Contemporary Holiness

Leviticus 19:1-2

          Some of you may have looked at the sermon title today, discovered the word ‘holiness’ in it, and you have already checked out.  You’re wondering why this can’t be one of those Sundays when we put fifteen inserts in the bulletin so you’ll at least have something to read for the next few minutes.  And thank God for add-ons today like “Faith Words” and honoring our graduates because that’s sure to make a sermon on holiness shorter.  If it weren’t so embarrassing to just get up and leave, some of us might be gone.

          Sermons on holiness – God’s and our own – are way too abstract for us.  We have neither the patience nor the focus to endure.  Tell someone who’s new to the church that the sermon is, first of all on Leviticus, and secondly on holiness, and they’ll be gone faster than mini-doughnuts at the State Fair.  “Give us a short parable and a catchy little story and we’re with you preacher!  Preach on holiness and we’ll see you next week.”

          What does holiness mean?  Why should we care?  Is this just another of those antiquated church words that we throw around but can’t really put our finger on?

          Keith Russell, the editor of The Living Pulpit, says, “Holiness is an interesting term because it evokes both positive and negative reactions.  For some people, it appears that ‘holiness’ is something from which they are trying to recover.  Holiness ...tends to be about behavior and following the rules.  You know, those people who are ‘holier than thou.’”[1]  You and I both probably know people who have spent a lifetime trying to recover from legalistic piety.  Too many have heard church people say, “Don’t cross the line or God won’t love you as much,” and we’ve merged that theological distortion into a concept of holiness.  That’s the negative side and, quite frankly, people who would say such things are being spiritually abusive.

          The positive side of holiness wants to describe a God who is indescribable.  Words like wonder, mystery, awesome, and majesty become adjectives for talking about the Divine.  We just wish we could come up with a new word that would once and for all completely encompass how we’d like to describe God.  Yet, it’s impossible to contain the richness of holiness in a single definition.[2]  So should we give up and maybe just skip over texts like Leviticus 19? 

          The Bible obviously thinks that holiness is important.  If you do a word search on “holy,” you’ll find 779 occurrences of the word and that’s not including the different word variations.[3]  Our text says, “You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy.”  Similar calls to holiness are repeated in 1st Thessalonians 4:7, “For God did not call us to impurity but in holiness.”  1st Peter 1:16 says, “Instead, as he who called you is holy, be holy yourselves in all your conduct.”  And we should remember that each of these commands came to ordinary people like you and me.  This is not language from the halls of academia.  These words were for the schoolteacher, farmer, carpenter, and administrative assistant of the biblical world.  So as much as we might like to skip over wrestling with holiness, this is a message for us.

          The Hebrew root for holy is the word qadosh.  It means to be consecrated, set apart, and different from all others.[4]  So to be holy is to be special in a way that very few are special.  The Greek term for holy is hagios.  One of our early church fathers, Caesarius of Arles, preached to his congregation that holiness means “not of this earth.”[5]  That’s probably a good way to think about it because those who experience the holiness of God are drawn in, yet terrified in its presence.  Not many things on this earth both draw us in and terrify us at the same time.  Yet, this is how our holy God is described and this is the call for those who claim to be God’s faithful followers.  We are to be holy.

          Stories often help to clear the fog of abstract concepts and in the C.S. Lewis children’s story, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, we get an image of holiness.  In the story, the earth is completely flat.  On the eastern edge of the flat earth, there was this place of great curiosity.  This eastern edge held a marvelous fascination for all who traveled there.  A ship, named the Dawn Treader, traveled toward this edge with an assortment of children, adults, and talking animals.  They were going to this eastern edge because it was the place to go. The nearer the Dawn Treader got to the eastern edge of the world, the sweeter the seawater became.  It was almost intoxicating.  Soon the travelers were drinking this sweet seawater, which made their eyes strong enough to stare directly at the sun.  What an amazing, new, and intense experience this was!  They were captured and terrified at the same time.

