Sunday, 23 October 2011: Holy Eucharist
Proper 25, Year A
Leviticus 19:1-2; 15-18; 1 Thessalonians 2:1-8; Matthew 22:34-46
The Episcopal Church of the Epiphany
O God, be merciful to us and bless us. Show us the light of your countenance and come to us. Amen.
As many of you know, several of our fellow Epiphanites are in the mountains of North Carolina at Kanuga on a parish retreat. Benno and Cynthia are there with them and by most accounts a good time is had by all.
A couple of weeks ago during one of our weekly staff meetings, Benno chided me saying that since I have never been to Kanuga, I didn’t know what I was missing. I smiled and shook my head in agreement, thinking the whole time, “When the Rector’s away, the Seminarian will play…”
So in preparation for a Sunday without the Rector and Associate Rector, Barbara and I thought about choreographing a song and dance number or something to that effect. But once I read the lectionary passages for today and saw Leviticus among the appointed texts, I knew we would have a good time. After all, Leviticus is everybody’s favorite book of the Bible…
In reality, we read from Leviticus about three times in the three-year cycle of our lectionary. In fact, preachers for this Sunday had the option to do away with the reading from Leviticus altogether and substitute a text from Deuteronomy instead. I almost took that path.
Most of the time, I dread reading Leviticus as, I suspect, many of you do, as well. It is full of arcane laws and rules and “you shall not’s.” It is where many of the kosher dietary laws are found. It is where codes of dress and hygiene like the prohibition against men trimming their beards are found. And through the centuries, it has also been the book of choice for those who attempted to use Scripture to marginalize LGBT persons, to exclude women from full status in society, and even to condone the practice of slavery.
And so I groaned when I sat down to read the Scripture passages appointed for today. In fact, when I opened my Bible to read the texts, I started with the Gospel and worked my way backwards.
But when I flipped to Leviticus, I read, “You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God, am holy.” And I took a long pause… I thought about it… and I kept reading. And I arrived at this verse, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
Suddenly, the Gospel text from Matthew stood out to me in a different way. I could almost see the Pharisees, making one final attempt to get Jesus to commit heresy or treason; one last-ditch effort to be rid of this aggravating radical who was causing such a stir among the people.
They put forward the one among them who knew the law the best; who could fastidiously recite every last detail, to ask Jesus: which was the most important commandment?
Perhaps they expected him to select from the Ten Commandments or from the Holiness Codes. Perhaps they expected him to say something that wasn’t found in Torah at all: something completely new, which would certainly seal Jesus’ fate as a blasphemer and a heretic.
But Jesus didn’t pick from among the Ten Commandments; he didn’t offer something new and different. He quoted Judaism’s most fundamental, ancient, and widely recited Biblical passage, the Shema:
“Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.”
“And the second,” Jesus said, “Is like it: you shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the laws and the prophets.”
Jesus quotes two verses that come from the very heart of Torah; one from Deuteronomy and one from our passage from Leviticus. And in doing so, Jesus reminds the Pharisees that all of the laws must be interpreted through the ultimate goal of loving God.
“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.”
And it is impossible to love God without loving one’s neighbor. “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
Jesus is reminding us of God’s will for us and for our lives. The Catechism found in the back of The Book of Common Prayer refers to Jesus’ two greatest commandments as the Summary of the Law. The Baptismal Covenant, which unites us all as the Body of Christ, requires those being baptized or confirmed to “seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself.” And on most occasions where The Holy Eucharist is celebrated, we confess to not having loved God or our neighbors, as we ought to have loved them.
This is, more than anything else, the central act of our faith. Loving God and loving neighbor!
But of course, the difficulty is in how we go about doing it…
Surely, we say, there must be some sort of hedge set around who is our neighbor and who is not our neighbor.
Surely, we say, what appears as “love” in English actually means “forbearance” or perhaps “tolerance.” What God is really saying is that we must tolerate those people with whom we struggle. That’s love, right?
Surely in order to maintain our holiness, God means for us to separate ourselves from those who do not live as we live or act as we act.
