You Shall Be Holy
You Shall Be Holy
A sermon on Leviticus 19:1-2, 15-18 and Matthew 22:34-46
Preached on October 29, 2023 at Barboursville and Gordonsville UMCs
As I was reflecting in preparation for preaching to you all today and as I was thinking about holiness, I was reminded of how much of an impact Pastor Ethan has had on my theology. As many of you know, I met him during seminary, so theological conversations were in the air already, but after seminary, when many of our colleagues were happy to leave theology behind, Pastor Ethan and I continued to talk about what we were reading and our theological reflections on ministry. You’d think that we would have finished learning theology in seminary, but at this point, I’ve learned more after graduating than I ever did before.
And it’s actually been in conversations with Pastor Ethan that I’ve worked out some of my most important and beautiful theology, my clearest thoughts about holiness. I don’t know if he’s expressed it to y’all in this way, but one of his basic theological beliefs is that there is an undying love at the center of the universe. When you strip away everything else, all our rituals and practice, all our questions and doubts, our understanding of good and bad and what to do with that information, when nothing else is left, there will still be an unending, undying love that will not let you go. At your highest highs and your lowest lows, when your life is so full you can’t imagine fitting another thing in and when it’s so empty you can’t imagine any way out, we are, each of us, buoyed and surrounded and connected by the vast ocean of undefeatable love we name holy, a love we call God.
For Pastor Ethan, that’s what makes this all tick. That’s why he studies theology and why he stays in church. That’s why he continues to wrestle with difficult questions and to do his best to love others well. And honestly, a belief like that is what keeps me around too. If a curmudgeon like Ethan can believe something so beautiful, and put it at the center of his theology, then maybe I can believe something like that too.
I promise we’re going to talk about our scripture passages this morning from Leviticus and Matthew, and I promise this is all connected, but I want to stick with this idea for a minute. What does it mean for us when we say that there’s an unending love at the center of the universe? I mean, it’s a beautiful thought, as I’ve said, and that on its own makes it compelling, but what does believing in this love mean for our lives? What does it mean for how we live with ourselves and with each other? If we assume that despite all the evil and sorrow and pain we experience, there’s an unconquerable love at the center of all things, which is a big assumption, what do we do with that information?
Well, firstly, and maybe selfishly, it makes me feel secure. John Wesley said, “Best of all, God is with us,” and I truly think that this is the best news of all. It makes all those scriptures about joy and perseverance and how the world to come will be like a banquet make sense. It makes our sacraments make sense. It makes our practice of searching for the good in all things make sense. If I am loved with a love I cannot earn and do not deserve, if experiencing that love is a gift that cannot be taken from me, no matter what I do or don’t do, if I am simply loved, then all the pressure is off. I can just be. I don’t have to be perfect. I don’t have to have the answers. All I have to do is be. And I can handle that. More than that, when life is more than I can handle, I can return to this conviction: I am loved by an everlasting love and nothing can ever change that. No sickness, no job loss, no loss of any kind, no self-doubt, no death can separate me from the love of God, which we know through Christ Jesus. That is a life-changing belief.
And I can testify that this belief has changed my life. I think that this has made me more holy. Through all the twists and turns of the past decade of my life, I’ve been able to step into new or uncertain circumstances with a level of stability and security. (We might also call that peace.) In times past, I would have agonized over some of the changes that have happened in my life. I would have spent hours upon hours in prayer, begging for some kind of sign about what the right path was. This was actually most of my prayer life for most of my life: me staring up at the ceiling trying to connect with a God who had promised to order my steps in His Word. Now, that’s not terrible theology; I think there’s something lovely in the idea that we can love God so much that all we want to do is follow in the path that God has laid out for us. But that was the theology I inherited. It wasn’t my theology.
My theology turned out a little bit different, just like everybody’s theology turns out a little different from the theology of those who came before them. Our lives are different from the ones who came before us. It makes sense that our theology would be too. But in this theology, the one based on a resilient, tough, steadfast, unending love holding up all things, I don’t need to pray unceasingly about what comes next. I can step forward knowing that whatever comes next, God will be with me. Knowing that has saved me some sleepless nights. It kept my head above water during the uncertainty early on in my cancer diagnosis. It keeps the despair at bay. (We might call that hope.) And it makes me more loving: I feel like I have an endless storehouse of love that I can go to time and again.
This is where we turn our attention to the scripture passages for this morning, because I truly think that most of our theological differences across the years come down to what love looks like. We know that we are commanded in Leviticus to love our neighbors as ourselves, and the passage in Leviticus gives us some examples of what that looks like:
be just in your judgment;
treat everyone the same, whether they’re rich or poor;
Speak truth and kindness about those around you;
If you begin to prioritize profits over the wellbeing of people, change your way of doing business;
Keep hate out of your heart, especially when it comes to those who support you and love you;
When someone does wrong, call it out, because bystanders aren’t innocent; and
Forgive.
Now, you might notice that I paraphrased some in that list. I adjusted it for what I know to be true. I think that I made those changes in light of what I know about Jesus and his teachings and that I was guided by the Holy Spirit not only as I wrote out this list but also as I have done the learning over the years that produced these changes. But truly, you and I might disagree on some items on this list. We disagree about what the scripture means, and we disagree about what it means to love your neighbor as yourself. And that puts us in good company- every Christian disagrees with another Christian about this stuff.
But because I believe that there is perpetually expanding, everliving love at the heart of everything, I can stand up here in boldness and disagree with you. This disagreement will not be the end of me or of you. And because I know this love holds both me and you, I can stay with you despite this disagreement for as long as it takes for us to figure out how we might love alike. (We might call that patience.)
