We love to talk about “healthy” boundaries. It’s even become a warcry amongst the younger generation about keeping relationships at bay so their lives will remain minimally impacted by those we really want to police (usually parents). But all that’s really doing is fueling division, and with division comes death.
“Come on man! You can’t have a child molester babysit your kids, right?”
Correct but that is 100% not what we’re talking about here. We’re talking about you deciding who can be in relationship with you and in what measure. Although politicians have mastered this effect, taking extreme examples as justification should never be a means to blanket-cover your own selfishness.
Now, there is a boundary we need to adhere to but it may not be quite what you’d expect. In fact, it goes directly against setting healthy boundaries with your parents.
I had a very strange experience happen recently in my own life that explained the idea of clean and unclean in terms that made intimate sense to me.
As a reminder, when you are unclean you must leave the courtyard of the Tabernacle until your uncleanness is cleaned. This is more than just a bath -- it requires us to look deeply into every area of our finite lives.
I’ve spent years trying to get some kind of bearing on what it really means to be unclean. The Torah gives detailed instruction on what causes it -- death, disease, childbirth, discharges, even intimacy -- but what does it actually mean to be unclean?
For the longest time, I thought uncleanness was merely about giving it a little time then washing up before approaching the Holy One. But then I had the opportunity to live it. I had a moment, a brush with mortality, that changed everything. I finally got a firsthand look into why I was put just outside the gate.
It turned out that it wasn’t sin that separated me (although it certainly can), it was the undeniable weight of being human. I became supremely aware of my body, my breath, my heartbeat, and simultaneously of something infinitely larger pulsing through the air around me. It was as though I could sense every spiritual frequency vibrating through creation. Yet, in that very awareness, I also felt the ache of distance -- standing just outside the gate, the place where holiness begins.
At first, I couldn’t understand it. I hadn’t done anything wrong (that I knew of). But it soon became clear that my state wasn’t about moral failure, it was about proximity. I had brushed against the veil between mortality and Eternity, and the residue of that encounter made it impossible to cross the threshold of the gate.
I longed for the Presence, yet I could feel the pull of life itself -- family, community, all that is good. Both death and life had left their mark on me, and both must be released before entering the Holy Place.
It was then I realized that holiness is not a list of approved behaviors. It’s the meeting point where Heaven and earth touch -- and everything that belongs to the dust must first bow to the Eternal.
The Book of Leviticus is a masterpiece of divine architecture. It’s not merely a catalog of rituals. It’s a map of reality showing how finite humanity dwells safely in the presence of an infinite God.
The Tabernacle is the center of that design, a microcosm of Creation. The outer court teems with the life of Israel -- blood, bread, light, incense. The inner sanctum, the Most Holy Place, is Heaven itself, the seat of YHVH’s glory. Between them stands the gate, the threshold where mortality meets Eternity.
Clean, unclean, and holy aren’t moral judgments. They describe states of nearness. The unclean dwell in the realm of mortality. The clean may draw near. The holy dwell with God. The gate is where these states meet and are reconciled. It is the hinge between worlds -- where flesh learns reverence, where time slows to match Eternity’s pace.
When I found myself sitting outside that gate, I was reliving Israel’s story in miniature. I wasn’t cast out -- I was being held still. In that pause, I saw the gentle mercy of Leviticus -- that the Holy One of Israel builds boundaries not to exclude us, but to prepare us.
But prepare us for what?
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks once wrote that tame (usually translated “unclean”) doesn’t mean “defiled.” It means mortal. It is, he said, “that which distracts from eternity and infinity by making us forcibly aware of mortality.”
That definition captures everything I felt. To be tame is to be reminded that we are not infinite. Instead, our flesh has limits, our days are numbered, and our hearts still cling to things that fade.
Tahor (clean), on the other hand, means readiness to step toward Eternity. This is the call upon all who serve our God though few take the step.
Leviticus, then, is not a book of prohibitions but a dialogue between time and Eternity. It teaches us how to live as physical beings who still host the breath of God. Holiness is not escape from the world but the sanctification of it -- a life balanced delicately between body and spirit, where every movement honors the Presence that dwells among us.
Leviticus 24 drives this truth home in the most uncomfortable way possible. In the wake of the commands concerning priestly holiness and sacred space, the narrative shifts. A man, the son of an Israelite woman and an Egyptian father, blasphemes the Name of YHVH during a quarrel. He’s brought before Moses and the community, and the word of YHVH declares that the one who curses His Name must bear his guilt and be stoned.
Why insert this story here? Because holiness does not end at the curtain of the Tabernacle. The sanctity of God’s Name extends far beyond the sanctuary walls. Reverence isn’t confined to the altar -- it belongs in the marketplace, the camp, and the field.
The blasphemer’s act shattered that harmony. He desecrated the divine order not through ritual impurity but through irreverence. It was as if he dragged Heaven’s holiness into the dust, refusing to acknowledge that even ordinary speech can carry eternal consequence.
The same chapter then commands the oil for the lampstand and the bread of the Presence -- symbols of perpetual light and sustenance. These were to burn continually before the LORD, both inside and outside the veil. What this tells us is that holiness flows outward. The Tabernacle is the epicenter, but the current moves through the people, transforming the camp itself into sacred ground.
And we are the ones called to see this happens.
My experience -- that trembling awareness of standing outside the gate -- was the living out of this Levitical truth. The same Presence that filled the Tabernacle pressed against the boundaries of my heart. I was able to feel the weight of both my mortality and my calling.
Holiness is where Heaven and earth meet, but it’s not static. It moves. It calls. It demands reverence inside the sanctuary and outside it. In the Holy Place, we learn how to approach. Outside, we learn how to live. The same God who guards the gate also walks among the tents, listening to how we speak His Name, how we treat one another, how we carry His presence through the dust.
So when I found myself outside the gate, I wasn’t being rejected, I was being shown the rhythm of divine encounter. I was standing at the very hinge of holiness, learning what every priest must learn: that to dwell with God, everything that clings to the flesh -- even love, even grief, even life itself -- must be surrendered.
And when you finally step back through that gate, it won’t be as one who merely washed up, but as one who has seen the difference between mortality and Eternity and chosen the latter.
Leviticus ends not with distance but with intimacy.
Leviticus 26:12 “I will walk among you and be your God, and you will be My people.”
That is the goal of holiness -- not separation but communion.
The gate of the Tabernacle is still there, not as a barrier, but as a mirror. It shows us the threshold within ourselves where Heaven and earth meet. And the call of holiness, whether in the sanctuary or the street, is to honor that meeting place, to hold the tension between dust and divinity with reverent hands.
For in that sacred balance, Eternity finds a home in mortal hearts.
It finds a home within you.