Heart of the Rockies Christian Church in Fort Collins, CO

“For I the LORD your God, am Holy”, Jeff Wright, 2/23/14

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 “For I the LORD your God, am Holy”

A sermon preached

by Jeff Wright at

Heart of the Rockies Christian Church

(Disciples of Christ)

Fort Collins, Colorado

February 23, 2014

 In Leviticus, the people of God are called to be holy, not because holiness is an arbitrary religion game that God wants played, but because God is holy. Because God is holy, God’s people are to be holy by being like God in the world. We can, therefore, do away with all the cartoon pictures of the sanctimonious holy person wearing a halo and a prudish glare. To be holy is not to be narrow-minded and primly pious; it is, rather, to imitate God. To be holy is to roll up one’s sleeves and to join in with whatever God is doing in the world.

Walter C. Kaiser, Jr.,

The New Interpreter’s Bible 

Texts: Leviticus 19:1-2, 9-18 & Matthew 5:38-48

We use the word holy a lot in the church, in our hymns, our prayers, our liturgies. The word appears over seven hundred times in the Bible. Asked to define holy, people use words like mysterious, sacred, spiritually pure. The word has more humble roots. It means different, set apart. This set-apartness is what makes God God. God put it like this through the prophet Isaiah (55:8), “My ways are not your ways. My thoughts are not your thoughts,” which among other things means that God is above and beyond us; doesn’t inhabit time like everybody else, because God invented time; no more exists in space than an artist exists on the canvas she paints (Frederick Buechner).

When we use the word holy to describe God, we’re talking about the God who refuses to be domesticated, who continues to show up in the world uninvited in order to do the unexpected, and who, having made everything that is, has the self-given right to say how everything ought to be.

So it’s quite startling that in our reading from the Book of Leviticus, God says, “You be holy too because I, the Lord your God, am holy.” God wants a people as set apart as God, a people who are different in the world. Different, because God is different. This is the heart of the Old Testament message: it takes a set-apart people to serve a set-apart God. God chooses to be revealed to the rest of the world, not in a place, a religious ritual, or a holy book, but through a people who refuse to be conformed to the world, who show up uninvited in order to do the unexpected and who, serving the One who made everything that is, have the responsibility now to show the world how it can be.

Hence, the Holiness Code in the 19th chapter of Leviticus, laying out what this uniqueness looks like when it comes to religion, relationships, business and politics. “Be different,” God says, “because I the Lord your God am different.” Don’t steal, cheat, or lie. Don’t make a promise in my name if you don’t intend to keep it. Be honest in your business and just in your dealings with others. Care for the people at life’s rough edges: children, widows, the disabled, the poor, the slave, the alien among you. Settle your differences fairly, don’t take revenge, and don’t hold a grudge. Love your neighbor as much as you love yourself. Jesus took the Holiness Code further in his Sermon on the Mount, this set-apartness that God expects from his people: from our reading this morning, “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven… Be fully mature,” Jesus says, “as you Father in heaven.”

Now here’s a problem. The Law, the Ten Commandments, the Holiness Code did set the Israelites apart from the people around them. But here’s the problem. It still plagues synagogue and church alike. The people of God began to think that our uniqueness, our set apartness, is bestowed upon us in our having been given the Law, in our rigid adherence to the customs and practices we’ve been given. We began to find our identity in our set-apartness, in God having chosen us – the Law being the sign of our chosenness. But it wasn’t the Law and customs that rescued the Israelites from their slavery in Egypt. It was God. God set the Israelites free, God defeated Pharaoh’s army, God fed the people, led them to water in the desert, God delivered the Israelites into the Promised Land. God forgives and then re-opens the future before us – not the Law. The Law may be helpful in ordering our lives. But the Law can’t give us life.

Still, there’s the temptation to build our relationship with the Law, with the distinctives of our faith, our beliefs and practices, not with the One who made us. I think the Israelites began to relate, not to Yahweh, but to the rules, the rituals and the diet that Yahweh had given them, because it’s easier for us to think we’re twisting the rules, abusing the rituals and cheating on our diet, than to think we’re cheating on God. The Israelites wed themselves to the Law, when it was Yahweh who wanted to be their partner.

So this awesome, holy God – high above and beyond us; refusing to be domesticated – showed up uninvited to do the unexpected. Was humbly born in a stable; spoke in a voice like ours; was accessible; holy still but like us now, showing us what holiness looks like in human being; touching, transforming persons one by one; drawing close, not by way of the Law but by way of love. God sought a personal relationship with the world.

Last week I told you that I’d tell you why, returning from Israel and Palestine, I missed my connection in Newark and arrived home at 11:30 Saturday night instead of at 2 in the afternoon. It was the plastic two-liter Coke bottle filled with olives that I had packed in my carry-on luggage. Every year, the senior supervisor of therapists at the Y in Bethlehem has sent me home with olives her mom has prepared from their olive trees. Mona knows I love their olives because I eat a ton when we’re in their home. I usually pack the olives in my checked baggage, but for some reason I put the bottle in my carry-on. When I went through security in Newark, they spotted the bottle filled with olives and called me aside. The TSA rep told me that because of the liquid, the olive oil in the bottle, I could throw it out or pay to have it mailed to our home. Our connecting flight was just about to depart. Janet said, “Leave ‘em. We don’t have time to ship them.” I didn’t want to part with the olives, so I asked the rep if I could go out and empty the oil out of the bottle. The agent said, “No.” I asked to talk to his supervisor. Janet said, “Leave ‘em. We’re gonna miss our flight.” The supervisor agreed with my plan, said I could go out and empty the olive oil then come back through a shorter line in security. Janet said, “Leave ‘em.” I said, “I’ve got time.” She said, “I’m going on to the gate.” That was the last I saw of Janet in Newark.

