Living with Leviticus – Recompense

“And they must bring forward an offense offering to the Holy One—a ram, hale and hearty, from the flock—of value with the offense to the Priest” (Leviticus 6.6).

Tell me how I can make it up to you. Perhaps you’ve said those words to someone at some point in your live. For me, they’re words I find myself speaking when the pain I’ve caused someone is so great as to have caused despair—they have given up hope in me. And I know if I could discover some equal measure against the wrong I’d done I would do it. As though I could cover over, blot out some thoughtless action with an offering or a sacrifice equal to it.

That seems like the instruction here—that recompense should equal the value of the offense. An offender must, in some way, make restitution for their action as though by finding something of equal value things could be set right. Like the thief who must not just restore the item or its value, but the time lost in the searching for it. The murderer must somehow give something to fill the space once filled with another’s life.

But does it? Does anything we do for someone truly make up for what has happened? While an act of contrition and even recompense can help reopen the door to trust and healing, can anything—even of dollar-for-dollar value—really equal up to what has been done? Can anything make up for the pain one person brings upon another?

Perhaps the instruction here is less directive than reminder. Maybe the exhortation to make restitution is mean to call to mind the impossibility of the task. Maybe this instruction is meant to challenge our beliefs with the reality that no one act can heal a relationship, a community, or a world. That no matter how long we calculate or how intricate our math, we can never provide anything valuable enough to mend what’s broken.

That sounds almost hopeless, doesn’t it? As though no mistake, no error could ever be forgiven or made right? It can sound like that, if we think of our relationship with God and one another as purely transactional. Because if it is all predicated on a measure-for-measure exchange, then these words are devoid of hope.

But what if these exhortations to make offerings equal to an offense are here to inspire our imaginations? What if, rather than believing that there is somehow some means of offering recompense, we dare consider the cost of change? What if the requirement is the rethinking, reimagining our relationship with each other, the world around us, and the Divine?

It could be that this instruction to provide something equal to an offense is the dare we all need to see how small our visions have become. It may be that the Divine challenge is for us to consider ourselves in how we relate to all those around us, think of why we acted as we did. And then to open our eyes to the vision of a world where God has come amongst us.

And live as though it were true.

Great Dreamer, help me dare to imagine more than what I have seen.

And now...discuss.