You Shall Be Holy

Have any of you read the Bible straight through? Some of you may have read the New Testament through. But I’d guess that even those of you who have read a lot of the Bible have not read Leviticus straight through. In our Sunday lections we now hear significant parts of the Old Testament. We hear Genesis and Exodus, and some from Deuteronomy, and we pray a lot of the Psalter. We hear parts of Job, parts of Isaiah, and Jeremiah, and parts of other prophets – just a couple of weeks ago we had a lesson from the prophet Micah. Leviticus is a difficult book, especially after all the wonderful stories of bad boys and family feuds in Genesis, and the deliverance from Egyptian oppression followed by forty years in the wilderness in Exodus. Perhaps that’s why this Sunday is the only Sunday in the entire three-year lectionary that we hear a reading from Leviticus.

Perhaps we should hear Leviticus more often – despite its difficulty. Much of the Old Testament was compiled and edited after the Jews returned to Israel from Exile, i.e., in the years following 539 BC. Because it is a compilation of a lot of different kinds of writings, the Old Testament is really like a library, a library of the ways people have debated, argued about, and experienced God’s interaction with the Jewish people. A central theme of the Old Testament writings has been the working out of God’s covenantal relationship with the Jews.

Leviticus is the middle book of the Torah, the first five books of the Old Testament. It contains four main sections dealing with how to perform sacrifices, how to ordain priests, a section that is called the Holiness Code, and an appendix. And I don’t recommend reading any of it without a commentary! The Holiness Code, chapters 17 through 26, is where today’s reading comes from. As you might guess from the portion you heard, this section lays out in concrete detail, exactly what it means to choose life, to keep God’s covenant, in a word, to obey God.

When we really listen to what God is telling the people here through Moses, we hear some pretty startling commands. They hear that if they truly want to obey God they are to treat God’s people with justice and integrity. They are to share their wealth with the poor and the alien, and they are to be honest in all testimony and dealings with others. Here’s a shocker: they are to treat their employees fairly! They are to care for the disabled, pursue justice, and practice righteousness within their families and communities. They are to forgo vengeance and love their neighbors as themselves. In a sense, they’ve been given a distillation of the whole law – all the rest really is commentary. And the main thesis is simple: love of God and love of neighbor are integrally related. How are they to show that they love God? By loving their neighbor! And why are they to do this? So that they can be holy, just as God is holy: “You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy.”

Five centuries later, the disciples gathered around Jesus heard much the same thing from him. Unquestionably, Jesus knew his Leviticus! But to the perspective of Leviticus Jesus adds another element, that of love that goes beyond what is strictly required. Most particularly, Jesus adds the declaration that the disciples were to love their enemies and pray for those who persecuted them – much as he himself would do on the Cross. And then we discover that the reason for doing all these things is the same for Jesus’ disciples as it was for the people who heard God speaking through Moses: “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

“You shall be holy.” “Be perfect.” Can these words possibly have any relevance for us? Now we know why we haven’t read Leviticus. Yes, it’s a dense book filled with references to ancient social practices. But the real reason is that we know we can’t live up to God’s standards – any more than the ancient Jews could. Worse yet, we know that in this broken and sinful world, we can’t live up to Jesus’ standards either. “Be perfect?” What were you thinking, Jesus? O.K. maybe a few saintly people have been able to live up to such standards. People like the Desert Fathers and Mothers, like Francis of Assisi, Julian of Norwich, Toyohiko Kagawa, a Japanese Christian labor reformer, or Mother Teresa. But surely you can’t expect the rest of us to be holy and perfect, can you?

Let’s look a little more closely at what those words really mean. The basic meaning of the word that Jesus uses is “complete, having fully attained its purpose, mature.” Isn’t Jesus calling us to grow from where we are into a more mature faith, a more Christ-like way of living? Isn’t Jesus calling us to be different from the world around us? God was certainly calling the Jews to be a community different from the cultures around them. The word holy, which Leviticus uses, means “set apart.” When the word is applied to things, it means dedicated to God’s use – like our communion vessels, or even this building. When the word is applied to God, it reminds us that God is “other,” different from humanity. A writer in a recent Christian Century magazine suggested that a good synonym for holy would be “odd.” Odd? What if Jesus were really saying, “Be odd, therefore, as your heavenly Father is odd?” What? That’s the last thing some of us want to be. We want to fit in, to be normal. Perhaps God was calling the Israelites and Jesus is calling us to be something new and different.

Let’s hear again those words from Leviticus: “You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy.” Of course there is an implied command in the words, but couldn’t this also be a declarative sentence? Could God be telling us, that in God’s company we become more like God? Perhaps we’ve not only been created in God’s image, but are also called to be other, apart, a separate community, just as God is other. Even as God fills all things yet is wholly other, so God’s people are part of humanity, yet also set apart. God’s people are called to a way of life that is different from that of rest of the world. Being holy or perfect means swimming against the tide of the ways of the world and straining towards being more like God. We know being more like God is hard work. Yet when we feel tempted to give up, we can hear again God’s promise: “You shall be holy.”

And how can we continue to hear that promise, so that we can grow in holiness and become more mature Christians? You know the importance I place on the sacraments, how important it is for us to allow Jesus to nourish us with his Body and Blood week by week. You know also the importance I place on mission, on service to others, on the importance of showing our love of God in the way we treat others. But hear again God’s promise: “In My company, you become more like Me.” The holiness and maturity to which both these lections call us ultimately grows out of an internal change of heart that then can be seen in a changed life. As we deepen our relationship with God, as we are led further and further into the heart of God, the standards of this world are less and less important to us. The desire to imitate God by loving others becomes more and more important.

And the way to deepen our relationship with God? Seeking God every day of our lives. Finding times and ways to pray every day. If you do nothing else, here’s a simple way to seek God on a daily basis. Open your prayer books to p. 138. Spend a minute or two in silence, then pray the brief Noonday prayer. It takes about two minutes and can be done anywhere. If you want the five-minute version of Noonday prayer, it can be found on p. 103. Lent is coming – Ash Wednesday is on March 9th. Here’s a Lenten discipline to consider: praying Noonday prayer every day in Lent. You could even start it tomorrow, even though it’s still Epiphany tide! I guarantee you that daily Noonday prayer will do more for your souls than giving up chocolate or alcohol! And if noon doesn’t work for you, notice that the prayer book provides brief forms of prayer for the morning, the early evening, and the close of day. In addition to these prayers, find some time in your day for silence with God. You’ll be surprised what the Holy Spirit can do if you listen attentively for just five minutes. And five minutes twice a day? Even better. You may or may not have any high “ecstatic” experiences. That’s not the point. The point is to draw nearer to God, to let God begin to shape and mold you, to let God continue the process of growth into holiness and completeness that began with your baptism. I assure you, that once we place ourselves in God’s company, God will make good God’s promises to us. Out of our silence, God will help us to live with simplicity, pursue social justice, and seek peace. God will help us to grow in holiness and lead us into a deeper faith. Thanks be to God!