Just Holiness
Leviticus 19:1-2, 9-18
And now at last we come to it…the book of Leviticus. The Lectionary doesn’t afford many opportunities to preach from this book. Just once every three years, in fact, and always this passage. I’ll get to why that’s the case a bit later.
That we so rarely read from Leviticus is a shame, because who doesn’t enjoy reading about rules and regulations governing temple sacrifices? Who doesn’t enjoy learning about how to properly prepare burnt offerings, grain offerings, well-being offerings, and sin offerings? What is more fascinating than discussing the finer points of ritual purification for those experiencing bodily discharges or suffering from skin diseases?
Alright, so Leviticus may not be everyone’s cup of tea. Much of this book is essentially a handbook for Israelite priests. But amid all the exacting details on how to prepare the various offerings to God, if we zoom out, we see that the overarching theme of Leviticus is holiness—the holiness of God, first and foremost, but also the holiness of God’s people. To distill the book down to its essence, Leviticus is concerned with what the holiness of God means for living as the people of God.
And that means that this book, which is filled with rituals, practices, and laws that seem foreign to us, and which is set more than 1,200 years before the birth of Christ, is still relevant for us. Case in point, the reason that this passage occurs in the Lectionary at all is because Jesus cites it in his answer to a question from the Pharisees. Seeking to test him, one of the Pharisees asks Jesus, “Which commandment in the law is the greatest?”
Jesus responds, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind,” which comes from the book of Deuteronomy. And then Jesus adds, “And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” which (surprise, surprise) is taken directly from this book that at first glance seemed entirely irrelevant to us.
Leviticus is the third book of the Old Testament: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus. Genesis, which we spent quite a bit of time in this summer, begins with the account of creation and humanity writ large but then narrows its focus to Abraham and his descendants, who by the book’s end, have settled in Egypt.
Egypt is where the story of Exodus begins, with the descendants of Abraham now living in captivity as Pharaoh’s slaves. The story of the people’s deliverance from captivity, climaxing with their escape through the parted waters of the sea, is the central event of the first half of Exodus. Once the people are free from the hand of Pharaoh, the rest of Exodus is concerned with the covenant that God forms with the Israelites. A sign of that covenant is the Ten Commandments. With the Ten Commandments, God pledges to be for and with the Israelites, and they, in turn, promise to live according to those laws as God’s people.
You can think of Leviticus as the working out of some of the finer details and nuances not only of the Ten Commandments but all of the Law.
You can think of Leviticus as the working out of some of the finer details and nuances not only of the Ten Commandments but all of the Law. The book begins with lots of instructions directed to Israelite priests, who were tasked with maintaining standards of holiness in the worship of God. But eventually the concept of holiness expanded to include all of the people and virtually all aspects of life. There are more than 600 laws in the Old Testament (613 to be precise), and they cover things like diet, attire, personal grooming, family relations, sexual relations, and as we see in today’s reading, social relations and responsibilities, especially to the poor and the alien.
The passage opens with the Lord speaking to Moses. For context, Moses and the Israelites are camped in the wilderness of Sinai. They have escaped from Egypt. They are no longer slaves of Pharaoh. But they have not yet reached the land that they will one day call home. They are in a middle space, not only between Egypt and the Promised Land, but between who they were and who they will become. Their journey through the wilderness represents a time of transition, a time during which they will learn by trial and many errors what it means for them to be the people of a God whose defining characteristic is holiness.
That’s made clear right away in today’s reading. The Lord says to Moses, “Speak to all the congregation of the Israelites and say to them: You shall be holy, for I the LORD your God am holy.” We’re no longer in the realm of rules for priestly sacrifices. This is the God of Israel speaking to all the people of Israel and calling them to lead lives of holiness.
I don’t know what you picture when you think of holiness. Reading the Bible, perhaps? Praying, probably. Reading Scripture and praying are certainly acts of personal holiness, but they’re not the focus of what the Lord speaks to Moses in today’s reading. Every command that the Lord gives Moses to share with the people has to do with social responsibilities, i.e., with how to be a good neighbor, especially to those on the margins—the poor, the alien, the day laborer.
“When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. You shall not strip your vineyard bare or gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the poor and the alien.” The command here is to intentionally not harvest all the crops of a field but to leave a portion unharvested so that the poor and the alien may share in the bounty.
Understand what this means. This is not charity. This is not God urging those who have more than enough to give from their abundance. Take what you need for yourself and then give some of the excess to the poor and the alien. No! That is not what this means. This is God saying that a portion of the harvest belongs to the poor and the alien. It is rightly theirs because they too are God’s people. God is not urging the people to be charitable, God is demanding that the people be just.
God is not urging the people to be charitable, God is demanding that the people be just.
The word “justice” echoes in many church sanctuaries these days. Justice is a popular concept in our more progressive corner of the theological spectrum. Maybe it’s the contrarian in me, but in many church settings when I hear the word “justice” I often wonder whether our understanding of justice is the same as God’s. It’s tempting to think of justice as the people we don’t like getting what they deserve. (That’s the kind of justice I can get behind!) But as shown by this passage, God’s justice is an expression of God’s holiness, and God’s holiness is experienced in God’s reconciling love.
