Asylum Cities

Numbers 35:11-23         1/9/2018

The passage describes the principle of asylum cities. These cities were empowered to grant asylum from the “life for life” aspect of the law. They were Levite cities – filled with ministers of the law.

It was a little bit like a deadly game of tag.

Whenever a person died at the hands of another person, the victim’s nearest relative (known as the avenger of blood) was charged with exacting justice by killing the perpetrator. Even a person who was responsible for the accidental death of another person was still subject to be killed. The asylum city was a place where someone who killed without malice could flee. The avenger of blood was not allowed to kill in a city of asylum.

The Law is Crazy

The temptation is to think it’s all a mumbo-jumbo, capricious, arbitrary, nonsense.

So, if a man inadvertently kills another person, the avenger of blood is responsible for killing the person who committed the homicide. The only hope the unintentional killer has is to get to a city of refuge and stay there. He can’t leave until the high priest dies.

What is this? And who made it up?

Ancient Justice and Eternal Justice

The eternal purpose is community. God created the universe in order to produce an Authentic Community. If you claim the One, True, God – you are a part of this community.

All of creation supports this community. The planets and the stars and dark matter and quarks and bosons and essences and ideas – all exist for the purpose of supporting the Authentic Community. This is the cosmological Christian claim.

So, to injure the community, especially through the death of another, is a sin against all creation. Creation itself is adversely affected by my failings. Creation is injured by my sins.

Asylum

But asylum wasn’t a permanent fix. Asylum isn’t a permanent fix. It is a reprieve that allows time for healing before ultimate justice is exacted.

So my question for today: Do I live like someone granted asylum? Stuck in a small city? Stuck in a small life? Unable to remedy my situation on my own. Always afraid of the ever-lurking, avenger of death?

Or do I have liberty to go wherever I please in the land of promise?

“Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom” 2 Cor 3:17