We see that patience in Jesus, I think, in our passage from Matthew today. I’ve thought about it differently over the years, and I am a fan of sassy Jesus, but I think Jesus shows incredible patience in this passage. He’s being bombarded with questions by experts who are trying to trip him up, and if I were Jesus, I think that I would be annoyed. Why don’t you trust me?, I would think. Why do you insist on wasting our time with this?, I might say in anger.
But Jesus listens to their questions and poses them another thinker. I used to puzzle over all the “The Lord said to my Lord” stuff, once upon a time. I used to be amazed like the experts in this passage, or at least anxious and unwilling to ask Jesus questions. Honest to God, I used to be trapped by this passage. Why couldn’t I figure this out on my own? Wasn’t I saved? So then why wasn’t the meaning of this scripture plain to me?
The truth is that I, like the experts in this passage, was taking it all too seriously. I, unlike the experts in this passage, was trying to make my own salvation through my own knowledge. I was relying on the one strength I knew that I had: my smarts. It took letting go of that, letting go of my need to make sense of it all on my own, something that I couldn’t do until well after seminary, for this passage to make sense. There’s only a conflict in logic if you assume that children must always be lesser than their parents, which was a baked-in assumption for the experts in Jesus’s time. Jesus is asking them to challenge what they know.
I used to hold so tight to what I knew and to be honest, that made me brittle. I couldn’t be challenged and I didn’t respond well when someone told me I was wrong. But it is by God’s grace that I have changed my ways. If I know that our God who is love permeates all things and will never abandon me, I can go into the unknown and admit that things are unknown to me. I’m not threatened by new information or a different point of view. I can listen with patience, sure, but I can also set aside my fear of being wrong and help or work alongside others regardless of how their ideas or beliefs challenge mine. (We might call that kindness.) I can meet others where they are and give whatever love I can, without the barrier of my fear coming in between us.
You might have noticed that the fruits of the Spirit have been bubbling up throughout this sermon. It surprised me at first, but I found as I reflected on these passages and on our God who is love, the fruits of the Spirit flowed naturally through this writing. When I believe that Love is in the middle of everything, scripture starts to connect for me. I start to see how love, holiness in action, is present across the centuries in scripture and in my life. When I trust that I am held by a love that has seen worse than whatever lies ahead of (and behind) me, I can give whatever I can to whoever I encounter. (We might call that generosity.) When I know that I will be caught up in the arms of a love that cannot falter, I can let the waves of hurt this world throws at me knock me over without lashing out. (We might call that gentleness.) When I know that I am known by a love that has seen me inside and out and loves me still, I don’t feel the need to correct those who think the worst of me or talk down to those who doubt me. (And I’d call that self-control all day long.)
But it’s when we come to faithfulness that I see the most profound change in myself. See, all my life, I never understood what it meant to be faithful or to just have faith. I thought I was broken, maybe. I thought that I was a bad person, or at least a bad Christian, but I didn’t feel anything when I thought about having faith. I didn’t feel secure or hopeful or joyful or peaceful or anything like that. I mentioned John Wesley earlier; he talked about having feelings like this when he returned from his time as a missionary in Georgia. All his life, he had been doing the right things, but it wasn’t clicking.
All my life, I believed what I was told were the right things. I did what I was told were the right things. I tried to live what I thought was a holy life. None of that was really the issue. But I didn’t really know why. I couldn’t understand why. God or no God, I figured I would be doing these good things anyway, because it was just a habit at this point. I followed the rules and some good rules had been set out for me, thanks to my parents and some other kind folks who helped raise me.
If you’ll forgive the poetry, it wasn’t until I believed, truly believed that God is love and that God’s love is what makes every connection possible, from the interaction of the tiniest particles to the reconciliation of enemies, from the dance of the grandest galaxies to the smallest gesture of kindness between friends, that I was able to understand what it meant to have faith in God. I couldn’t believe in the God I was taught about when I was younger. I couldn’t connect with that God. I was so worried about doing the right things for that God, following the path that God had set out for me, that I’m not sure I ever knew that God.
But a God who is love, a Love that abides at the root of all things? I can believe that. I’m so thankful for that. When the storms of life are raging, I can find shelter in Love. When I am overwhelmed, I can find strength in Love. When I don’t know what to do, I can listen to Love. When I think I have no way to help my neighbor, I can trust Love to provide. When I see no end of trouble in sight, I can find hope and renewal in Love. When I have nothing left, I trust that even then, there will be Love.
A love like that doesn’t have to be. In the face of many of the facts of this world, it seems quite possible that a love like that isn’t. And yet, a love like that is exactly who I believe God to be. I trust that at the center of all things is an unending, holy love and I draw joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, gentleness, and self-control from that abundant store of love.
We might call that faithfulness.
And so, my friends, today I invite you to consider your theology. How do you understand God? Is God a God you want to believe in? Does your understanding of God call you to be just, true, kind, to forgive, to love and advocate for your neighbor? Does your theology help you be more like God? Does it help you be more loving? Does it help you be holy?
Because, as Pastor Ethan might say, if we’re not trying to be more holy, friends, what are we doing all this for? If we aren’t surrounded and held up and driven forward by God’s unending love for us, what are we trying to be? Let’s us be holy, friends. Let’s us love as we are loved. Let’s us love God and love our neighbors as ourselves. Because that’s it. That’s the law and prophets. That’s holiness. That’s everything.
Let’s love.
Amen.