Numbers 19

I know that holy water is made such by God's intervention rather than any actual physical ingredient. Still, I'd have said that holy water consisted of something like the water from Old Faithful mixed with the seventh branch of a bonsai plant and chocolate rum pudding. I would never have guessed that it would consist of the ashes of an incinerated cow. When I think of flaming cows, I can't help recalling the opening scene of Tim Burton's wonderfully nutty film Mars Attacks!, which features a whole herd of blazing bovines:

We never find out what happens to that burning stampede, although we do get to witness a panoply of celebrities (including Danny DeVito, who gets above-the-line billing for about 10 minutes of screen time) get zapped, liquidated, startled, or flattened by Martians with big brains. Basically, it's an absurd piss-take of Independence Day, which was released earlier that same year.

Although God tells His people to burn only certain parts of sacrificial offerings, He makes no stipulation with the Holy Water Heifers. (How's that for a band name?) He says, "the heifer is to be burned--its hide, flesh, blood, and intestines" (verse 5). While the radiant ruminant is burning to a lovely crisp, the priest must fling some wood, minty hyssop, and red wool on top of the whole conflagration. I'm mildly curious about whether it did smell like BBQ, as the Burton film suggests. However, I'm nowhere near curious enough to obtain a whole cow carcass and set in ablaze in a bonfire on my front lawn just to find out. I'm sure that would break some kind of city ordinance, for one.

But from such humble beginnings springs the cure to uncleanliness. Such uncleanliness doesn't just result from peccadilloes, felonies, immorality, and general naughtiness--God is so unrelentingly holy that an act as seemingly innocuous as accidentally touching a dead body makes one unclean. But God knows that sometimes, s*** happens (to take an aphorism from Forrest Gump), and He magnanimously makes provisions for such lapses. Luckily for us, we don't have to take a match to poor Bessie to atone for our uncleanliness, but we still must keep in mind God's unalloyed holiness matched only by His loving grace.