Leviticus 19:1-2, 9-18
When I went to Sunday School, the classroom goal for the year was always the same. It was every Sunday School teacher’s dream to have each child memorize all the books of the Bible.
Since each year we started at the beginning, most of us over time had a fairly good grasp on the Old Testament books, particularly the ones near the start of the Bible – and a not-so-good grasp on the New Testament, especially anything that came after the Gospels. And our tenuous grip on the opening New Testament narratives was most likely the result of the rhyme that annually circulated the halls of the church education wing: “Matthew, Mark, Luke, John. Saddle the horse, and I’ll jump on.”
However, over time we all knew that Genesis came first with its admittedly hard-to-believe as we grew older but still interesting tales about Eve sprouting from one of Adam’s ribs, Eve with her penchant for ripe red apples and fascinating ability to talk to snakes, about Noah and the animals in the Ark bobbing on the waves for 40 days and 40 nights before ending up perched precariously on the summit of Mt. Ararat, and Abraham nearly sacrificing his son, Isaac, on a makeshift altar in the woods before a ram entangled in the nearby bushes miraculously appeared to save the day. A Biblical deus ex machina, perfected later by ancient Greek playwrights.
Then there was the drama of Exodus with the Burning Bush and Moses standing In his bare feet on holy ground, the parting of the Red Sea with the triumphant drowning of all the Egyptians on their chariots along with their horses, and then Moses smashing the stone tablets as he descended from Mt. Sinai when he witnessed in horror the Hebrews dancing sensually, their sweat glistening in the firelight, dancing around a Golden Calf in the valley below (at least, that is how Cecil B. DiMille portrayed the scene in the movie).
But after Genesis and Exodus, well, then came the three boring books, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy – finally followed by action once again with the story of Joshua besieging the city of Jericho until the walls came a tumblin’ down – and so on and so on.
Leviticus, then, was the first of the three often skipped over dull books. It was the one that encompassed all sorts of laws, most of which make no sense to us today and some that we would not even want to talk about in polite church company, but laws nonetheless that the Hebrew people were to abide by as they settled the Promised Land.
And so we find in this tedious Book of Leviticus what to do about animal sacrifice, oozing sores, moldy walls, gashed flesh, and any sort of bodily emission you can think of. There are also instructions about diseases, women’s health, and sexual mores.
According to this rulebook, trimming one’s beard was prohibited, as were sporting tattoos and wearing clothing made of two kinds of fabric. Even more difficult to stomach – no pun intended – was that eating shrimp and lobster was outlawed, and, worst of all, no bacon.
And those were the easy laws! If you were less than holy because of the animals you sacrificed or the tattoo you got when your mother was looking the other way, if you were impure in those instances, you could clean up after yourself, so to speak.
However, tucked in amongst all of these offbeat and, to us at least, ridiculous regulations governing what we eat and what we wear, are the verses that we read this morning, all of which could be grouped together under the more acceptable umbrella of “neighborliness.” These are the more difficult laws to abide by.
In these verses, we find laws that echo the Ten Commandments, such as do not steal and do not use God’s name in vain. And we find the words that Jesus fell back on – either directly or indirectly - time and again in his own preaching: Love your neighbor as yourself.
Those laws are the tough ones because they challenge us to live in the likeness of God. They demand that we live as God dreamt from the beginning that we would live. They call us to be good and holy because God is good and holy.
Old Testament scholar Tyler Mayfield summarizes these Hebrew Bible verses this way: “Broadly speaking, the regulations provided in Leviticus 19 relate to ethical matters such as the proper treatment of others, how we respect and honor various peoples.” He goes on to elaborate, “The laws deal with one’s relationship to these diverse groups, cutting across economic, familial, and ability lines…..
The word typically translated as ‘neighbor’ does not carry an explicitly geographic association. It is not necessarily the one whom you live beside or across from or on the same street. It is not necessarily the people on your side of town or even those within your city.”
Your neighbor, then, is any fellow traveler you encounter – either directly or indirectly – on your way through life. It is the homeless man with his sign saying that anything would help. It is the refugee fleeing famine, the immigrant seeking a better life, and the asylum seeker mother and her children leaving terror behind. It is the one who cannot worship with us and enjoy our fellowship afterwards because we are not suitably handicapped accessible. Those people are all our neighbors.
I find it fascinating that these short sound bite injunctions that punctuate this passage are bookended at the beginning by the demand to “be holy” and at the end by the commandment to “love your neighbor.” It is as if the author is constructing a bridge between being holy and loving one’s neighbor.
