Holiness: An Invitation to Cooperation

Leviticus 19

February 19, 2017

          Compliment or criticism? He’s holier than thou.  If you’re saying that about someone are you building him up?  It’s a critique.  Not a one of us would want to be called ‘holier than thou.’  Yet, I suggest that in our effort to see more of God and to know God better, in our lives, we must strive to be holy.

          One of my parenting tasks is to help my kids with grammar and writing homework, so I have to note something about this well-worn phrase, holier than thou.  The word ‘thou’ is archaic and it means you.  The word ‘holier’ is in a comparative form: holy, then the comparative ‘holier,’ and the superlative ‘holiest.’  Holier than thou is a phrase steeped in competition.  He’s not just holy.  He’s holier than you!

          No wonder it’s used as a put-down.  Holy becomes a synonym for ‘better.’  He’s holier than thou.  He’s better than you.  O no he’s not! ­ We think.  We never stop ponder what makes someone better than someone else.  We just resist the idea that one person is better at being a person than another person; we don’t like to think someone else is better at humanity than we are. 

          Holier than thou.  We say it out of the side of our mouths, a euphemism for cocky.  He’s so full himself, so holier than thou.  He thinks his stuff doesn’t stink.

          We’re so resistant to spiritual or moral comparisons, and yet much in our worldview is comparison-based.  We value competition.  Think about your own view.  Do you see the world through a cooperation-tinted lens or a competition-tinted lens?  In order for one to get ahead, does another necessarily fall behind?  Let that question settle.  Are you more prone to competition or to cooperation?  Let the question simmer as it pertains to how you move through life.

          Is it enough that the Tar Heels are having a really good basketball season?  Or, is it only truly successful if they are not only good, but better than Wake Forest?  Or N.C. State?  Or especially Duke?  Competition is admired in sports and it should be.  I want my favorite team to be highly competitive.  What I am asking us to consider is how this cooperation-competition dynamic spills over into life and into our thoughts about God and our own identity in Christ. 

          In the campaign of 2016, Donald Trump gave a specific compliment to Ted Cruz.  He said of Cruz, “He’s fighter.”  Later, Trump said the same thing of Hilary Clinton.  “I know this about her,” he said, “She’s a fighter.”  In both cases, he said it with admiration.  He appreciates that tough, competitive spirit.  So did Barak Obama.  So do most Americans.  Toughness; competitiveness; we see these as admirable qualities, except when we are dealing with holiness.

          Holiness is a title reserved for the pope.  To be extra reverent, we say ‘the holy Bible.’  But people, who are supposed to be competitive in all things, are suddenly expected to be humble and self-effacing when it comes to holiness.  The great irony is the Bible really doesn’t commend us to be great champions in sports or politics. 

From the Proverbs to the Parables, the Bible commends deference. Put others ahead of yourself.  Don’t brag.  Take the least significant place at the table.  These are paraphrases of actual teachings from scripture – the Bible we call “holy.”  In life, we are to put other ahead of ourselves.  We’re not told by God to be “winners.”  It’s strange that we say the Bible is authoritative in our lives.  But some things we highly value, toughness & competitiveness, are not Biblical values. 

But you know what is?  We just read it in the holy Bible; but not just the Bible!  This is the Torah, the law on which the rest of scripture stands.  Here at the center of Torah we read this command, Leviticus 19:2.  “You shall be holy.  For I, the Lord your God am holy.” God did not say this to the Pope.  This is not an inner-trinity conversation, Father-God speaking to God-the-Son.  This is to every one of God’s people.  This is to you and me.  We must be holy, for the Lord our God is holy. 

A quick aside: this is not a wholesale rejection of competitiveness.  In your work, you may have to compete for grants.  Compete hard!  I want the scientists who get the grants to be scientists who worship HillSong.  Compete hard in the interview for the job.  Strive excellence in the things you do in life.  Strive to be an excellent parent, an outstanding friend, the best student you can be, a quality, trustworthy employee.  Be a leader in the workforce.  If you coach a basketball team, strive to win every game.  Compete in life. 

However, when it comes to our primary calling, the Bible is directing us to view life through a cooperative prism, not a competitive one.  We don’t need others to fail for us to succeed.  In fact, the Biblical picture of holiness painted in Leviticus 19 is inherently cooperative.  It’s not something we fight for.  We join with one another in a mutually beneficial effort for the good of society. 

