All Those Offerings

A post from Kiran (I hope it isn't too long)
So what are all these different offerings they're talking about here at the beginning of Leviticus? Here's what the (limited) commentary in my Bible says to describe them:
Holocaust: The sacrifice called 'holocaust' ('wholly burned') was celebrated in Israel from ancient times. In Lv 1 the emphasis is on its expiatory character but the ancient holocaust was a sacrifice of thanksgiving for some signal divine intervention.
Oblation: the 'oblation,' being an offering of agricultural produce, originates as the rite of a settled population. The burning of the handful of flour assimilates the oblation to the holocaust. The oblation is usually accompanied by another, complimentary, sacrifice.
Communion Sacrifice: often called 'peace-offering,' it was widespread in the semitic world and beyond. It was a sacred banquet at which the worshipers ate one portion of the victim, the other being made over to the deity. It seems to have been the most commonly celebrated sacrifice in ancient Israel and the central rite of her feasts. Since it was a meal 'shared' with God, it expressed better than any other sacrifice the union of God with his faithful.

So all of this got me thinking: Leviticus is laying out the little details of these sacrifices, but it doesn't say what they're for or anything. It's obviouse that all these types of sacrifice already existed. Then I realized I was encountering one of my favorite themes of the Bible (I hadn't expected to find it so soon): God is taking something of the world and making it holy. He is making the Sacred out of the Profane. I can just imagine him looking at all us mortals and saying "So that's how you do religion, sacrifices? Well fine, we can work with that. Here's how you do sacrifices so they will be holy and pleasing to me." This inspires me to go out into our current culture, to look at it, and to say, alright, this is what I have to work with, how can I make it holy and pleasing to God? The creative possibilities seem endless.