There is certainly a case for this in reading Leviticus! God commands Israel not to eat certain foods, not to engage in certain behaviors, and not to compromise their own holiness. Translated into a modern context, this is read as a justification for separation; a justification to take on God’s call to holiness by remaining separate from that which is not holy; or that which is other.
This is also what happens when we attempt to turn our fears into theology. If we associate with people who are unholy, we may become unholy. If we associate with people who are sinful, we may become sinful.
But the problem with this theology is that it puts limits on God’s commandments. It sets a boundary around who is a neighbor and who is not a neighbor. And it translates love as a passive and fickle means of toleration, rather than an active, barrier-shattering call to reconciliation, wholeness, and ultimately, holiness.
Neither Leviticus nor Jesus has any interest in passive love… The love that Jesus proclaims and that Leviticus commands is an active, personal, love that tears down boundaries and challenges our misgivings.
Active love is inextricably bound up in the work of reconciliation, which is always messy. And it necessitates that we engage with the ugliness, the brokenness, and the sinfulness of the world in order to create a kingdom built on justice and peace, rather than the preservation of the status quo.
“You shall be holy for I, the Lord your God am Holy” is about justicemaking, peacemaking, and restoring God’s kingdom.
Rather than a command to maintain a flawed notion of holiness according to human standards, this is an invitation to holiness in accordance with God’s standards!
Perhaps I have been misreading Leviticus. And perhaps the church has, too. If we read Leviticus as an invitation to holiness instead of a commandment of separateness and judgment, we can begin to understand that in order for our relationship with God to be holy, our relationships with one another must be holy. And that begins with love. Active, reconciling, ugly, messy, forgiving, hard, boundary-less…love.
Leviticus moves us towards an understanding of neighbor that includes the persons who live near us and are like us, as well as those who are far from us and unlike us.
Leviticus says the poor and the alien should be fed from the edges of the fields, the gleanings of the harvest, the fallen grapes of the vineyard [1].
Leviticus says the neighbor shall not be defrauded, and makes clear that it is wrong to keep a laborer’s wages until morning, to revile the deaf, or to put a stumbling block before the blind [2].
Leviticus says you shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great; neighbors are to be treated with justice; they shall not be used for profit [3].
And Leviticus says you shall not oppress aliens, they shall be treated as citizens among you, and you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt [4].
It appears as though the neighborhood in Leviticus is a lot larger than the neighborhood where we live.
But our work must begin here, at The Episcopal Church of the Epiphany, with you and with me. After all, if we cannot love one another in our parish community, how can we have any hope of loving those in the neighborhood that are most unlike us?
We here at Epiphany take our work in the larger neighborhood very seriously. In my three years here, I have been deeply moved by the caring relationship we maintain with our larger neighborhood. The list of outreach ministries, clothing drives, food drives, and other valuable ministries goes on and on.
But there are always areas where we can do better; where we can treat each other better. Perhaps it comes in the form of introducing yourself to someone you haven’t met. Perhaps it comes in the form of getting involved in a new type of ministry. Or perhaps it comes in the form of letting go of past hurts and grievances so that healing and reconciliation can begin.
Sometimes, loving our neighbor begins with forgiving our neighbor. After all, forgiveness is the very incarnation of love. But let no one tell you that forgiveness is always easy or neat or tidy. More often than not, it is exactly the opposite: painful, messy, and ugly.
But without it, we have no hope. We have no hope of reconciliation, of love, of wholeness, and most of all, no hope of holiness.
When my wife Shayanna and I were preparing the final details of our wedding, the priest who blessed our marriage sat down with us and reminded us of a very important fact.
“You know, Episcopalians aren’t fond of the words, ‘I do.’ We don’t say it at weddings, we don’t say it at baptisms, and we don’t say it at ordinations. Instead, we say, ‘I will.’ The difference is that although the latter may take longer, it allows for grace. It allows for mistakes and fights and hurt feelings and shortcomings and forgiveness and apologies and reconciliation, with the constant understanding that we’ll get it right sooner or later; in this life or in the next.”
“You shall be holy for I the Lord your God am holy.”
Indeed, we shall.
Amen.
[1] Leviticus 19:9-10
[2] Leviticus 19:13-14
[3] Leviticus 19:15-16
[4] Leviticus 19:33-34
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