Our Holy Calling

Leviticus 19: 1-2 & 15-18 & Matthew 22: 34-46
Roger Lynn
January 17, 2016
(click here for the audio for this sermon)

Willie Nelson sang about being “on the road again.” I write newsletter columns under the heading “Notes from the Journey.” This congregation is learning to live into a new future. In one way or another most of us can identify with being in process, somewhere between getting started and finally arriving, between who we are now and who we are becoming. Because the truth is that there really is no “arriving.” We are always in the process of becoming. Of course, figuring out where we’re going and how we’re going to get there is the work of a lifetime. It is the ongoing challenge of faithful living. 

The book of Leviticus is addressed to a people who are engaged in precisely this challenge. What does it mean to be faithful? What does it mean to be people of God? They had a glimmer of an understanding that we have the stuff of God within us. The creation stories in Genesis talk about it in terms of being made in God’s image and having the breath of God as the source of our lives. And so it is not surprising to find Leviticus taking the next step — since we have God’s imprint on our souls, it follows that the shape and character of our living also ought to reflect the qualities we find in God. “You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy.” (Leviticus 19:2) 

The snag, of course, comes in trying to figure out what that looks like. Defining holiness is more art than science. It is subtly nuanced and not very precise. The whole business lends itself to misunderstandings, abuse and unhelpful traps. The distinction between process and goal gets fuzzy. We start thinking that where we’re going is the same thing as how we get there. In Leviticus this becomes pretty clear in a hurry. In just the chapter from which our reading this morning was taken, we find references to particular cultural practices like shaving your beard in a specific way, right next to prohibitions about planting different crops next to each other and wearing garments made with more than one kind of fiber (which comes from a world view that things are good if they can be understood as either one thing or another, but bad if that distinction get blurry or confused), and all of that right next to admonitions to be kind to your neighbor and welcome the stranger in your midst. All in the name of trying to be holy. Clearly the goal is a worthy one — live so that the divine spark within us shines and the divine connection we have with God remains strong and vital. And when we keep our attention focused on that goal and allow it to help us interpret the particular means which we have, over the years, devised to try to meet that goal, we are much more likely to stay on a healthy path. But when we allow specific rules and regulations to overshadow the goal, we quickly find ourselves straying off into unhelpful territory.

In Matthew’s account of the closing days of Jesus’ ministry, we watch him face one conflict after another. Those with a big stake in maintaining the spiritual status quo were getting nervous. And it is within this context that our Gospel reading for today comes to us. At first glance it is a curious and confusing pairing of stories. The first (what is the greatest commandment?) seems so clear and straightforward and to the point. The second (is the Messiah David’s son?) seems convoluted and obscure. What point was Jesus trying to make? What point was Matthew making by putting these two stories right next to each other? As with much of what we find in the Gospels, there is no way to know for certain. But one possibility might be found precisely in the contrast between the clarity and the confusion. Perhaps the point has to do with what is important for us to spend our time and energy pursuing, and what gets in the way. For both of these stories Jesus’ audience were the Pharisees and other religious elite. They delighted in nothing more than engaging in the kind of hair-splitting discussion which we find in the second story. Maybe Jesus was telling them, “If you spend more time loving God, loving each other and loving yourselves, and less time worrying about arcane debates concerning who is acceptable and who isn’t, the world would be a lot fuller, richer place.” Our holy calling, Jesus seems to be saying, is to live out our connection with God by sharing God’s love with the world. It really is that simple, and that hard.

Carter Heyward put it this way, “...to try to be something other than human, is . . . to hide under a bushel the one most valuable gift any of us can give another: our willingness to share what we need, what we yearn for, what we experience, what we believe, what we doubt, what we fear, what we cherish, what we create, what we celebrate, what we grieve for, the stuff that being human is made of. To rise above this precious openness and vulnerability to one another and to the world itself is to snuff out the possibility of meeting God in the world.” (Our Passion For Justice, “Compassion”, Carter Heyward, pp. 234-235) 

“You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy.” May the truth of this holy calling shine forth in and through our living as we seek to truly love all of God’s children with as much creativity and compassion and integrity and vulnerability as we can muster. Amen.