Leviticus 19 appears to be a re-working of the 10 commandments.  There’s the insistence on Sabbath-observance.  There the prohibitions against coveting, lying, and stealing.  There’s the rejection of idolatry.  This is a helpful way of understanding Leviticus 19, but note this.  The emphasis here is on relationships with people.  Our obedience to God’s absolute command is seen in how we relate cooperatively with people.  Samuel Ballentine writes, “the importance of how one lives in relationships with others in the human community is equal to, if not even greater than, the requirement of [faithfulness] to God.  … Ethical behavior is not merely the necessary consequence of love for God; it is the fundamental prerequisite that establishes the authenticity of that love.”[i]

In other words, we know we are striving to obey God’s command to “be holy” when we cooperate with other people for their good according to the guidelines given in the Bible.  

Let’s go through it and see this cooperation woven throughout the commandments.

Leviticus 19:3, “You shall revere your mother and father.”  We know we are striving for holiness when we honor our parents.  And honoring our parents is a matter of cooperation within the family. 

Verse 4, “Do not turn to idols.”  In ancient cultures, idol worship involved looking at a statue, endowing that statue with qualities reserved for God, and then serving and worshiping the statue.  This practice was the root cause of the destruction of society.  When we give what belongs to God – our worship and devotion – to something that is not God, then our social orientation is so off kilter the damage ripples throughout society. 

In ancient times it was statues – literal idols.  Today, our idolatry is seen when we give the loyalty and the allegiance that is exclusively God’s to someone or something else: a political party, a value like consumerism or patriotism, or a country.  “Do not turn to idols,” Leviticus says.  God should be our center and our all-in-all. 

Verses 9-10: don’t harvest everything!  This made sense for the agricultural society in which these commands were originally given.  Land-owning farmers who worked hard to maximize the productivity of the land were told point-blank not to harvest everything.  Leave some of it for hungry people.  Cooperate with those people who don’t own land and might starve without your help.

In today’s contex, this command might be worded don’t hoard.  Don’t keep everything. Why not?

Remember the overarching command in verse 2 – “Be holy.”    The only reason God gives us is “I am the Lord,” and this phrase is repeated in verse 4, 9, 11, 13, 15, 17, 25, 28, 30, 31, 34, & 37.  In 2017, when we read Leviticus 19:9-10, it sounds like this.  “When you receive your paycheck, don’t keep it all.  Take some of that money and share it with someone who is struggling.  No, that person with whom you share it didn’t work for it.  You did it.  So why in the world should you share it?  What the heck?  Why?”

“I am the Lord.”  It’s the only reason given. 

To say one person is holier than another, as in ‘holier than thou’ makes no sense.  It’s an absurd notion.  Holiness is not comparative at all, when we understand it Biblically.  One cannot be holy as God commands us to be holy alone.  The only way we can obey this command of God is in relationships of cooperation with others.  We have to cooperate in our worship community to exalt God and only God.  Together we reject idolatry by rejecting idols.

Together we honor our parents.  This is true in our own families but also in our church family, where we honor those who are elders among us.  We honor them for the work they do in the life of the church today.  Our elderly are as active as anyone.  Second, we honor them for the wisdom they’ve acquired over years.  It’s a cooperative effort in which we all experience blessing.

Together we honor everyone in the community by recognizing that the paychecks our hard work produces are a means of cooperation.  When seen this way, we realize we aren’t giving to charity when we share our money so others can eat, be clothed, be educated, and have housing.  The sharing of money contributes to helping everyone in the community join God in holiness.

Verse 17 couldn’t be clearer.  “You shall not hate in our heart anyone of your kin.”  Based on the life and teaching of Jesus, we know our “kin” is the human family.  We are not to hate anyone, period.  That is followed up with something that might be familiar to New Testament readers.  Leviticus 19:18.  “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” 

We Christians are tempted to think of ourselves as New Testament people who no longer practice the system of worship described in Leviticus.  We don’t do animal sacrifice.  However, as New Testament people, we would readily submit to the authority of the books in the NT, including First Peter.  First Peter 2:9 says, to us, “You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people.”

That verse colors our reading of Leviticus 19.  No, we don’t undertake the sacrificial system of worship prescribed in Leviticus because Jesus was the sufficient sacrifice, once and for all.  Our worship involves singing praise to the one true God.  It does not involve sacrifices.  After the cross, that’s no longer necessary.  However, the values of Leviticus, especially the holiness commanded in chapter 19, are formative for anyone who would be a God-worshiper.

