Proper 25, Year A
Leviticus 19:1-2, 15-18; Psalm 1; 1 Thessalonians 2:1-8; Matthew 22:34-46
Almighty and everlasting God,
increase in us the gifts of faith, hope, and charity; and, that we may
obtain what you promise, make us love what you command; through Jesus
Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one
God, for ever and ever. Amen.
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Why preach on
Leviticus? What do we modern Christians have to do with all of the primitive boundary-making
that fills this book? Weren’t the
ancient Israelites just making laws to define themselves as a people, to set
themselves apart from the nations who threatened their identity? What does that
have to do with us? Didn’t Jesus show us
that we have a loving God, not a
fearsome God who needs to be placated with obscure rituals? And we’re not
obsessed with purity anymore, certainly? We don’t talk in terms of things being
ritually “clean” and “unclean …” We’re too sophisticated to fear what seems out
of place in nature. We’re no longer frightened beings who see lightning
strikes as acts of God. We have science to light our paths. We don’t need to
obey a detailed list of rules in an attempt to control a universe that we don’t
understand….
Or do we? How
about this headline from the news just this week: “Infection Protection: New
CDC Ebola Guidelines Stress Gear Ritual.”
After those two nurses came down with Ebola in Dallas, the Centers for
Disease Control created “an almost ritualistic approach” to protect health care
workers. "We need to increase the margin of safety," they pronounced
with gravity. All healthcare workers must undergo rigorous training in exact
ways of putting on and taking off gear in a systemic manner.[1]
Reading about the new regulations, they sound an awful lot like those detailed
instructions in Leviticus.
Indeed, Ebola
is bringing out the fear of contagion in all of us. The idea of this disease
that infects us through disgusting bodily fluids, that oozes blood and melts
our organs—it reaches us in the deep, dark places of our fears. They say that
there are three kinds of universal human disgust: 1.) the primary disgust that
is triggered by bodily fluids (sharing spit in the communion cup, for example,
or stepping in dog poop); 2.) the socio-moral disgust for strangers, for those
people who are “different,” who don’t belong in our circles; 3.) the strong
animal-reminder disgust that occurs when we are reminded of our own deaths.[2]
All three of these kinds of disgust are triggered in us by the Ebola virus.
Blood and guts, foreigners, and death: they stir up deep repulsion in us—the
kind of repulsion that naturally leads us to purify, to set boundaries, to try
desperately to make things right and clean again.
David Brooks described this week the parents
in a Mississippi school who kept their kids home just because the school
principal had traveled to Zambia, an African country untouched by the Ebola
outbreak.[3]
There are all kinds of people turning up in public places in crazy homemade
hazmat suits. We are now quarantining people who arrive in the United States
from infected countries. I’m not saying that many of these precautions aren’t
necessary. I’m merely pointing to the link between fear, rules, and boundary-making.
As Brooks writes: “[What we are experiencing with Ebola] is a fear you feel
when the whole environment seems hostile, when the things that are supposed to
keep you safe, like national borders and national authorities, seem porous and
ineffective, when some menace is hard to understand… People seek to build
walls, to pull in the circle of trust. They become afraid.”[4]
Can you admit to your fear—or at
least your disgust—over Ebola for a moment? Let it float around in your mind as
you join me in giving Leviticus another chance. First of all, let us understand
the Israelites' picky little laws in the light of our own attempts to save
ourselves from contagion. When we are facing death and disgust, we all clean,
and we all circle the wagons. But more importantly, today’s section from
Leviticus points to a deeper reality than the uncleanness of shrimp. Today’s
reading from the Holiness Code is about living out a proper relationship with
God and with others in the midst of the very kind of fear and disgust that we
are feeling. It’s about creating community stability in the face of our human
struggle to control the dangers of this world.
“I am Holy,” begins the Lord God in
our reading. “I am different, set apart! I am different not just in my power,
but in my love. In the power of my love, I “brought you, my people, out of the
land of Egypt” when you were slaves. I am the God who frees every captive, the
God whose Love never ends. And because you are made in my image, you are holy
like I am. As you are in relationship with me, you will set others free, as
well. That is who you are. You will love one another and all of the creation
that I made, as I love you.[5] This
divine self-definition and command is at the center of the Hebrew Scriptures.
It is no wonder that the rabbi Jesus quotes it as the center of his own Good
News. We are to act justly with one another because God is just. We are to be
in relationship with one another because God’s very self is relationship. We
are to love our neighbor because loving the other is the very essence of our
God.
Moreover, this love that we are to
have for our neighbor is not some kind of vague, abstract love. This holiness
that we are given is not some hazy, saintly aura. According to our text, we
enact God’s holy love when we pay fair wages to those who work for us, when we
don’t profit off of the backs of the poor, when we forgive a grudge, when we
give away part of our earnings to those who are hungry and alone. As one modern
rabbi writes, an example of the holiness of loving neighbor can be as simple as
promptly writing a check to the plumber who has just fixed your leaky faucet,
aware that in so doing, you are participating in God’s love for the world.[6] Leviticus
brings home to us that love and holiness consist of small, real, and tangible
practices. It’s like Pastor Walt Wangerin’s story about the time that he was
trying to profess his deep and abiding love to his wife. “I don’t need all your
grand words,” she told him. “If you love me, just make up the bed every
morning!”[7]
When Ebola came to Dallas this month, one Christian congregation was given the chance to act out of the freeing holiness of God.[8] You see, Louise Troh, the fiancĂ©e of Ebola victim Eric Duncan, had been coming to church at Wilshire Baptist in Dallas. When she was put in quarantine, waiting to come down with the deadly disease, the people of Wilshire Baptist decided that the holiness of God called on them to reach out to her in love, not to withdraw behind safe boundaries. They agreed that it was OK for their pastor to visit her. They made her casseroles. They were not afraid of letting their pastor go to her and then come to shake their hands at the church door. “This is what we do,” everyone agreed. “We reach out in small concrete ways to our neighbor in need.”
Leviticus does not have to be used to bind and to belittle.[9] Fear’s need for rigid boundaries and self-preserving purity does not have to control us. The call of our loving God for us to be Holy as God is Holy can free us from the fear that imprisons us. One loving act at a time.
[1]
http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/ebola-virus-outbreak/infection-protection-new-cdc-ebola-guidelines-stress-gear-ritual-n230206
[2]
Richard Beck, Unclean, found at http://www.christiancentury.org/reviews/2012-06/unclean-richard-beck.
[3]
David Brooks, “The Quality of Fear,” found at http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/21/opinion/david-brooks-what-the-ebola-crisis-reveals-about-culture.html?_r=0.
[4]
David Brooks, Ibid.
[5]
See Fred Gaiser’s interpretation of this passage, found at
http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=1004.
[6]
“Holiness is Where You Find It,” found at http://www.beliefnet.com/Faiths/Judaism/2000/05/Holiness-Is-Where-You-Find-It.
[7]
Walt Wangerin, Jr. As for Me and My
House: Crafting your Marriage to Last (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1990).
[8]
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/george-mason/when-ebola-comes-to-church_b_5971124.html.
[9]
Gaiser, Ibid.
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