Holiness to the Lord
Proper 25A
Parish Church of Trinity Ashland
8:00 AM Said, 1:00 AM Sung Mass 26 October 2014
Deuteronomy 34:1-12; Psalm 90:1-6, 13-17; 1 Thessalonians
2:1-8; Matthew 22:34-46
God, take away our hearts of stone and give us hearts
of flesh. Amen
“You shall be holy, for I, Yahweh your
God am holy.” What can that possibly
mean? Somehow “Be religious, for I God
am religious” doesn’t quite make it. Nor
does “Be churchy for I am churchy,” or even “be uptight, for I am
uptight.” What does holiness mean? How is God holy, and how can we be holy?
The burning ones around the throne
of Yahweh in Isaiah 6 chant “Kadosh,
Kadosh, Kadosh” (Holy, holy, holy).
What do they mean? The Hebrew
word basically means separate or distinct from other things. Set aside, special, to the point of causing us
to stand before it in awe, trembling.
God’s holiness, or difference from
everything else, is often described in visual terms in the Hebrew scriptures,
where the word Kavod, or meaning both
brightness and heaviness, is used. It is
a visual clue of the awesome difference:
a glorious cloud of light, so palpable that it is described as a
weight.
The link between holiness and glory
is so tight that the two are used as synonyms in poetic pairing structure in
the Hebrew verse. Note: “Ascribe to the Lord the glory or honor due
his name; worship the Lord in the splendor of his holiness.
(Psalm 29:2)
Strangely, the difference and
distinctness of God from all creation lies behind all creation, beneath everything
other than God. Remember Paul on the
Areopagus: “In [God], we live and move,
and have our being…”
So taking a cue from those burning
ones in Isaiah, we to this day sing in our weekly meal of common things made
holy, bread and wine become somehow Christ’s Body and Blood, “Holy, holy, holy,
… heaven and earth are FULL of your glory.”
Common things made holy, set aside
for God and special use: this is the
sense that the Leviticus Holiness Code declares, “You shall be Holy for I am
Holy.” If we belong to God, we are
indeed dedicated and set aside, set apart, different
from those about us. Though they too
belong to God, we are different because we recognize this. Holiness is awareness of God’s immanent
presence and love.
This is why the Tractate to the
Hebrews (12:14) declares, “Make every effort to live in peace with everyone and to be holy; without holiness no one will see the Lord.”
It is also why the prophet Zechariah
describes the day of salvation as one when common things will all serve God’s
purpose. He uses the inscription on the
High Priest’s Breastplate “Holiness to the Lord” to express this (14:20-21): “In that day shall there be inscribed upon the
bells of the horses, Holiness to The Lord;
and even pots … shall all be like the sacred bowls before the altar. Yes, every pot in … Judah shall be “holiness to
the Lord…”
But what does this mean? Again, at heart it is simply recognizing the
presence of God where it always was, but where we didn’t see it before.
Some of you have asked me why we
sometimes use holy water to bless objects and not just people. Or why we reverence the blessed sacrament after
consecration. In the eyes of some, this
is crass superstition or worse, magic. Rather,
these things are sacramental: inward
grace seen and made real by outward signs.
The act of blessing itself is not the issue: it is the holiness or virtue recognized and
made real by the act. In Eastern
Orthodoxy, the great blessing of the Waters on the Feast of Theophany (what we
call Epiphany) is not to take bad water and make it good. It is to act out our recognition that God has
already blessed all water in creating
it, and all rivers by being baptized in Jordan. We shouldn’t believe in magic when this
means superstition and silliness. But
the magic in a child’s wonder and the awe of seeing God’s beauty—this is magic
we should never lose or belittle.
In the rabbinical commentaries on
“Be holy for I am holy,” there is often the idea that simple, common, everyday
acts become holy if we do them with right intention. Paying the plumber is an act of holiness when
done consciously with the desire to manage the plumbing problem and honor the
artisan with just compensation for expertise and labor. Being holy means living in the presence of
God even when—especially when—we are doing normal, everyday things, even when
we are doing embarrassing and personal things, perhaps even when we are straying from
God’s will. In a very real way, I think that “being holy”
is the way ancient Hebrews expressed an idea phrase in a different way by
Buddhists: “being present” and “mindful.”
But Scripture also teaches you
cannot be holy while disobeying God. And
so sometimes, like in the Holiness Code itself, it gives lengthy lists of what
to do and what to not do. Holiness
cannot be reduced to actions, however.
The heart of the matter is
love. Holiness also entails what Buddhists
call compassion. Note how in the
Leviticus passage the concern with fairness and equitable treatment of others,
as hallmarks of holiness, is summed up in “love your neighbor.”
That is the point of today’s Gospel.
The Pharisees ask Jesus a question
of halakhah, or legal interpretation. “Of all the 613 commandments in the Torah, (365 "Thou shalt not"s and
248 "Thou shalt"s), which is the most important? What is the
heart of the Law? Of all the competing and sometimes contradictory
rules, which ones take priority and interpret the others?”
Jesus starts his answer by something
not all that unusual: the Shema‘, the credo of Judaism recited every
morning and evening: “ Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord alone. And
you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and
with all your might.” Most rabbis had
also pointed to this passage from Deuteronomy as the heart of the Law.
But then Jesus adds, “and a second
commandment is just like this first
one,” citing an obscure portion of the Leviticus Holiness Code, the very one we
read today: “‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments
depend the entire body of scripture.”
This
juxtaposition is something completely new, first made by Jesus.
He puts these two commandments using
the verb “love” on par with each other.
In so doing he bridges a great divide in the Hebrew tradition: the contrast between holiness and purity on
the one side and social justice and fairness on the other, between Priests and
prophets, or ritual and ethics.
Why love? Why not fear, or obedience, or respect? Why not honor, or duty? Jesus is saying the openness and
vulnerability of our hearts is where we find the ability to find the right path
to faithfulness to a holy God and taking care of one’s fellow human
beings. This is what it means when he says the link between the two
is love.
Love is hard to explain
or define. Remember Pooh and
Piglet? “How do you spell love?” “You
don’t spell it, you feel it.” And it’s
not just a feeling, but a feeling that finds expression in a disposition of the
will, in a lifetime of acts.
Maybe it’s the loss of
self-regard we experience in love. Most
of our other emotions and habits can be pursued while manipulating and being
manipulated by others. But if love
starts doing that, we no longer consider it love.
Think about it: your best loves—whether a partner, or friend,
parent, or child—what is their essence?
Loss of concern about yourself and focus on the beloved. That’s one of the reasons that finding right
ways to set boundaries in love relationships is so tricky, and so
necessary.
The two are on par with
each other. Holiness must be bound by
justice. And Justice must be driven by
holiness.
In other words, mindfulness
and being present must find expression in compassion. And our concern for decency and fairness must
never descend into mere self or group interest.
Mindfulness and detachment is the way to do this. None of this is possible without love.
This week, I invite us all in our meditations and prayers to look at our relationships for
signs of love, for hints of the great love that lies behind all things. And look for the various ways the love of God is made manifest in our love and the love of those about us. I hope that such reflection may help us expand the scope of love in our lives and the mindfulness we have each moment of God's loving presence.
In the name of Christ,
Amen.
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