Perfect Holiness

Epiphany 7A, 2/23/14
Leviticus 19:1-2, 9-18
Matthew 5:38-18

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God, you are our rock and our redeemer. Amen.

Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly father is perfect.

Seriously, Jesus?

I mean, I struggle enough with perfectionism anyway.

Times like Ash Wednesday are almost refreshing for me, when we’re reminded that God is God and I am not, so the weight of the world really doesn’t need to rest upon my shoulders.

But Jesus today is telling us almost the opposite.

If we are following Jesus, if we are worshipping God, then our goal is nothing short of perfection.

No pressure.

Some colleagues of mine have been preaching or leading Bible studies on the theme, “things I wish Jesus had never said.” Be perfect certainly makes it on to that list.

We’ve been hearing from the Sermon on the Mount for the past several weeks, and we’ve done our best to take Jesus at his word all the way through. I believe that Jesus really meant what he was saying. He didn’t just preach to hear his own voice, but he really wanted – and expected – his disciples to follow his teachings.

We’ve learned from the past several Gospel readings that Jesus has high expectations of his followers.

Blessed are you when people persecute you.

You are the salt of the earth, but if the salt has lost it’s taste, what good is it?

You have heard it said… but I say to you… let your yes be yes and your no be no…

Sometimes the way that Jesus describes the expectations he has for his followers is really harsh.

He doesn’t mince words.

He’s not a warm fuzzy preacher – he’s not concerned with making people feel good, but he is concerned with speaking the truth. Jesus speaks with conviction and passion, even at the literal risk of his own life.

So when Jesus says, “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly father is perfect,” I think he means it. I think we need to take him seriously.

Jesus wants his followers to be perfect.

         OK.

But what in the world does that mean?

And how in the world can we even come close to perfection?

Thankfully, we have some guidance from the Old Testament lesson today.

You don’t tend to hear sermons on Leviticus very often in Lutheran churches.

There are reasons for that.

Leviticus is full of rules and regulations, God’s laws and commandments.

Some of the laws seem totally irrelevant to our society today.

In the verse following our reading, we are told not to grow two kinds of crops in the same field and not to wear fabrics of mixed fibers.

Well, I think I'm already condemned, since I’m pretty sure every pair of underwear I own is made out of at least two types of fabric.

A few verses further, we learn that trimming your beard and getting tattoos are forbidden.

I guess my husband is out of luck, as is the pastor who I do text study with every week.

Chapter 20 talks a lot about sex, about incest and adultery, and why a man must not sleep with a woman who is having her period.

Well, probably every married couple here has been in violation of that one, since you’re not even supposed to sleep in the same room as a menstruating woman, since the blood makes her unclean, according to Levitical laws.

Looking back a few pages, chapter 11 goes through food laws, saying that it’s not OK to eat shellfish but it is OK to eat locusts, and if a mouse falls into a jar, that jar is forever unclean and must be broken to pieces.

Yeah, I don’t know about you, but I’d much rather eat scallops than locusts, and if any vermin like a mouse happened to fall into a ceramic vessel I own, I’d probably soak it really well, but I’d definitely use it again and not break it into a million bits.

Leviticus is given a pretty poor showing in most Christian preaching. 

This Old Testament book only shows up once in the three-year cycle of the Revised Common Lectionary. In the schedule of readings we follow of Old Testament, New Testament, Gospel readings, and Psalms, this is the only time we’ll hear from Leviticus until 2017.

And no wonder, with so many laws that not only seem irrelevant to us, but also require explanation as to why they ever existed in the first place – it’s easier just to ignore passages like these in the Bible, when there are so many more life-giving passage out there.

It’s hard to find any Gospel – any good news – in the pages of Leviticus.

But in this combination of readings, when Jesus is continuing his reproachful and convicting Sermon on the Mount, I think that today’s better news is to be found in the Old Testament lesson, in the words for Leviticus that Jesus repurposes for his audience in Matthew.

Jesus tells us to be perfect.

Leviticus tells us why.

You shall be holy – because I, the Lord your God, am holy.

You shall leave some of your harvest for the poor and the foreigner – I am the Lord your God.

You shall not steal or lie – I am the Lord your God

You shall not cheat or steal, you shall not harm the deaf or the blind – I am the Lord your God.

You shall treat everyone with justice – I am the Lord your God.

You shall not hate your family or your neighbor, or hold grudges against anyone – I am the Lord your God.

And I, the Lord your God, am holy.

And if you do these holy actions, the whole world will know that you belong to me, that you are people of God.

And the whole world will know something about who I am – who God is – through learning who you are as God’s people.

Who you are – who you are intended to be – are holy people.

People set apart for God’s work.

People who live according to God’s law.

People with a special promise from God to be forgiven of all sins and to be granted eternal life.

According to Leviticus, God wants the chosen people – God wants us – to live our whole lives as a quest for holiness. We are supposed to make following God and reflecting God’s values the primary reason why we    ever    do    anything.

In all aspects of our lives, from what we eat and what we wear to how we speak and run our businesses, we always have the opportunity to reflect well upon God with our actions. By doing everything for the glory of God, we end up making our actions holy. We end up living holy lives.

Does this translate into being perfect, like Jesus talks about in the Gospel reading?

Maybe.

“Perfect” is a complicated word.

For us, in English, as 21^st-century Americans, “perfect” usually means “flawless.”

For Jesus, and for his followers, and for the earliest readers of the Bible, “perfect” was synonymous with “complete” or “whole.”

Be whole, then, as your father in heaven is whole.

Or even, be holy, as God is holy.

Wholeness, completeness – holiness – these values imply a journey, a process, a continual state of being that needs regular maintenance.

If you have a whole chocolate cake, you need to work to make sure that no one else stops in and eats a slice before it’s time to serve it.

If you have a complete set of first editions of Charles Dickens’ works, you need to work to keep it from deteriorating, or from being stolen, or from experiencing damage from sun or moisture.

Wholeness – holiness – requires maintenance

Another pastor I know rephrases Jesus’ command this way: Jesus is inviting us to live into our true selves, created in the image and likeness of God.  

And I, the Lord your God, am holy.

God’s people are meant to be set apart from the general population.

That’s not because we’re better than anyone else. Any of us who have struggled with perfectionism will know beyond a doubt that we are far from perfect! We are definitely not any better than any of the other sinners out there!

But we can try to be.

We know the promises that God has for us, and we know the expectations that God has for us. And the good news is that, regardless of whether we follow God’s commands for two or three days at a time, or whether we sin every other second, God still loves us.

God still believes that we can be holy – complete – perfect.

So let’s follow through on God’s faith.

Let’s try our best to be as holy as God thinks we are.

According to today’s Leviticus reading, that means we should provide for poor people and foreigners, that we should be honest and fair with our money, that we should be attentive to the needs of the deaf and blind, that we should be just, and that we should love our family and our neighbor.

And so on, and so forth.

Between Jesus and Leviticus, it would be a full-time job trying to follow all of God’s commands.

But really what the readings get at is this:

Let your actions reflect the holiness of God.

If you’re living like that, you’re living right.

We could spend weeks arguing the merits of things like fair trade food and clothing that’s not made in sweatshops.

But really what God wants us to do today is to pay attention.

Know what it is that you’re doing.

And every step along the way, consider whether your actions truly reflect the nature of God.

If they do, then you are holy – whole – complete – and perfect.

If not, then you have work to do.

So let’s let our actions reflect our love of God.

And let’s live in confidence of God’s promises of grace and forgiveness for us in all those times when we fail to measure up.                

Amen.