A new Songbook | Song: Lord Prepare Me |
Friends,
I'm sitting at town meeting, covering the higher expenses of diesel, and getting permission to close our town dump.
It doesn't feel holy in the arguments over the process, but what we are trying to care for the community. That's hard work, and it's holy.
-Elizabeth
What Does it take to be Holy?
This week's lectionary selections provide a great opportunity to address common anti-Judaism perspectives that many Christians hold.
Many Christians consider our faith to be an "improvement" on Judaism: that we are less legalistic, that the Hebrew Bible is about violence rather than about love, that the old covenant was about rules and the new covenant is not. Most Christians do not want to be anti-semitic, but our faith can set us up to be unintentionally judgmental of the Jewish faith.
Today's lectionary readings are an example how fully Jesus built his sermons on Hebrew texts. (Technically he most likely studied the Septuagint, a Greek translation of those texts, from the 3rd century BCE.)
What stands out immediately is the obviously parallel Leviticus and Matthew texts: Love your neighbor as yourself. Not in the lectionary is Deuteronomy 6:5 You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might--an exact match for Jesus command to us in Matthew.
Jesus uses the word "commandment" for this, which we hear not as a law, but as a covenant, the new covenant, something that should be written on our hearts, not a list of rules to live by. (Notice that writing the law on our hearts is from both Jeremiah 31:33 and Hebrews 8:10.) But Christians often look at the commandments in Leviticus and elsewhere as a list of rules.
The Leviticus 19 reading opens with the call You shall be holy, for I the LORD your God am holy. This works well with Exodus 19:5c-6a Indeed, the whole earth is mine, but you shall be for me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation. The point of the rules, the point of the covenant, is for us to be holy, as God is holy. In each time and culture, there are ways to show our holiness. In all times and in all cultures, the essence of that holiness is love of God and neighbor.
The law is not about having rules to run our lives, but is rather instruction for how to be holy, how to be like God. How to care about the community that God has created. Why are we to love for our neighbor? Because God is God (Leviticus 19:18). Thus in Psalm 1, those who delight in the Law and meditate on it are like trees with plentiful fruit planted by streams (v. 2-3).
What is important to hold onto is that the law provides examples of how to live in community, and how to care for the community. It is culture specific, and time specific, but the intent, summarized by Jesus, is love of God and love of neighbor. The law provides ritual behaviors for the community to stay close to God, and rules for how to care for one another. When we read Leviticus, we must read it as the rules to make community 5000 years ago.
The challenge today is not to throw out the law, but rather to figure out what examples of righteousness live up to the goal to be holy as God is holy and to be a holy nation. Today I think we would emphasize the rituals of gathering to praise God and to be with the community in the presence of God. This includes radical sabbath taking and being part of a worshiping community. For me this includes participation in eucharist, both ritually, and in our steady sharing of meals.
As we see in Leviticus, the call to be holy is not simply about rituals. In fact the Leviticus 19 text moves quickly from avoiding idols and making sacrifices to leaving gleanings for those that are poor to eat, and then on to how to care for one another. The call to be holy is about how we live our whole lives.
Throughout the Hebrew Bible, the Jewish people are called to be holy as separate from how the secular (or other god-worshiping) cultures around them are living. Many of the rules for living are about ethics, and many are about maintaining a distinctiveness. Standing out as different is part of the call to be the people of God.
Similarly, in Thessalonians 2:4 but, just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the message of the gospel, even so we speak, not to please mortals but to please God, who tests our hearts. We communicate the gospel by loving our neighbor and our God with the way we live our whole lives. The point is to do what is right and good in God's eyes and not worry that humans do not all see it as right.
The Hebrew Bible is made up of three parts: Law, Prophets, and Writings. Jesus is summarizing just the Law and Prophets in Matthew 22:40. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.
The call in our texts, the entire scriptures, those old, and those new, is for us to be in Covenant with our God. To be holy as our God is holy.
How does your church engage the way the Hebrew Bible and the New Testaments? Reply to this email to let me know what's happening.
All of you song lovers! Look at this great book from Ana Hernández, providing us with Songs of Hope that we can engage in congregations of all sizes.
It's hard to find songs about us being holy because so much praise music really wants to praise God for being Holy. (Which is good, too, but not the point today.) But here is a redo of one of my favorite camp songs by Roots Reggae Gospel Worship. (3:31)
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