The next series of commandments has as its basis truth-telling. “You shall not steal; you shall not deal falsely; and you shall not lie to one another. And you shall not swear falsely by my name,” says the Lord. On the surface these commands make it seem as though being truthful is merely a matter of personal integrity, morality, and holiness. But because truth is a universal principle, something that we all share in together, that means that to steal, to lie, to deal falsely, to swear falsely by the name of a God who is truth is an offense against not only the one we aim to deceive but an offense against God as well. Think about what that means for a culture in which lies are as pervasive as they are in our public discourse right now. It means that in a culture of lies, telling the truth is an act of defiance, and as followers of Jesus Christ, we are called to speak the truth as a matter of holiness, and yes, as a matter of love.
From concern for the poor and the alien to concern for truthfulness, the next series of commands reflects a concern for economic justice. “You shall not defraud your neighbor; and you shall not keep for yourself the wages of a laborer until morning.” In the most narrow sense this means not taking advantage of those who are economically vulnerable, such as the day laborer who gets paid a daily wage. In our own context, in which so many people live paycheck to paycheck and struggle to keep up with ever-rising prices, the concern for economic justice calls into question the fairness of a system in which billionaires flourish while the working poor and the poor must rely on food banks and church pantries.
From concern for economic justice, the next series of laws concerns impartiality. “You shall not render an unjust judgment; you shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great: with justice you shall judge your neighbor.” Showing partiality to the poor is not something that many of us, or many folks anywhere for that matter, could be accused of. But we naturally gravitate toward, and defer to, those with power, to those who can benefit us in some way. Truthfully, as much as I would welcome a wealthy benefactor for this church—Lord knows there is deferred maintenance everywhere you look—I’m glad that this church does not have one, because I wouldn’t want to be tempted to treat them any differently.
The final series of commands gets personal. “You shall not hate in your heart anyone of your kin.” “You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” I don’t know how many of us are tempted to take vengeance. Vengeance seems so…cinematic. Vengeance is Russell Crowe in Gladiator or Keanu Reeves in all those John Wick movies. Vengeance is active. It requires effort. You need a lot of motivation to seek vengeance.
But to bear a grudge? That’s easy! Bearing a grudge is passive. It requires hardly any effort at all. The person against whom we bear a grudge doesn’t even need to know. That may even make carrying a grudge easier to do. It’s often easier to stew in our resentment than address the underlying cause. Or if we do attempt to address the cause, we do so in a spirit of rage rather than reconciliation.
A couple of weeks ago in the Tea-ology Book Club, we read about a woman who had been greatly wronged by someone. The authors write, “She was justifiably angry at the injustice perpetrated against her. In an encounter with her wrongdoer, our friend felt her rage boil over and she was in the process of giving him a piece of her mind. In that moment she remembered that Christ commanded us to forgive our enemies. She said, ‘Lord, I’ll try to do what you want me to do, but you’ll have to help me.’”
And that’s the perfect segue to my final point. None of this is possible for us on our own. We can never be fully faithful to what the Law demands. Sure, we may have our moments here and there. But resentment, selfishness, fear, greed, or anger will eventually get the better of us. We will fall short. We will miss the mark. We will succumb. We will fail. And God does not lower the standard of holiness to accommodate our failures. God is holy, and the standard remains a holiness that is grounded in God’s holy nature.
God does not lower the standard of holiness to accommodate our failures.
I’m sure you heard the pattern that was evident throughout the reading. Each of the series of commands concludes with the declaration, “I am the Lord.”
“You shall not reap to the very edges of your field…. I am the Lord.”
“You shall not deal falsely…. I am the Lord.”
"You shall not defraud…. I am the Lord.”
“You shall not render unjust judgment…. I am the Lord.”
“You shall not bear a grudge…. I am the Lord.”
Every single command is grounded in the holiness of God.
I know what you’re thinking. C’mon! The holiness of God? Isn’t that an unfair standard for lowly human beings? No, it isn’t. And I’ll tell you why it’s not only not unfair but why it’s even good news. It’s good news because we don’t pursue holiness in order to be God’s people. We don’t first have to show ourselves holy for God to accept us. Rather, in Christ, God has already made us God’s people, and therefore we put on the holiness of Christ.
The point of the Law is not to drive us to despair. The point of the Law is to point us to Jesus Christ, because Christ does for us what we cannot do for ourselves. Jesus Christ is the living embodiment of the Law. Christ fulfills the Law for us.
And as the one who fulfills the Law, Christ even ups the ante on what the Law demands. In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus says, “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you: Love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you.”
“Love your neighbor” is a noble sentiment, even a rational one. You don’t need to be a believer in God to hold it. But “Love your enemy?” Now that is simply absurd! It’s irrational. It’s unreasonable. And…it’s holy.