One verse in today's reading is the key to the whole sacrificial system, and to the cross behind it: the life of a creature is in the blood. God gave it, He says, to make atonement, life covering life.

Nothing about the Bible's insistence on blood is primitive. It is the sober price tag of life, and the extravagance of the One who paid it.

Leviticus 17:11 is the Bible's economics of forgiveness stated plainly: sin costs life, and God, rather than collecting from the sinner, arranged for life to be given. Every altar in Israel ran on that substitution, and every altar was a promissory note. At the cross the note was paid in a currency no bull or goat carried: the life of the Son.

That is why the Syrophoenician mother's crumbs were enough and the deaf man's ears opened at a word: the Payer was standing in front of them. Live today out of paid-for-ness. No self-atoning, no penance projects, no groveling. The life was in the blood, and the blood was given, for you.