Leviticus 19:17 says, “You shall not hate anyone of your kin.” How do I accomplish “holiness?” 

How can I be holy as the Lord my God is holy? Don’t hate anybody and love your neighbor.  Who is my neighbor?  The person who needs my help.  Why would I love him?  God’s answer comes at the end of verse 18.  We do it because God says to us, “I am the Lord.”

And to drive the point home, in Leviticus 19:34, God says, ‘you shall love the alien who resides among you as you love yourself.’  That’s it.  When we meet immigrants, people from other places, our first and only response to them must be as Christ-followers, people of God, a holy people.  It doesn’t matter where they are from.  It matters who we are.  Who are we?  We are a holy people (First Peter 2:9).  Because of that, what drives us is love.  We love the alien who travels to our home town.  Why?  God says, you do it because I am the Lord.

Every message this year at our church has been driven by a desire to know God.  From Leviticus 19, it is clear God wants us to know Him.  He loves us so much, he gives us guidance for every aspect of life.  God doesn’t want us confused.  God wants us to be assured of His love for us and our place in His Kingdom. 

This week, our task is to strive for holiness; not to be holier than thou, but rather to be holy alongside thou.  We do this and we will see God. 

Our starting point is love.  Who is hurting?  Who has deep need?  Who is the neighbor in our path we are called to stop and help?  There is so much noise in America right now, and most of it competitive in a damaging way that will leave us all defeated.  This week, let’s raise a different sound.  Let’s make some noise for cooperation – cooperation rooted in the holy love described in Leviticus and demonstrated in the life, crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus. 

Let’s go from here as holy witnesses who use everything we have to help people find their way into the Kingdom of God.

AMEN

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[i] S.Ballentine (2002), Interpretation: A Commentary for Teaching and Preaching: Leviticus, John Knox Press (Louisville), p.161.

Because I am the Lord Your God (Leviticus 19:2)

Sunday, May 22, 2016

          God created the world.  This is basic belief of Christianity.  Yet, we live in a post-enlightenment world, which, among other things, means a lot of people have problems with this simple statement – God created the world.  While this might be assumed in Church, some simply don’t believe it. 

          Maybe you are one.  You hear it.  But you know that the statement comes from authority of the Bible.  The Bible, if read as an official record, only accounts for about 6000-10,000 years.  Physicists and biologists are quite certain the earth is 4.5 billion years old and the universe is 14 billion years old. 

          We know that science leads to technological breakthroughs.  We have seen the skyscrapers.  We hold in our phones all the knowledge of world.  Diseases are eradicated.  All these advances begin with science.  So we trust science, whatever we mean by ‘science.’  This path has so many turns, we’re not sure we can find our way out of this forest.  We trust science; science says the universe is billions of years old.  The Bible seems to say something else.  So we end up doubting the simple statement: God created the world. 

          Even in the church, where such a statement appears to be painfully obvious, our lives are lived in such a way that we don’t really believe it.  Oh, we say, yes of course, we believe God is creator.  But when you look at the choices we make – choices that indicate our values and our deepest held beliefs, do our choices reveal that in our hearts we believe God truly is God? 

          Or is something else God – the God to whom we give allegiance?  Is a certain lifestyle the god that we actually serve?  The successful, middle class lifestyle.  Is that god the one who dictates how we live?  Does a particular ideology hold more sway over us than the God described in the Bible?  The tolerance ideology, in which everyone must be affirmed, the self is the ultimate measure, and no one must ever be question, criticized, or asked to change.  Is that ideology calling the shots in how we think, choose, and live?  Examples abound.  Political movements, family dynamics, competing loyalties, personal appetites – all these forces vie to tell us who we are and how we are to live.

          We have spent five weeks counting today paying attention to another voice – the voice of the Holy Spirit.  God is telling us who we are and how we are to live.  God claims the authority to call us to a way of living.  I have over and over emphasized this.  It is not only pastors, prophets, professors, missionaries, theologians, and chaplains who get called.  Those religious specialists each have a unique calling, noted by titles like reverend, ‘father,’ and ‘doctor.’  These unique roles are important, but your role is important too.  We are, each one of us, called. 

          Why?  Because God is the Lord.

