Recollections

Rachel (a.k.a. the Velveteen Rabbi) recently posted a very interesting article to Radical Torah, a group blog on Jewish social action to which she also contributes. The article concerned the “harrowing tale” of Nadab and Abihu, two Aaronic priests who, according to Leviticus 10:1-3, were struck dead by God for offering “unholy fire” (or “strange” or “alien” fire) in sacrifice to God.

Rachel notes that this passage is sometimes used by Orthodox rabbis to criticize the efforts of Reform or Conservative Jews to introduce liturgical innovations into prayer and worship. I found this interesting because I have also heard the same text used by conservative Christians to warn against the dangers of “change” in the worship practices of the church. In fact, in the churches that I grew up in, which took very seriously a strict adherence to Scripture, the death of Nadab and Abihu was used (along with other “harrowing tales” like the death of Uzzah, who was smitten for steadying the ark of God with his hand) as if the story amounted to a Q.E.D. in any argument against any alteration in traditional practices or interpretations of Scripture.

It’s odd (to say the least) that conservative Christians would reach into the stories of Torah to argue against “change,” since Christianity itself is “strange fire” if ever there were such a thing. If what Nadab and Abihu did was worthy of death at the hands of Adonai, then we should at least pause at the realization that the liturgical and theological innovations of Peter and Paul were of another order of magnitude altogether. The Christians who seem to like stories like those about Nadab and Abihu and Uzzah seem to be those whose theology is grounded in a deep commitment to “risk avoidance,” a desire to play it safe when it comes to serving God. But this is ironic since to believe that Jesus was the Son of God was the riskiest business imaginable to his contemporaries, something that Peter and Paul at least understood.

Even more troubling to me is the simplistic way that these kinds of “harrowing tales” about the dangers of innovation are represented as though they summarize the true spirit of Scripture, as though the entire meta-story of God’s relationship with Israel can be reduced to a game of gotcha, in which even those (like Uzzah) who seem to be wholly devoted to the Lord end up on the receiving end of a fistful of thunderbolts. The message that these stories are alleged to convey is that change is always bad, that returning to the old paths and sticking to the old ways is the summum bonum of religious life.

To be fair to this view, repentance — which implicitly involves a change that rejects deviation from a norm — is described throughout the Scriptures of both Jews and Christians as a virtue. There is value in returning to traditions, to putting out the alien fires that we introduce into our lives. But it would be a mistake to reduce sin to a synonym for change, especially since an equally resonant theme of Scripture is God’s ability and perogative to surprise and to change. I love a passage from Deuteronomy 8 that underlines this theme by reminding Israel of God’s provision of manna in the wilderness, a kind of food with which “neither you nor your ancestors were acquainted.” It was, in other words, alien food, strange food — but food intended to show the people that “one does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord,” even words with which neither we nor or ancestors were acquainted.

Stories like the death of Nadab and Abihu are uncomfortable to read, and they cannot be put away simply because of that discomfort. But the “point” they convey — that the old ways are safe, that new fire is “strange” and “unholy” — seems to me to pale in comparison to the larger point of Scripture as a whole, which stresses God’s penchant for doing a new thing, for surprising those to whom he reveals himself with words and bread they had never seen before. It may seem safe to stick only to the words and bread with which we are acquainted (I imagine it took some courage to take the risk of putting that first piece of strange manna in one’s mouth), but that philosophy of “risk avoidance” is not, in the end, the major message of Scripture.