The author seems to be saying read between the lines - literally. And when you do, you will discover that there is a linkage between holiness and love of neighbor, a linkage that is expressed and lived out by the verses in between: Do not deceive. Do not defraud. Do not hold back wages.
Do not discriminate against or make life difficult for the blind, the deaf, the disabled. Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge. Do not do anything that endangers your neighbor’s life. Do not pervert justice.
Is it any wonder, then, that these verses are part of what is called in Leviticus, the “Holiness Code”? As Old Testament scholar Cameron Howard notes in her commentary, “In the Holiness Code, holiness extends from the sanctuary (that is, the synagogue or, in our case, the four walls of this church building) ‘to the land and its occupants’…Holiness is a mark of distinction…Achieving holiness requires ethical behavior, not only ritual precision. “
She continues to write, “The practices described in this passage name the kinds of everyday injustices that not only many of us have experienced, but also that many of us have committed. There are perhaps dozens of times every day that we have the opportunity to look out for our neighbor, but we look out only for ourselves: we do not leave some of our income for the poor, we deal in falsehoods to save or make a little more money, we bear grudges against family and friends. These are the actions that should make us blush. Yet we often become so comfortable with our sins that we hardly even notice them.”
She concludes by saying, “Leviticus’ concern with impurity and holiness remains relevant today, even to the twenty-first-century Christian reader. The book brings to each of us the question: what in your life is impeding your encounter with God?”
Or to use the language we have been using throughout this worship series: What is increasing the likelihood that you will experience Spiritual Affective Disorder, so that you feel like you are living I the winter blahs of semi-darkness? And what intentional spiritual practice might you embrace that will turn the lights on once again in your life?
Of all the ways to be holy as God is holy, to be neighborly as God dreams for us to be, I think the very first one stated is an excellent place for us to begin:
“When you harvest your land, don’t harvest right up to the edges of your field or gather the gleanings from the harvest. Don’t strip your vineyard bare or go back and pick up the fallen grapes. Leave them for the poor and the foreigner.
For the farmer - or even backyard gardener - among us, these verses might make perfect sense.
Leave the snow peas and the eggplants, the zucchini and summer squash that grow near the perimeters of your vegetable gardens intact and refrain from freezing them for your own use in the coming winter. Do not pick up the drops from your apple tree in the autumn and make applesauce for yourself.
Why? Because, in Leviticus, the purpose of leaving produce in the field was to give poor people an opportunity to gather food for themselves and their families. For us, that might mean planting a row or two to give to the Food Pantry – or canning some applesauce to give away as well.
However, for those of us who are not farmers – or even summer gardeners - how might this idea of gleaning, that is, of gathering food for those who need it out of the abundance that we live with every day, be applicable to our own lives? What if we began by embracing the blessing of our abundance and recognizing the excess we have? What if we were to intentionally, as the adage goes, “live simply such that others may simply live”?
What might that look like? For Sharon Beckwith, the founder of Daisy’s Children who will be speaking to us at the end of our worship, it meant starting a non-profit to feed hungry children in Honduras. For you, it might be a much smaller task.
As worship consultant Marcia McFee suggested, “What awareness can we bring to the food we buy, cook, and throw away as part of our spiritual mandate to care for the human family? (Could it be) cooking more than enough and sharing with someone who needs it, buying extra at the grocery store to donate to the food bank, or getting involved in a gleaning network's efforts?”
Therein lies is my final challenge to you this week as we wrap up our worship series on Spiritual Affective Disorder. Do something around the excess of food in your life. Practice some 21st century “but I do not have a garden and besides it is winter anyway” opportunity for gleaning. Again - what might that look like? Perhaps it would be something as simple as cooking extra to share with someone who might need a little help – financially or emotionally.
Take those chocolate chips left over from baking Christmas cookies and put together a batch for a friend. Bake a casserole with those extra noodles and cans of tuna in your cupboard for a neighbor who is having a hard time. Buy an extra jar of spaghetti sauce, and a box of pasta, and a couple of extra cans of soup and fruit and vegetables, and leave them on the Missions table in the Vestry to donate to our Food Pantry.
Take a collection box that will be available after worship and support Daisy’s Children – our Lenten mission project – and by doing so help food insecure children be fed.
Doing those things is being neighborly as Jesus challenges us to be. Doing those things is being holy as these verses in the Book of Leviticus call us to be. After all, as Presbyterian pastor Diane Christopher reminds us, the question is this: “What does holiness look like? It is loving God, but it is also loving our neighbor. Being holy is about how we treat other people. That is what Leviticus 19 is all about. It is about living together in a community.”
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