          I think this imagery helps us to imagine the holiness of God.  The more we journey along the pathway of holiness, the more we want to drink deeply of this life and of God. Our eyes grow stronger, our vision clearer of who God is, and greater our appetite for the things of God.[6] 

          But the more we see of God, the more we become aware of our own unholiness and are repulsed by our sin.[7]  Does this describe your own desire for holiness?  Is it both a repulsion and magnet at the same time?  Have you tasted the sweetness of God’s holiness and now lured to more?  Yet, are you repulsed by your own unholiness?  Most of us tend to look at those who we think have made it – those we consider to be holy like a Mother Teresa or some lesser known saint – and we get discouraged.  We only see how far we are from someone like that.

          But we should be encouraged!  Every time we meet someone we consider to be holy we should think, “Well, if they made it, then it’s possible for me too!”[8]  And that’s true.  Holiness is possible for all who seriously pursue their relationship with God. 

          So what does holiness look like for you and me?  I could talk for hours about this but there is one essential ingredient – loving God and loving others. 

          The nation of Israel experienced the holiness of God in their chosenness.  God chose them out of love.  And for us to be holy, we have to adopt an approach where we love God and love one another with total abandon.[9]  That means neighbor, friend, and enemy alike.  To be holy is to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly before all.  It’s to forgive as we’ve been forgiven not seven times but seventy times seven.  Essentially we are to live in a way where the world around us gets a glimpse of God.[10]

          In the 14th century, there was an Italian woman, Catherine of Siena,[11] who tirelessly worked for justice and love in the midst of corruption.  Politics were horribly violent.  Clergy didn’t serve the people but their own interests.  But she did not give up.  She continually encouraged all to walk on two feet of love. 

          Two feet of love – what does this mean?  Think about how you walk when one of your legs doesn’t work so well.  When you limp, you shift your body weight to the stronger leg and your balance is thrown off.  To walk on one foot, is to be off balance.[12]  We are called to walk with balance.  It’s how we function best.  Holiness is the center of our gravity.  It’s what keeps us from falling off the edge.  And people get a glimpse of God when they see us loving with total abandon.

          Amen.

 


[1] Keith A. Russell, “How does holiness relate to the use of money?” The Living Pulpit, July-September 2001, volume 10, number 3, p. 1.

[2] Walter J. Burghardt speaks of the frustration of describing holiness in the opening paragraph of his article, “To Be Holy is To Be Just,” The Living Pulpit, July-September 2001, volume 10, number 3, p. 4.

[3] This search was done by Bibleworks 7.0 and in the NRSV translation to come up with the 779 occurrences of the word.

[4] BibleWorks 7.0.

[5] Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture, ed. Thomas C. Oden, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy (Downers Grove, ILL: InterVarsity Press, 2001), p. 178.

[6] John White, The Pathway of Holiness (Downers Grove, ILL: InterVarsity Press, 1996), pp. 13-14.

[7] In Richard F. Lovelace’s, Dynamics of Spiritual Life (Downers Grove, ILL: InterVarsity Press, 1979), chapter 3, pp. 81-94, he talks about awareness of our sin and God’s holiness as one of the preconditions for renewal in the life of a congregation and individual.

[8] Robert Ellsberg picks up on this idea of meeting holy people and being encouraged in his article, “Holiness: Pass It On,” The Living Pulpit, July-September 2001, volume 10, number 3, p. 12.

[9] Felicia Y. Thomas talks about this in her article, “Wholly Holy: Holiness and Preaching,” The Living Pulpit, July-September 2001, volume 10, number 3, p. 38.

[10] Bruce Modahl, “Christ Haunted Landscape,” The Christian Century, October 13, 1999, p. 963.

[11] Her years were 1347-1380.

[12] Susan Rakoczy talks about Catherine of Siena in her article, “Walking on the Two Feet of Love: A Call To Holiness,” The Living Pulpit, July-September 2001, volume 10, number 3, p. 26.