor. The Biblical tradition as a whole connects the love of God with love of neighbor. This is brought out clearly later in Leviticus 19 in that most sensitive treatment of what it means that God asks us to "be holy." The reason that "you shall love your neighbor as yourself" is not to gain reward, but that "I am the LORD" (Lev. 19:18). The reason that "you shall love" the stranger "as yourself" is that "you were strangers in the land of Egypt" and that "I am the LORD your God" (Lev. 19:34). Jesus makes the King in his parable say, "as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me" (Mt. 25:40). Rabbis shortly before the time of Jesus similarly saw the quality of "singleness," of single hearted devotion to the will of God alone, as inextricably bound up with charity to the neighbor (T. Issachar).

The breach against our neighbor is, then, against our God as well. It is a breach we can commit in many ways. We may deceive our neighbors in the matter of a trust accepted for material goods. We may deceive them at another level through our prejudice or dishonesty, preventing them from obtaining the truth or good that they desire. We may steal from our neighbors' material goods, or by taking possession of their thoughts and affections and misusing them. We may betray a confidence. We may oppress our neighbors physically, either directly, or by enjoying the benefit of labor inadequately compensated,--or we may manipulate them psychologically, preventing freedom of thought and enjoyment. We may find what was lost and lie about it, twisting a situation for our benefit. We may swear falsely, promising what we know we may not do. We may injure our neighbors in a thousand different ways.

We cannot do these wrongs to others and not suffer from them ourselves, cutting ourselves off from the source of life, and diminishing for all the trust and justice and charity which are abundant life. These wrongs are obvious injuries. We cannot easily plead innocent error. They are injuries we do to our neighbors. We cannot plead defilement coming from their sins or errors. Up to now, we could turn to God more or less confidently, with some reason to trust in mercy and with some excuse. We could, perhaps, identify the evil thing as evil, and distinguish the evil action from ourselves who did or suffered it. But now, are we not faced with the fact that we are guilty? Should we not start, at least, to punish ourselves and so avert worse punishment to come?

This is perhaps the final test of our awareness of the facts of life. God's goodness is the source of life. There is no other. Good loves which do not feel natural to us, such as the love of truth or of loving others without regard to our own ego, are from God. They are given to us when we ask them from the Lord and use them as from the Lord. When we take them into our own hands to use apart from God, they lose their source of life. If we attempt to punish ourselves, to chasten ourselves to an unselfish love of truth, we may cut off some of the more obvious selfish motives, only to enlarge our deeper pride in our own intelligence or comprehensiveness; and then we have no clear light from God by which to discern truth from falsehood.

Self punishment cuts us off from God. We let ourselves be fooled by hell's voice that we are guilty, and that we have to deal with the evil ourselves before we dare to come to God. And so we fight in our own strength, without the source of all the strength there is, and lose.

Self punishment serves hell, not heaven. "The Lord imputes good to every man and evil to none." God's constant love for every person is trustworthy. That "steadfast love endures forever." It is a breach of faith against God when we are unfaithful to our neighbor. What heals the breach? We are to restore "in full, and add a fifth to it, and give it to him to whom it belongs," going first to our neighbor and doing our part to make it right with him or her. And then on the same day we are to bring a ram, a desire to know God's will and do it, to the priest, that our priest may make atonement for us before the Lord, so that we may "be forgiven for any of the things which one may do and thereby become guilty." Any of them. Again we must identify the evil we have done, and deal with it, not evading the specific by turning our attention to ourselves and feeling guilty.

The key point is again that first awareness of the evil. That is the point at which we must trust God enough to look clearly at the evil in the light of God's presence, and not run away and hide it somewhere in ourselves so we won't really have to see it, and not try to fix it ourselves so that we never have to bring it to the Lord. Self punishments, like dead lions, make us filthy. And God's will is for good, that we turn from the evil and to God, and be free of it and live.

We are responsible to go to our neighbor, to restore "in full, and add a fifth," giving more than our original injury. Beyond this we are not responsible. We are not the ones who make it right. We can only free our block, our defensiveness, so that the Lord's love will have the space to work for healing. It is not our judgment of the issue which solves the problem. And it is not we who go alone to bring about solution. It is God's mercy that goes, bearing us and our action with it as a kind of symbol of that love, if we but will. And all the outcome, for ourselves and for the other, we must yield to God.

The way to deal with guilt is not denial, nor war against it, nor eating it. It is to put it in the Lord's hands, to be taken outside the camp and burned to ash. Why are there guilt offerings? Not to convict us of guilt, but to free us from it. Removal of the evil, and renewal of God's life in us, is God's Divine forgiveness. And so each offering, for sin, defilement, or transgression, ends with forgiveness. For the Divine forgiveness is a sense of the Lord's love in us, of healing and of freedom to enjoying doing what is good and to perceive the ways of loving wisely.

Be quiet. Turn your mind to God's amazing, consistent love for you. Rest quietly for a moment in God's goodness, the reality of all that is, that does no evil, the utterly amazing goodness that no matter what evil you have done, does not want you to be guilty, but wants your healing.

Read again Leviticus 5:14-16 and 6:1-7, and hear the Word of God to you that there is a way to come back from any evil you have done, to the Lord, to be free of it.

And now let your mind be open to the evil you have done, and this time don't turn away. Look at it and see the evil of the thing you did. Who did you injure? Mentally put that person into the Lord's hands to be comforted, and feel the power of the Lord's compassion for him or her. And now, in the strength of that compassion, ask the Lord's help to know the pain you have caused and to know the way the Lord would want that person to be comforted.

And now put the evil and the pain, the other person, and yourself, into the Lord's hands. And whatever the action is you know that you will do, to go and see that person face to face and ask forgiveness, to make the phone call, to write the check or letter, to do your part to right the wrong, see the Lord with you as you see what you will do. And see it not as a thing that you alone must do to stop the pain or heal the breach, but as an expression of your knowing that God's will is already moving with you both, with power to heal if you will let it.

And now whatever the good of love that was disrupted by your sin against your neighbor, see that good, and bring your ram of love and give it into the Lord's hands. And greet the priest in you, and give the source of your feelings and your memory of the evil to the fire of love upon the altar. And see the priest in you take all the rest, skin and dung and all, outside the camp to be burned to ash. And now, again, be still a moment, and breathe deeply and gratefully, and let the good come in.

Lord, thank you. Thank you that I can come to you and ask your help to see the evil I have done and turn from it, and live. Help me to put myself, and my neighbor I have hurt, into your hands. Hold us, Lord, in your cleansing, healing love. Thank you, Lord. Amen.