Clean and Holy

I used to think it was so unfair of God to have those rules about being clean and unclean.  How could the Jews ever keep those rules?  For example, touching a dead body rendered a person unclean ... but somebody had to prepare the body for burial.  How could God makes rules and expect us to keep them when the rules were unkeepable??

But that's not what holiness is about.  Holiness isn't about doing all the right things and keeping ourselves oh-so-pure.  It's about being contaminated as the helpless unclean one is served and helped and made clean.  Again and again, Jesus' miracles show Him getting dirty by touching the lepers and the ill and the bleeding and the dead. 

God sure does seem fond of oxymorons.