          Memorize the second half of Leviticus 19, verse 2.  Fix that portion of scripture on your mind.  Emblazon that half of a verse on your heart.  You shall be holy, for I, the Lord your God, am holy. 

Imagine this being said to you, the individual human.  You are created in the image of God.  Perhaps you hear this and have no earthly idea what it means.  One thing it means is God had something in mind when you were made.  God calls you to be holy.

          You shall be holy, for I, the Lord your God, am holy.  Imagine this being said to the entire church family.  As a group, we are brought together for a purpose – God’s purpose.  Individuals and the church corporate are to be holy as God is holy.  We are called to this. 

Everything we have said over the past five weeks leads to this.  We have said we are called to fellowship at the Communion table in the Lord’s Supper and at the common table in meals.  We are called to be givers and receivers of hospitality. 

We are called to a story.  We understand our lives as stories that should be told.  We understand that the gospel comes to life when our stories intersect with and are woven into God’s story.  We are called by God to live the gospel story and to share it.

We are called to forgiveness.  The stinking pile that threatens the aromatic beauty of the Jesus way is sin. Sin clings, sin reeks, and sin sucks the life out of us.  But on the cross, Jesus has defeated sin completely and finally. So the threat is actually no threat.  We are fragranced with grace.  We are called to receive forgiveness and to give it.  We live as forgiven people, freed from sin.

Fourth, we are called to renewed humanity.  As we adjust to the idea of being forgiven and freed from sin, the wisdom of the Holy Spirit fills us.  At this point it is perfectly normal to assume that death is not part of our long-term future.  Yes, the world is still in sin.  No redemption is not complete.  But it is happening and complete restoration of God’s good creation is coming and we, in Christ, are part of it.  So even as our bodies die, we look forward to resurrection and life lived in healthy bodies that cannot be injured or killed, and this life is lived in good relationships, right relationship with God and with others.

My certainty that all of us are called to fellowship, story, forgiveness, and renewal comes from God – my understanding of who God is. 

I earlier urged us to commit the latter half of Leviticus 19:2 to memory. You shall be holy, for I, the Lord your God, am holy.  Now, we look to the setting.  Where and when did God say this and to whom did God say this?  At the beginning of verse 2, where God instructs Moses: “Speak to all the congregation of the people of Israel.”  He’s addressing the entire nation gathered at the foot of the mountain in the Sinai wilderness after they have fled Egypt.  There are words in the Bible that are only for priests.  This verse is not among them.  Who did God tell “be holy”?  Everyone.

Who was this ‘everyone?’  Israel had been a nation of slaves under the heel of a cruel taskmaster.  The Egyptian Pharaoh in the book of Genesis is kind to Joseph and his brothers, the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

By the time we turn the page to Exodus, the second book of the Bible, the kind Pharaoh has died.  Joseph and his 11 brothers have sired numerous sons and daughters who in turn each became parents of large families.  The next generation did the same and so on, so that what began as a family is at the beginning of Exodus a growing nation.  The new Pharaoh has forgotten the relationship with Joseph.  This new despot feels threatened by this burgeoning population and enslaves them. 

Who is this ‘everyone’ of Leviticus 19?  They are a people who were powerless to do anything other than Pharaoh’s bidding until Moses, under the power of God, freed them.  So, they went from slaves to wandering homeless people.  Now, if I said, “Word association,” and I hollered out “holy,” would you immediately think words like “slave,” “homeless,” “beaten,” “powerless,” and “downtrodden?”  These words describe the Israel gathered at the mountain in Leviticus 19.  God looked at these desperate wanders and said, You shall be holy, for I, the Lord your God, am holy.  Holiness is imparted by God on the most unlikely of people. 

In his book Desiring the Kingdom, a guide for me throughout this series, James K.A. Smith says, “Gathering [for worship] indicates that Christians are called from the world, from their homes, from their families, to be constituted into a community capable of praising God. … [Here, we are] a new people gathered from the nations to remind the world that we are in fact one people.  Gathering … is a foretaste of the unity of the communion of the saints.”[i]

When we realize that we are who we are because by coming here we have answered a call from God and it is only possible for us to be here because God called us then it makes perfect sense.  Of course the people God calls “holy” are those who transitioned from defeated slavery to wandering homelessness.  The mighty of that era were the Egyptians.  By the time the Israelites stood at the mountain hearing God tell them to be holy those mighty Egyptians were fish food at the bottom of the Red Sea. 

