As we begin the book of Leviticus, we enter a foreign world. We are confronted with ancient rituals – animal sacrifices and cures for leprosy. But at its core, Leviticus is a book about honesty, a book about intimacy.

We think of the sacrifices in a literal sense. But the Hebrew word has a different meaning. It comes from a verb that means “to get closer.”

The sacrifices of old were more than offerings. They were acts of giving up our pretensions, ways of admitting that we are not all-powerful, and that at times, we need help from God. In those moments of honesty, we get closer to God and closer to the ones we love.

The sacrifices are long since gone. They ended thousands of years ago, but something else replaced them, what the rabbis called “the offering of the heart.” In modern times, we call it prayer or t’filah, but the principle is the same.

Prayer, t’filah, is an act of opening up to ourselves, of giving our honesty and our openness to God. As the Psalmist put it:

Adonai, open up my lips that my mouth can declare Your praise.
You do not want me to bring sacrifices;
You do not desire burnt offerings;
The true sacrifice to God is a contrite spirit;
God, you will not despise a contrite and broken heart.

Psalm 51

The true offering to God is our brokenness, our willingness to admit that we are just beginning to understand. We open up to who we really are, and slowly we realize that God loves us more than we love ourselves.

Prayer, like the sacrifices, is an act of humility. We open up to our brokenness, and we experience something larger that our selves, waiting, listening, reaching out to help. As Nachman of Breslov wrote:

When a man rises to pray, all sorts of thoughts surround him, and he remains in darkness and is unable to pray. But there is a door in the darkness that allows us to go out. And the name of that door is truth.

Even in the darkest times, there are doors that we can go through. But we cannot always see them. We cry out to God and admit the truth about our lives, and God shines His light upon us and shows us the way. As it says, God is close to all who call Him, to all who call Him in truth.

On the surface, the ancient sacrifices seem barbaric. But they teach us a powerful truth. To love is to give. To loveto be honest and to admit our brokenness. And, at times, to love is to give something up so that the one who we love can prosper.

And perhaps, more than anything else, to love is to know that we are never alone. There is someone who loves us, listening, sharing our honesty, helping us to open a door when life seems darkest.

Adonai, open up my lips that my mouth can declare Your praise.