The Breast Plate of Aaron

In 2006 I got a book from the Bishop to encourage daily devotions, it was basically a journal with a space to write some prayers and a guide for reading through the Bible in a year. Each year since I have attempted to use this book as a way of encouraging good Bible reading habits. This year I started late, so I actually skipped most of January rather than try and scramble to catch up as I was just getting started with my new healthy Bible reading habit. This is probably fine since I made it through all of January the last two times I did this anyway. The guide basically has a person reading from one book in the Hebrew Bible and one book from the New Testament at the same time. So as I started on this project I jumped into the beginning of the book of Acts and the middle of Exodus. For the last two days I have been experiencing the fascinating tension of reading about the church in Acts and its struggles with the established religious authorities at the same time as I have been reading about the establishment of the religious authorities in Exodus. In particular I have been reading through the 5+ chapters that detail the Temple, the priestly class, and how to make the vestments of Aaron and his sons.

I am never sure what to do with the details of Exodus 25-29, while important historically, I cannot see how they help the Church today. Is there value in attaching ourselves to the symbols of the past? What do we do with the bloody nature of the early rituals? How does all of this relate to the sermon of Stephen in Acts 7 where he seems to emphasize that one of the largest fallacies of the Jewish tradition is that God can be contained in a temple. Without the need for a temple is there a need for a priestly class and priestly ritual? I guess what I am pondering right now, and have done almost every year, is beyond historical value, what can be gained from the descriptions of the ancient traditions of the Jewish faith, for Christians or for Jews. Just one more thing to think about.