Sermon – Leviticus 19.1-2, 15-18, Matthew 22.34-46, P25, YA, October 25, 2020

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Bible, election, faith, generosity, giving, God, image of God, Jesus, Leviticus, love, neighbor, pandemic, relationship with God, Sermon

This summer when we were doing our 90-Day Bible Challenge, many of our readers dreaded reading Leviticus.  We read all the fun stories of Genesis and Exodus, and then for chapter after chapter of Leviticus we had to read about how to make sacrifices, what numerical formula to use for different kinds of worship of God, the differences between burnt offerings, grain offerings, fellowship offerings, sin offerings, guilt offerings.  All the momentum of reading came to a screeching halt.  In fact, a seminarian once said of Leviticus, “I never realized I could fall asleep on a treadmill until I did so while trying to read Leviticus.”[i]

For the most part, our wariness of Leviticus is warranted.  But the reading we get from Leviticus today is from the chapter that likely helps us understand why all the other monotony is so important.  You see Leviticus focuses on how to be in right relationship with God.  All those repetitive instructions are meant to do what our reading today finally gets to:  to tell us we can be holy because God is holy.  All those instructions about worship are meant to enrich our relationship with God – to help us see what being holy before the Holy One looks like.  But this particular chapter does not just focus on that vertical relationship with God.  Chapter nineteen of Leviticus introduces something new – our horizontal relationship with one another.  You shall love your neighbor as yourself.  This too is what holiness looks like.

Of course, this should sound familiar.  In our gospel lesson today, when Jesus is asked what commandment is the greatest, Jesus pulls from his Jewish roots and the lessons of Hebrew Scriptures.  “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind,” a text straight out of Deuteronomy, and, he says, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” a text straight out the Leviticus text we read today.  As people of faith, we balance the vertical and the horizontal – one cannot be true, full, or authentic to one without the other. 

That concept is so simple, our eyes can begin to glaze over like all readers of Leviticus.  Love God, and love neighbor – got it!  Simple enough.  But there is nothing simple about this summary of the law and prophets.  All we need to do is look around us and see how hard these commands are.  Seven months into a pandemic, with cases rising again, our nation in political upheaval around issues of racial injustice, and a national election that has us so divided we cannot even conceive of loving anyone who advocates for the “other” candidate – whichever the other one is for you.  With each passing month of this pandemic, coming to God in reverence and praise sometimes feels impossible because all we feel is anger, frustration, and fatigue towards God – not holiness.  And forget about loving our neighbors – unless, of course, we mean loving our neighbors who agree with us, who are willing to bash the other side with us, who have done enough discernment to know our political position is the holy one.  As each day gets us closer to this election, Leviticus’ words about not slandering others, not seeking vengeance or bearing grudges, makes loving all our neighbors seem impossible.

So what do we do?  With all these feelings of impossible holiness, do we give up or stop trying?  In facing these feelings, Barbara Brown Taylor says, “Made in the image of God, human beings share in God’s holiness.  God has placed within them what they need to do God’s will.  God has furthermore placed them in communities of support, giving them teachings to guide them in their life together.  Wherever sinfulness comes from and whatever drives [sinfulness], [sinfulness] is less fundamental to human nature than holiness.  People can be sinful, but the Lord their God is not sinful.  People can be holy, for the Lord their God is holy.”[ii]   All the things that feel impossible now – loving God fully (despite our misgivings) and loving our neighbors fully (the ones we actually love and the ones we love to hate) is possible because we are made in the image of God – we share in God’s holiness.

I think that is why I am so grateful we are in stewardship season right now.  As we gather financial commitment cards today, we are claiming something about the resources God has given us.  We are taking our resources and investing them in our vertical relationship with God and our horizontal relationship with one another and our neighbors beyond these walls.  We commit to giving not because we are capable of generosity alone – we give because our God and this community inspire faith-filled generosity.  We look at a world that seems impossibly flawed and messy and say, “Yes.  I am holy because the Lord my God is holy.  My giving is a sign of my sharing in God’s holiness.”  Giving may not feel easy in this time of upheaval, in this time of economic turmoil, but giving is our way of saying, “I cannot do this alone, but with this community I am committing to faith-filled generosity.  I trust Hickory Neck will walk with me as I claim my holiness.”  Even though we are scattered, even though some of us are visiting this campus today, either for a quick drive-thru or a full service, and some of us cannot be here until a vaccine is available, we celebrate the holiness of one another today, the holiness of our God, and the holiness of our neighbors – all our neighbors.  Only in seeing that holiness can we be liberated to live lives of faith-filled generosity.  Amen.

