Sermon preached by The Reverend Dr. Harold T. Lewis

SERMON PREACHED BY THE REVEREND DR. HAROLD T. LEWIS, RECTOR CALVARY EPISCOPAL CHURCH, PITTSBURGH, PENNSYLVANIA IN RODEF SHALOM CONGREGATION, PITTSBURGH FRIDAY 29 APRIL 2005


"Speak to all the community of the Israelites in these words: 'You shall be holy, because I, the Lord your God, am holy.'" (Leviticus 10:2)


It is a joy to be here tonight, to worship with you and to be your preacher, as Calvary and Rodef launch this Mitzvah weekend. I hope it will build on our relationship and will lead to many other joint projects during the rabbinate of my dear friend, Aaron Bisno. But I have to admit that I had some doubts recently as to whether he is really my friend. Over lunch he told me that the homily tonight should be short, perhaps about ten minutes, and when I asked him what the reading was tonight, he told me the Holiness Code, from chapters 17 through 26 of the Book of Leviticus. Rabbi Bisno had laid on me an impossible homiletical task. There's a lot of material in those ten chapters, but even at one minute per chapter, I couldn,t do justice to the topics that Moses addresses --- dietary laws, laws about animal sacrifices, sowing and planting, marriage and chastity, and the Levitical priesthood, including how the priest should keep his beard trimmed! So I have decided instead to focus on the words of Moses in the second verse of the 19th chapter of Leviticus: "Speak to all the community of the Israelites in these words: You shall be holy, because I, the Lord your God, am holy."

Being the holy people of God is at the core of the Judaeo-Christian ethic. The qadosh of the Hebrew Bible becomes the agios of the Greek Testament, and is the word, translated as "saint," which St. Paul uses when he writes to the people in the various communities he visited. So central is holiness to Christian theology that the words that the seraphim sang to each other at the time of the call of Isaiah are incorporated into every celebration of the Holy Eucharist: "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of Hosts. The whole earth is full of his glory (Is. 6:3).

And the Apostle Peter, in his first Epistle, preaches a sermon on Moses, words from Leviticus: "As obedient children, do not let your characters be shaped any longer by the desires you cherished in your days of ignorance. The One who called you is holy; like him be holy in all your behavior, because Scripture says, "You shall be holy, for I am holy" (I Peter 1:15-16).

Our first reaction when we hear these words is to reject them. "That's impossible! We can't be like the Lord. There is no way we can be holy in the same way that the Lord is holy. But this is not what is being asked of us. The Lord tells us "You shall be holy, because I am holy." In other words, our holiness, our consecration, our being set apart, manifests itself in believing in the Lord's promises, walking in faith, and obeying his commands. That's what makes us holy. How, then, can we accomplish such holinesss?

First, holiness means obedience to the commandments of God. The Lord God did not leave His people in the dark as to the nature of holiness. The bottom line is that holiness consists of obedience to the laws of God, obedience to His commandments. And as someone has recently reminded us, when Moses brought the tablets down from the mountain, they contained ten commandments, not ten suggestions!

Second, holiness requires sacrifices. Every act of obedience to the commandments of God was a sacrificial act. Obedience to God's commandments was costly. For example, not planting crops to the very edges of one's property --- leaving land to be cultivated by others, cuts into one's "profit margin." So did selling with honest weights and measures. Abstaining from eating the fruit from one's trees for five years and observing (i.e., not working on) the Sabbath days was also costly. My mother grew up in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn, New York, which in those days was about half Jewish and half African American. She used to tell me stories about how she and her siblings earned spending money, doing things for their Jewish neighbors on the Sabbath, which they were forbidden to do, since those acts were considered work. Even the handing over of money was considered work, so that at the end of the evening, my mother knew that she could find her nickel under the doily on the dresser, where it had been placed before the Sabbath. Holiness was a sacrifice.

Next, Holiness is more than "going through the motions" of observing religious rituals. (I have to admit to being somewhat amused reading your newsletter in which one of your rabbis talks about posture during worship --- whether one should sit or stand or bow at various parts of the service. I was amused because I thought Episcopalians were the only ones concerned with liturgical aerobics!) No, worship is not just going through the motions; it was intensely practical piety, involving a wide variety of actions as a part of one's everyday life. Chapter 19, for example describes a very practical, everyday, kind of holiness, of honoring parents, of honesty and kindness and compassion and justice.

Holiness is the also the imitation of God. In the ultimate sense, living a holy life is the imitation of God, who alone is holy.
What is more, Holy Scripture tells us that holiness is to be revealed positively, rather than negatively. If you and I were honest, I believe that we would have to admit that we sometimes think of the holiness of God in rather negative terms -- what I call a "Thou shalt not" mentality. God's holiness, for example, is thought of in terms of His hatred of sin and of His judgment of sinners. In fact, it is widely held in some Christian circles that the God of the Hebrew Bible is wrathful, punitive and vindictive, whereas the Jesus of the Christian Bible is loving, caring and compassionate. This is, of course, a great distortion of Holy Scripture. God's wrath is but one dimension of God's holiness, and it is not the dimension in focus in Leviticus 19. God's holiness was manifested by His quintessential act of compassion on behalf of the Israelites when they were afflicted in Egypt ---their deliverance from bondage. Likewise, holiness is to be manifested by the people of God by their kindness, grace, and compassion on others, especially the needy and the afflicted. We are holy because God is holy.

Finally, holiness is practiced by loving one's neighbor as one's self. There is a direct relationship between the command to be holy and the command to love one's neighbor. For the holiness of God is demonstrated by His people as they love their neighbor. In St. Luke's Gospel, when Jesus reminds the young lawyer of the commandment of the law to love his neighbor, the lawyer asks, "Who is my neighbor?" (Lk 10:29). In response to that query, Jesus tells the parable of the Good Samaritan, the story of a man (himself shunned because of his religious practices and lack of pedigree) who shows mercy and compassion toward a man left for dead on the side of the road, a man toward whom he had no obligation to minister. I think Jesus may have had the 19th chapter of Leviticus in mind when he asked the question, for the term "neighbor" doesn't only mean someone down the street. One's neighbor is one's fellow-countryman (vv. 11, 17); one's neighbor is an alien or foreigner (v. 10, 32-33, 34). One's neighbor is a person who is weak and vulnerable (v. 10, 14). One's neighbor can even be one's enemy (v. 17-18). It is not that holiness is manifested only by one's loving one's neighbor, but it is here emphasized that holiness must include an active love for one's neighbor. Thus, just as God's holiness is seen in His love for Israel, and just as we believe that Jesus, ministry had a special concern for the "least, the lost, and the last of society, so God's people must demonstrate God's holiness as they show love for their neighbors, especially those in need.

So we come full-circle to our Mitzvah Day. In doing our duty in the community, we are not only showing love toward neighbor, we are fulfilling the Lord's command to be holy, even as he is holy. AMEN.