No one ever has a passage from Leviticus read at their wedding. Quotations from this book of the Bible - one of the so-called five books of Moses - are not often carved on tombstones as epitaphs. And, at least in the Episcopal Church, the text of Leviticus is not the frequent basis of inspiring preaching.
It’s a shame that Leviticus has a bad name. But it’s a good thing that we have not given up reading from it in public altogether. Just six verses were assigned to us today, but we managed to read them all, and no one got hurt! Those six verses come from the latter part of the text, a section commonly referred to as the “holiness code.”
The holiness code contains some of my least favorite verses of the scripture. Two verses of Leviticus are the source of many anti-gay harangues, for instance. And Leviticus, chapter 20 lists the proposed penalties for violations of its precepts. Stoning, shunning, barrenness, and death are among the punishments pronounced in the Name of the Lord, with death as the most common penalty. Fortunately, not even the most conservative Jews have ever pretended that there could or should be such thing as an originalist interpretation of the document; and the laws of Leviticus have never been enforced, that I know of, in accordance with the plain meaning of the text, which suggests that the meaning of the text may not be quite so plain.
The holiness code also contains some inspiring moral instruction in the cause of justice and in the interests of the poor, the disadvantaged, and the stranger (“the alien who resides among you shall be to you as the citizen among you”). And these edicts, too, are delivered in the Name of the Lord, and with the force of God’s authority.
Chapter 19, whence come the few verses we read earlier, begins, as we heard, with an unusual and not easily comprehended pronouncement from God “to all the congregation of the people of Israel,” to whom the Lord has this to say: “You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy.”
Now, I am in the business of looking for Good News and then passing it on. And I know how easy it can be to miss a word of Good News, especially when it comes from the pages of Leviticus. But I want you to consider how astounding is this proclamation from the mouth of the Lord that I have just repeated: “You shall be holy, for I the Lord am holy.”
The editor’s note in my study Bible is eloquent on this verse. It says, “that which humans are not and can never fully be, but which they are commanded to emulate and approximate is what the Bible calls ‘holy.’ Holiness means imitatio Dei - the life of godliness.” (Harper Collins Study Bible, NRSV)
We shall be holy, for God is holy; and we are made in God’s image and likeness: we are like God. The fact that last week a spacecraft that we launched four years ago intercepted an asteroid 200 million miles away, in order to reach out and pluck up a sample of the surface material of that asteroid (which is thought to be about 4.5 million years old), would tend to reinforce this point: that we are like God, and the reach of our power is vast. Marvelous and impressive as that achievement in outer space may be, however, it could also easily lead us to the wrong conclusion about the life of godliness - that it means that because of our strength, cleverness, and power we can do as we like.
But the whole point of Leviticus - the whole point of a code of holiness - is that to be holy, to bear God’s image and likeness with authenticity and authority - actually, we cannot do as we like. We must make choices - each and every one of us. We have to make choices about how we conduct ourselves and about how we treat others. And our choices lead us either more deeply down the path of holiness, or further away from it.
Leviticus is like an asteroid. And if I reach back to that ancient asteroid, and pluck up a sample of what holiness looks like, well aware that I am leaving much else behind, this is what I get: “You shall not hate in your heart... you shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge... but you shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
Leviticus is an ancient asteroid that might as well be millions of miles away from us at this point. But we are drawn again and again into its beguiling orbit. We come into contact with it, and it’s like connecting with something that links us to the rest of time and space in ways that we might otherwise have forgotten.
Judging from the few seconds of video I saw of that amazing feat 200 million miles away, the stuff that we collected from the surface of an asteroid looks a lot like a bunch of dirt and rocks. That is to say, that it looks a lot like stuff we’ve seen before, even though it comes from long ago and far away. It looks familiar. But all the same, we treat it with respect and great care in order to learn something from it.
So it is with the call to holiness that comes to us from long ago and far away. It looks familiar, like stuff we’ve seen before. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. Familiar though this distant, ancient sample of holiness may be, we should not fail to treat it with the respect and great care it deserves - not merely as something that looks like the common stuff of Sunday School, but as the authentic, authoritative way of godliness; a commandment not to be taken lightly; the exercise of real holiness. Unremarkable though holiness may look at first glance, like the material gathered from an asteroid it will be rare on earth, and difficult to hold on to.
NASA reports that the collection device on the spacecraft that scooped up bits of the asteroid is having difficulty containing what it grabbed. The sample collector has sprung a little leak, and they are trying to make sure we can keep what we found, and not lose it all before it gets back to earth. Doesn’t that challenge sound familiar? Having discovered that we are made in the image and likeness of God, it has always been exceedingly difficult for us to hold on to the blessings of holiness here on earth, even when all we might have to do is love our neighbor as ourselves. You follow the news, don’t you? How hard it is to live by the rules we learned in Sunday School. How easily holiness slips from our grasp. (Becoming harder to hold on to, it would seem, the closer we get to power.)
But I am in the business of looking for Good News and then passing it on. And I rejoice to stand here in front of you today and remind you that there is good news to be found in the ancient, distant words of Leviticus. No less than this astounding proclamation is to be found in this troublesome book: the we shall be holy because the Lord our God is holy. We are made in God’s likeness and image, and we are to be imitators of God, to live lives of godliness. Isn’t this nearly everything? What else could we want?
The first part of Leviticus, which I haven’t mentioned at all till now, consists largely of a treatise on what kinds of offerings are to be made to God. These chapters amount to a discussion about worship, even more so than about stewardship. And so, nearly the entire book amounts to a discussion of the two great commandments and of the two great emphases of the mission of this parish: the worship and love of God and the care and love of God’s people, our neighbors.
The path to holiness does not lead us to the far reaches of the universe, it takes us into the every day choices we make about worshiping God and being good neighbors, which is a path that anyone can walk. And that path helps us to become “that which humans are not and can never fully be, but which they are commanded to emulate and approximate.” The path to holiness leads us to be imitators of God, if we are willing to try.
And if we can be imitators of God, what goodness will ever be beyond our grasp, if only we can hold on to it!?!?
Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
25 October 2020
Saint Mark’s Church, Locust Street, Philadelphia
