Sermon by Sarah Clausen, preached on 10/23/11
Leviticus is one of my favorite books of the Bible. That may seem a little odd to some of you, what with all of the proof texting, and “problem” texts that lie within this book, the middle part of the Torah. The reason that I like Leviticus is simple—it is a book about how to live in community, to live in relationship with God and with one another. The book is divided into 2 parts—the first are guidelines for the priests, the religious leaders of the community. The second part is the Holiness Code—that which guides the life of all of the Israelites, not just the leaders. Our reading today falls into this second section. God tells Moses to tell the people of the congregation, the gathered community, that they are to be holy. Why? Because God is holy. After a section that talks about some of the guidelines that are also found in the Ten Commandments, our reading jumps down to how the people are to live in relationship with their neighbors. God tells them that they are not to defraud their neighbors, they are to treat their neighbors equally, with compassion for those who are different or who have disabilities, to not be partial to those with money or without, they should not hate their neighbors, their brothers and sisters. Instead they are to respond in love to those in their community, love each other as much as they love themselves. And the overarching reason behind this? Because God is holy, and has made God’s people holy. Loving each other means extending the love that God has given to the people, a love that brought them out of the bondage of slavery in Egypt, out of the clutches of an oppressive government.
It is this section of Leviticus that Jesus quotes in his answer to the lawyer, the scholar in religious law, in our reading today from Matthew. This section is the culmination of an intense question and answer period that Jesus and the religious leaders of the temple have engaged in. We’ve seen some of this over the past few weeks in our gospel readings—Jesus has been in the temple, teaching, upsetting the “official” leaders, who then try to make Jesus look bad, hoping to find a way to make him stumble, make a mistake, to defraud him—after all, who is this guy anyway, where did he come from? Today, the Pharisees send in their lawyer who asks Jesus a question, hoping to test him. “Teacher,” he asks, maybe somewhat sarcastically, “which commandment in the law is the greatest?” Jesus, also knowing the law quite well, quotes Deuteronomy and Leviticus in his answer: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind…You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” The “greatest commandment”, to love God, can only be completed by therefore responding to God by loving one’s neighbor. And, as Jesus tells the religious leaders, it is on these two commandments that hang all the law and prophets—that is, everything else that they do, say, and teach, must be in the context of the command to love God and love God’s people.
Jesus gets this—he knows what it is to love God and love God’s people, and has consistently shown the religious leaders this in his teaching and examples during this extended teaching session in the temple. A few weeks ago our reading was the parable of the landowner and the vineyard, and the wicked tenants. The landowner sends his slaves to collect the harvest, but each time the tenants seize them and kill them, including killing the landowner’s own son. The tenants are thrown out—because of their disregard for neighbor and God.
Two weeks ago we heard the story of the king who was throwing a banquet, but the invited guests were too busy to show up. The end result was that those who normally wouldn’t have been invited were welcomed into the feast. It was a reminder that all are welcomed into the life of God’s community. However, the reading we heard two weeks ago was the version of the story from Luke. The parable that makes up the section of Matthew immediately after the vineyard story is a bit more chilling. In this version, the king throws a wedding banquet, and, after the invitation is sent, the invited guests not only scorn the invitation, but some killed the messengers. The king’s response was complete destruction—killing of the invited guests and leveling their city. The king then sends what’s left of his slaves out into the city to round up and gather anyone they could find—good and bad, young and old, those mourning the loss of their homes and ways of life in the wake of the king’s destructive tear—and bring them in to enjoy a banquet feast. But the king is not done destroying yet. He finds a man who was not wearing a wedding robe, not obeying the “rules” of the party, and orders him bound and thrown into prison. In this version, the defiant man is showing his love for God, his compassion for his neighbors forced into celebrating the family that destroyed their town, by standing up for justice and refusing to honor the tyrant king in maybe the only way he knew how—ignoring the wedding dress code.
Last week we continued on in the narrative. Now, Jesus has raised the stakes even further, reminding the Pharisees that loving God and neighbor, standing up for injustice in the face of tyranny and destruction, involves giving of all of oneself to God—that in giving to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s and giving the things that are God’s back to God really means giving all of ourselves back to the one who created us. And as Amy reminded us last week, that is no small task.
Jesus telling the religious leaders that the greatest commandment is to love God with all one’s heart soul, and mind, and out of that love comes love for each other was a reminder that harkens back to Leviticus. Yes, the leaders, the priests, had a code to live by in the instructions found in that book. But they were also part of the larger Israelite community, and they had the responsibility to not only lead the gathered community, but to live in the way that God commanded all of God’s people to live, that their very call came out of this. And this is a reminder to all of us as well—even though we are all not called as paid pastors in churches, we are all part of the “priesthood of all believers”, and are all called to share in the life of the community, teaching, preaching, sharing the gospel with others, living in relationship with each other and God. That includes our witness in organizations outside our church: Sharing ourselves with our guests at Interfaith Hospitality, standing against leaders who have used their power in destructive ways through the Occupy movement or fighting against destructive environmental practices, giving of food offerings and monetary offerings to community organizations. It also includes the ways in which we act and respond to each other within our own church community: sharing meals with homebound members, giving not only our monetary gifts but our gifts of time and experience to the life of the church, it means holding each other in times of joy and in times of grief, it is in the giving of everything we are back to God our creator, and loving God with all of our hearts, souls, and minds in our loving of our neighbor—the person sitting next to us in these seats—as ourselves.
As most of you know, we have been exploring communion this past month, both in adult Sunday School and during our services. The Sunday that I knew that Germantown Mennonite was my church home, that my understanding of faith fit best in an Anabaptist setting, was a communion Sunday, February 3, 2008. I grew up Lutheran, and in a Lutheran setting the ordained pastor must be the one who says the words of institution (you know, the In the night he was betrayed, our Lord Jesus took bread…bit). If the pastor is not able to be there, then a supply pastor is found—or there is no communion. Well, on that Sunday in 2008, Germantown’s pastor was not able to be there. Yet, we as a community still celebrated communion together. It was in that moment that I saw the power of the gathered community—that in this shared meal the most important thing was us, together, the body of Christ, called by Jesus to love God and love each other; that the “rules” about who is supposed to say the right words or do the right actions fell by the wayside because we had been called together to share in the bread and wine of communion.
Jesus’ reminder to the Pharisees was that their actions must always be in the context of the “greatest commandment”. It is a reminder for us as well—that it is in loving God and therefore loving our neighbor we are called into relationship with each other and our communities. That it is a reminder to stand up to tyranny, oppression, and practices that are destructive. That it is a reminder to give of our whole being to God and to each other.