Leviticus 21

According to everyone's favorite wall-crawler (just as long as he's not being directed by Marc Webb), "With great power comes great responsibility." The Israelite priests' power, though it comes from God, involves making sacrifices, taking the burden of the people's sin and bringing it before His holy presence. As such, God expects them to serve as the epitome of purity and reverence by following stipulations such as, say, steering clear of making their faces resemble those of ZZ Top's.

Although priests may make themselves unclean for the sake of close, consanguine (remember that word?) relatives, but the high priest can't even do that (verses 10-12)--which I suppose explains the whole fiasco with Aaron's sons in Leviticus 10. If he is to mourn, he must do so without manifesting it. I know I wouldn't be able to do that--which is why I probably wouldn't have made a very good high priest.

Actually, I definitely couldn't have been a high priest because my vision is so poor, it pretty much qualifies as an eye defect--and those with eye defects can't become priests, much less the Grand High Priest of the United Galactic Federation. Without glasses or contacts, I'd qualify as legally blind. God is so holy and perfect that He cannot stand any flaws, even physical deformities and illnesses. From our point of view, this is unfair--sick people or those who don't look like supermodels aren't necessarily worse human beings. Fortunately, Jesus' death and resurrection abrogates the requirement of physical perfection--and no one is perfect anyway; flaws make us human. I'm sure even Grace Kelly had imperfections she hid from everyone.

However, as with much of Exodus, we come to the "So what?" of this chapter. Few of us will become priests, and no one will become a Leviticus-era Israelite priest ever again. Riffing off of Spidey's catchphrase, the title character of director Matthew Vaughn's superb film Kick-Ass says, "With no power comes no responsibility"--but as he realizes right after he says that little nugget, that's not true. We all have power of some sort--a reasonable amount of it too, if you have the resources to read these words. I may not be in a leadership position, but I have the power to help the less fortunate and treat everyone in a Christlike manner.