Be Perfect

Have any of you read the Old Testament straight through? 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 Hebrew Bible. 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. Leviticus is a difficult book, especially after all the 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 one of the very few Sundays in the three-year lectionary that we hear a reading from Leviticus.

We should hear Leviticus more often – despite its difficulty. The Old Testament, as Christians call it, is a compilation of a lot of different kinds of writings. It’s really like a library, reflecting all the ways the Jews debated, argued about, and experienced God’s covenant with them. Leviticus is the middle book of the Torah, the first five books of the Hebrew Bible. 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.

Our reading begins with a startling pronouncement: “You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy.” Then, still speaking through Moses, God lays out for the people what a holy life looks like. The people hear that holy people treat God’s people with justice and integrity. They share their wealth with the poor and the alien, and are honest. They even treat their employees fairly! They care for the disabled, pursue justice, and practice righteousness within their families and communities. They forgo vengeance and love their neighbors as themselves. Here in a nutshell is the whole law: all the rest really is commentary. And the main thesis is simple: love of God and love of neighbor are integrally entwined. How are the people to reflect God’s holiness? By loving their neighbors!

Five centuries Leviticus was compiled, the disciples gathered around Jesus heard much the same thing from him. Unquestionably, Jesus knew his Leviticus! But to the perspective of Leviticus Jesus added another element, the awareness that love goes beyond what is strictly required. Most particularly, Jesus added 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 don’t trust God to really transform us. Look at all the different ways in which the psalmist begged for God’s help in becoming more holy: “Teach me, give me, make me, incline my heart, turn my eyes, fulfill your promise….” Perhaps too we are afraid of what might happen to our lives if we really did become holier. Worse yet, are we afraid that might lose God’s love if we fail to live up to God’s standards of holiness? For sure, in this broken and sinful world, there’s no way we can “be perfect.” 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, the Mennonite peacemakers, or Mother Teresa. But does God also expect the rest of us to be holy and perfect?

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.” Aren’t God in the Hebrew Bible and Jesus calling us to grow from where we are into a more mature faith, a holier way of life? Like it or not, 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 this building, or even us. When the word is applied to God, it reminds us that God is “other,” different from humanity. One writer has suggested that a good synonym for holy would be “odd.” Perhaps God was really saying, “You shall be odd, for I the Lord your God am odd.” What? That’s the last thing some of us want to be. We want to fit in, to be normal, to conform to the culture around us. Perhaps God was calling the Israelites, and Jesus is calling us, to be something new and different.

So hear again the words from Leviticus: “You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy.” Yes there is an implied command in the words, but this is also 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, but ultimately it is not a do-it-yourself project. Yet when we feel tempted to give up, we can remember God’s promise of holiness and trust that God is at work in us.

And how can we continue to experience God’s transforming grace, so that we can grow in holiness and become more mature Christians? You know the sacraments are important. We grow in holiness when we allow Jesus to nourish us with his Body and Blood week by week. You also know how important mission is, showing our love of God through our care for others. But hear again God’s promise: “In My presence 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 – just as we heard Jesus remind us in last week’s Gospel reading. As we deepen our relationship with God, as we are led further and further into the heart of God, as God continues to gracefully transform us, the standards of this world fade in importance. The desire to imitate God by loving others – even our enemies – grows in us.

What’s an easy way to begin deepening 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. And you can even access the Book of Common Prayer electronically, on your smart phone or e-reader. 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 5th. 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, even it’s just sitting in the parking lot for a minute or two before leaving the car or just opening you day with God before you get out of bed. 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, forgive others, pursue social justice, pray for our enemies, and seek peace. God will help us to grow in holiness and lead us into a deeper faith. Thanks be to God!