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[i] Kathryn M. Schifferdecker, “Commentary on Leviticus 19:1-2, 15-18,” October 25, 2020, as found at https://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=4626 on October 22, 2020.

[ii] Barbara Brown Taylor, “Homiletical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Year A, Volume 4 (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2011), 195, 197.

On the Sanctity of Life…

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change, complicit, God, goodness, holy, image of God, life, mass shooting, sacrifice, stewardship

Photo credit:  https://bigvalleygrace.org/life-is-sacred/

This past Sunday, I was assigned to be the preacher.  I had done my research and preparation, I had incorporated the theme from our stewardship campaign which would be culminating on Sunday, and I had finished the sermon by Saturday morning.  By that evening though, I found out there had been another mass shooting, this time at a synagogue in Pittsburgh.  This one was particularly heart-wrenching because it was at a place of worship, committed by someone who explicitly wanted to persecute people from the Jewish faith – my brothers and sisters.  So, on Saturday night, I had the age-old question of a preacher:  do I need to change my sermon?

Ultimately, I decided to mark the event liturgically with our prayers, but not address the incident in my sermon.  I could not preach about it because I was not ready.  Something about this incident hit me differently, but I could not yet articulate it.  And one of my homiletics professors always told me if you are going to preach something pastorally sensitive, make sure you have carefully constructed your sermons to pastorally address the issue.  And I just wasn’t there.

But in the days since the massacre, and after having a few conversations with parishioners about their frustration that I didn’t mention it, I am finally beginning to be able to articulate why this particular mass shooting is so upsetting.  The problem for me with this shooting was not that it occurred in a place of worship.  Despite the fact that I think those places are sacred places, gunmen and those with bombs have long desecrated houses of worship.  The problem for me was not that the shooting was anti-Semitically motivated.  Christians have long been complicit in anti-Semitism and if we are going to get upset about a shooter, we need to be equally upset about our own culpability in not rooting out that sin.  The problem for me is that this mass shooting was the final straw in helping me see that we as a country, and more importantly, we as a Church, have become complicit with the devaluing of all life – that same very life we claim to be made in God’s image, and created in goodness.

That accusation may feel harsh for you, as you are not likely a person who has ever committed violence with firearms on another person.  But until we as a society, and we as Church, decide that human life is sacred, these incidents will never stop.  The Oklahoma City Bombing happened weeks before I graduated from high school.  The Columbine High School massacre happened weeks before I graduated from college.  Essentially, for my entire adulthood, our country and our Church has not been willing to definitely say, “No, this is not who we will be.  We will make concrete changes so that this doesn’t happen again.”  And so it keeps happening.   At colleges, in schools, at workplaces, in homes, and in houses of worship.  To African-Americans, to immigrants, to the LGBTQ community, to Jews, Christians, and Muslims.  To teachers protecting students, to police officers protecting innocents, to mothers protecting children.  Yes, I am outraged that eleven beautiful children of YHWH were murdered senselessly in their most sacred place of worship.  But I am also outraged that we as a people are unwilling to do something about it.  We are so scared of losing, of sacrificing, of giving up something that we do nothing.  We become complicit, unable to hear from a mother who lost her kindergartener and say, “This will not happen again.”  And so it does.  Again, and again, and again.  Because this is who we are.  In our unwillingness to change, we have become a country who does not value life, who does not stand up for what is sacred, who does not see God in every human being.

My dear readers, I implore you, please take this day or this week or this month to do better.  I know it is hard, and compromise is nearly impossible in our current political climate, and you deserve certain rights.  But when the Lord our God created us in God’s image, God said that it was very good.  Our job while on this earth is to protect that goodness – even if it means not winning, sacrificing, and giving up some things.  Because until we are willing to make a change – any change – this is our reality.  This is our America.  This is our norm.  I don’t want that.  And I suspect you don’t either.  So, crawl with me.  Creep with me.  Scratch with me to make our way back to that blessed place where we hold life as sacred, where we stand in the light with all our brothers and sisters and see the holy in each one of them, where we can look at another person, no matter what political views they have, and say, “it is very good.”  And then help us to live into that goodness.