So, here I am in line at United Airlines’ Service Counter, trying to find a way home. Remember, hundreds of flights have been cancelled because of the weather and more snow is predicted in a couple of hours. I’m thinking, “Wow, these olives are going to taste delicious.” Janet tells me that, for the first hour of her flight, she had other thoughts. I’m telling you this story, because I want to tell you about conversations I then had with two people, one of whom is comfortable talking about this God who cares for each of us and another who is confused by our talk about having a personal relationship with God.

After waiting in line for over an hour to rebook a flight, I approach Jean Passe at United’s Service Counter. I give Jean my sad story. “It’s these olives,” I say. “I had to go through security twice and missed my flight because of these olives.” I’m sure he’s heard it all, so I pull out my trump card. “I’m a minister, been away for two weeks. I’m supposed to help in worship tomorrow.” “Well then,” Jean says, “we’ve got to get you home, pastor, so you can share the Good News.” It takes Jean twenty-five minutes to find the flights that will take me to Denver. As he searches the computer, he tells me how good the Lord has been to him; how he was raised in Haiti, and raised in the faith, never thought he’d get to the States, but was introduced to a man who made it possible for him to study here. “All that was the Lord,” Jean says, “he’s taken care of me and my family all along.” Jean’s never seen God, heard God’s voice, but deep within there’s this understanding that God has watched out for him, that God has each of us at the center of God’s concern. God, at work in Jean’s family. God, appearing in the man who made it possible for him to study in the States. God at work, now, in Jean and the way he treats tired, impatient customers. He hands me two boarding passes, the second leg a first-class seat from Houston to Denver. As a gesture of thanks, I give Jean the olives.

Okay, after arriving at the Denver airport, I miss the shuttle to Fort Collins. I am standing on Aisle 5 outside door 504 and the shuttle drives right by me. I’m blaming jet lag for my not seeing it. As I wait for Janet to come back from Fort Collins to pick me up – you can imagine she’s pretty happy with me at this point – I sit next to a young woman, mother of a seven-year-old, living with her boyfriend. She’s just gotten off work at one of the restaurants at DIA. She’s waiting for a local bus to take her to her home in Westminster. We talk. When I tell her I’m a minister, she says, “I don’t go to church, didn’t go as a kid. My partner is Catholic. He goes to church.” She says, “He talks about having a personal relationship with God. I don’t understand how that can be. I don’t know what it means, a personal relationship with God.” I ask her if I can send her a book about this. She gives me her name and address.

Our talk about God appearing in flesh and dwelling among us – we call it the incarnation; it’s – confusing to many. Talk about the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Crucified and Resurrected Christ dwelling now within us. This is the meaning of incarnation, too: God alive now within us. This is why the Law doesn’t count any more – not the way it used to. Why we don’t label some foods ‘clean’ and others ‘unclean’ – people, too, clean or unclean. Why we don’t send our women off away from the rest of the community once a month. Why we don’t have to go through sacrificial ceremonies to gain God’s favor.

Let me be clear here. The Law still stands. Jesus said not a dot over an ‘i’ or the cross of a single ‘t’ shall be changed, because God still wants a holy people and the Law still describes what a holy life looks like. But holiness is not a matter of our outward conformity to a written code. Holiness is the inward leaning of the human heart, a brokenness, a hunger for God, a desire from deep within to reflect something of God’s uniqueness. The Law can only describe a holy life. The Law can’t produce a holy life.

When we fall short of the wholeness God wants, when in our brokenness we despair of our ever measuring up to the Law’s demand, the Law is powerless to provide what only God can bestow: gifts of forgiveness, a second chance and hope.

Some of you’ll remember my telling you that when I was a paper carrier, about 12-13 years old delivering the Peoria Journal Star, a couple of buddies and I would meet back at the bakery, to have our breakfast together. Busy pulling bear claws out of the oven and filling the long johns, the baker would let us grab our own milk from the cooler and bag our own pastries from the racks. He trusted us to tell him what we’d taken, how much we owed him and to leave the money on a table. Six chocolate covered cream-filled long johns and a half-pint of milk would come to 48 cents. But I started taking a seventh, telling him I had six, and leaving just 48 cents.

One morning, soon after the habit began, the baker asked, “How many did you say?”

“Six.”

“Let me count ’em.”

My heart sank. You know what the baker did? He made me pay for the seventh. Then he said, “I know your dad. He’s the preacher over there at First Christian. I know he’d be real disappointed in you if I told him what you’ve done. But I’m not going to tell him, because I don’t think you’re going to steal from me again, are you?”

I’ll never forget that baker. He was Yahweh to me, holy, one of the ones whose behavior was set apart and different, just like God hopes for: showing up in my world uninvited in order to do the unexpected, refusing to be deceived. He’d laid down the law there in the bakery – so we’d know. You have to have the Law, so folks’ll know. But when I broke the Law, he didn’t use the Law to break me. He used something else. He reminded me not just of who I am but of whose I am, of the relationships that mattered in my life. That was enough to write the entire Holiness Code on my heart.

The Law can’t do that. Only God can – only God and the people of God who are not conformed to this world but transformed by God’s love. They’re the ones who, like God, go beyond the Law and get inside of us. Then it’s personal.

—Jeff Wright