Why?  Because the Lord God is Holy.

Because might or weakness by human standards is all the same – nothing in the light of God.

Because today nothing has changed.  The mighty today, 21^st century Pharaohs and power brokers, and the lowest of the low today, slaves and homeless, are all the same – nothing in the light of God.

However, this is not a sermon about how we are nothing.  This is not some sweaty preachers’ spit strewn soliloquy about the wretchedness of our condition.  This is an invitation to us to listen and hear.  God calls the wandering Israelites to be holy as God is holy.  God calls the Syrian refugee who is a Christian and is without home to be holy as God is holy. 

God calls the frustrated American who can’t shake his confusion.  He doesn’t know who he is supposed to be in a society where it appears that morality changes daily.  He doesn’t know what’s right and wrong because what was wrong yesterday is acceptable today.  And that American tries to take it all in and be faithful to God and he’s frustrated.  God calls the man of faith, drowning in confused frustration.  To him, God says, be holy for I, the Lord your God, am holy.  You are holy because I am the Lord.

So we are called.  How then do we answer?  Hint: the answer is not found in whether we believe the earth is billions of years old or 10,000.  For the record, I believe Genesis and I believe the account scientists offer for the age of the earth and the development of life on the earth.  How can I say that?  Because I believe God when he says in Leviticus that He is the Lord. 

As Lord, God rules over all arenas of life.  God rules as we make personal choices.  God rules as physicists and biologists do their research, conduct their experiments, and draw conclusions from the results.  God rules when my family is at home at night and no one else is around.  No one knows your family when you go, the porch light is turned off and the shades drawn.  But God does and God is lord there too.  In light of HB2, I’ll say this: God is even Lord in the bathroom and in the chambers of the legislature where laws are drawn up. 

Gathered with Israel there at the mountain, we hear what they hear.  We are called as they were.  To us God says, “You shall be holy, as I, the Lord your God, am holy.” In practical terms, it means God comes first in all our thinking.  God influences every choice we make.  The rest of Leviticus 19 elaborates on life lived in holiness.  Some of the material was essential in 1200 BC and is irrelevant in 21^st century America.  Some of it speaks as loudly then as now.  Verse 18 – “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”  That teaching was on the books from the beginning.  In his life, Jesus demonstrated how to live it out.  In all the teachings, we are completely submitted to God’s rule.

This means we are completely apart from the values of the world around us.  It’s tough because most of us want to be accepted by our peers and neighbors.  We want to fit in.  Holiness is not an intentional move to be odd, but it is a declaration that we don’t care about fitting in.  We follow the Holy Spirit’s promptings and if that means going against the grain of society, then we do so. 

Pushing against the social currents as a way of living out holiness can be quite radical.  We may protest unjust laws; we may take up the cause of the victim and in facing get hit ourselves; we may change our lives completely in order to live out God’s love and God’s justice.  However, we can also push against the grain in small ways in our daily lives.  If these small attempts to live as God’s called people became a way of life, gradually we come to realize that we can hear God’s voice when we need to and we understand the world differently than people who don’t know Him. 

I was a senior in our high school church youth group, which was large.  Thirty of us where on the trip to Disney World.  I remember as an underclassman how hard it was for me to crack into the social cliques.  I had experiences of feeling rejected.  So on that trip, I looked our group and looked for the 6^th graders that seemed to have no friends.  My efforts were clumsy.  Some of those young ones didn’t know how to react when the youth group president grabbed and said, “You’re not going to be sad and lonely left out today.  You’re hanging out with us.”  I am sure I had a bit of hero-complex.  But residing in me deeper than that was a sense that in Christ all should welcomed and love.  Holiness is to be set apart, but everyone is invited and in fact called to this state of set-apartness. 

Over the years I have tried to become more delicate in my attempts to invite others into the holiness of God.  Those who know me well know that blunt, blowhard 18-year-old still lurks within.  And whatever warts were on you before you began to be transformed by Christ may still linger. Even so, find those small ways in which you can step to the God who invites and bring others along with you.  In the rhythms of your daily life, submit to God’s rule and extend God’s love and welcome.  The more God has authority in all areas of life, the more we live in the holiness to which we are called. 

And the more we live as called people, the less we are products of the fallen world around us and the more we are witnesses that show world a better, God’s way, the way of forgiveness, welcome, family, and eternal life.

AMEN

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[i] Desiring the Kingdom, p.161.