You Want ME to be Holy? I Don’t Even Know What That Means!

Sermon delivered on the second Sunday before Lent, February 23, 2014, at St. Augustine’s Anglican Church, Columbus, OH.

If you would like to listen to the audio podcast of this sermon, usually somewhat different from the text below, click here.

Lectionary texts: Leviticus 19.1-2, 9-18; Psalm 119.33-40; 1 Corinthians 3.10-23; Matthew 5.38-48.

In the name of God: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Last week we took a hard but realistic look at the human condition, where we saw that all people are confronted with two basic choices: life or death. We saw that because humans have desperately sick hearts, choosing life is impossible because our heart-sickness makes us want to love ourselves more than God or neighbor. But we also saw that because we are Christians and believe that in the death and resurrection of Jesus, God has chosen life over death for us, we are to live as resurrection people who have real hope. As Paul reminds us, we who are in Jesus, that is, we who have a living and real relationship with Jesus, share in a death like his so that we may also share in a resurrection like his (Romans 6.4-5). That is the essence of the gospel. But it begs the question: What are we saved for? In today’s lessons, we are given an answer and that is what I want us to look at briefly this morning.

In our OT lesson, God commands his people Israel to be holy because God himself is holy. But here’s the problem. Nowhere in Scripture is holiness explicitly defined so that we must apparently work out for ourselves (aided by the indirect guidance of Scripture) what that might look like in our lives. Some of us, when we hear God’s call to us to be holy, break out into a cold sweat. We’re not sure we want to be known as holy rollers who make others around us feel uncomfortable. We envision having to walk around with our eyes constantly raised to heaven (which makes things like driving pretty hard to do) and never being allowed to have any fun at all because, well, that is just not what holy people do. And most of us are pretty sure that even if we wanted to be holy, we don’t have the stuff in us to be holy as we saw last week when we discussed our innate heart-sickness.

But as all of our texts indicate in their own way, this is not at all what holiness is about. As God’s called-out people in Jesus, we are to imitate our Creator in the way we conduct our daily lives, especially in how we conduct ourselves in our relationship with others, be it friend or foe. This is what Jesus meant earlier in the Sermon on the Mount when he called his followers to be light and salt to the world. Being light and salt means that we are not to follow the world and act as it does because the world’s systems and values are corrupted by human sin and brokenness, as well as by the evil our sin let into God’s good creation. If we understand this, holiness isn’t so much something we define as much as it is how consistently we live in ways that reflect God’s character and love for all his human creatures, good and evil alike.

So if this is true, that being God’s holy people means we are to reflect God’s character and love out into his world, I want to ask you a question. How many of you, when you harvest your crop, leave some of the harvest for the poor? After all, according to our OT text this is part of being holy to the Lord. My point in asking this question is more than just trying to be facetious. Commands like these remind us that while God is outside human history, God always works within the context of human history so that when we read about behavior that is apparently anachronistic, we must always look to see if there is an underlying principle behind it.

In this case there is. The intent of the command is that we always look out for the poor and needy, which in our day typically manifests itself in our how we spend our time, our money, and/or how we support various agencies charged with caring for the poor, especially the Church. And here we see an example of what it means to be holy. The poor exist in large part because of unjust economic systems that are driven by human greed and exploitation, and the world tends to ignore the poor. But God does not ignore them or their needs as shown in this command, and so we who are his holy people reflect God’s holiness and care for the poor when we care for them on God’s behalf. This is part of what it means to be a wise steward of God’s good creation and what it means to be Jesus’ light to the world. So instead of seeing holiness in some otherworldly person who withdraws from the world, we see it reflected in those who serve at Faith Mission, for example, and who do not judge those who are recipients of our holy work.

And we can apply this to all the other commands found in our OT lesson. We are to be just because God is just (but the unhealed world is not). We are not to defraud or steal from our neighbor as the unhealed world so often does because God does not steal from us or defraud us or put stumbling blocks in our path to trip us up. In following these commands, we not only imitate our holy God, we also do our part to maintain peace and harmony within our community. In the OT times, Israel was the community. In NT times (and later), a reconstituted Israel who followed Christ and comprised Jesus’ body, the Church, was the community in view. We are called as individuals to be holy, but we are called to be holy together as God’s people in Jesus.

This brings us to Jesus’ teaching on the so-called “Holiness Code” at which we have just looked. But before we look at what Jesus has to say, I hope it is blatantly apparent to you that being holy is much, much more than simply following a bunch of arbitrary rules. It is a way of life that is a daily and practical outworking of a changed heart in God’s people. Being holy brings real joy and wholeness, which gets at the root meaning for being perfect as Jesus uses it here. It also helps answer another question the Bible does not answer for us directly: What it means to love our neighbor as ourselves. Since God loves all his creatures and wants the best for them, God calls us to mirror his love for all in how we treat (or don’t treat) others. Put another way, God calls us to love others just like he loves us.

We see this reflected in Jesus’ teachings in this morning’s gospel lesson, part of the Sermon on the Mount. Here, as in our OT lesson, Jesus is not giving us yet another set of rules we have to follow. Instead, Jesus is giving us some examples of what God’s holiness looks like when it is embraced and faithfully lived out by Jesus’ followers and he is encouraging us to use these examples as the basis on which to think through what being holy might look like in our life.

The so-called principle of lex talionis (the law of retribution) was designed to prevent conflict and retaliation from escalating as is all too common when humans fight. Here in these teachings, Jesus is not telling us to be a doormat, a common misunderstanding that many Christians still have. Rather, Jesus is encouraging us to find ways that will diffuse the conflict entirely, not just contain it. So, for example, turning the other cheek instead of slapping back demonstrates that divine power is often manifested in (and mistaken to be) weakness. Think of Jesus on the cross as the ultimate example of God’s power demonstrated. Notice carefully how turning the other cheek deprives the other party of any motivation for continuing the behavior.

And because God loves the good and bad alike, so we too are to reflect that love by forgiving our enemies and praying for them. In doing so, notice how the potential for conflict is utterly diffused. Here again we see our Lord telling us to love others as we love ourselves. After all, who among us does not desire forgiveness instead of retribution and this helps us understand why we have that rather inconvenient clause in the Lord’s Prayer to, “Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.” How can we expect to receive God’s forgiveness, which is part of his holy love, if we refuse to reflect it out to others? I could go on but I hope you have the point. Reflecting God’s holiness is the way we love others as ourselves that transcends our individual personalities and idiosyncrasies.

And this is where it is critical for us to have a real and healthy atonement theology because many of us are prone to dislike and even hate ourselves for who we are or what we have done or continue to do (or not do). And because we are unable to forgive ourselves, it is very hard for us to see how God could possibly forgive us, let alone love us. That is why we must always preach and believe in Christ crucified as Paul did because it is only in the cross that we can truly see God’s suffering love for us along with his unmerited forgiveness. When, in the power of the Spirit, we really and truly accept God’s gift offered to us in Jesus, we are really in a position to love others because we know ourselves to be loved by God. Anything less than the cross is bound to fall short as the carnage of failed human self-help programs sadly attests.

But, you protest, Jesus’ teachings are impossible for us to keep. If this is what it means to be holy, we are hopelessly lost. And besides that, people like you irritate us no end and we don’t want to love and forgive you. This is precisely where we must realize that today’s teachings are not solely about us. They are also about Jesus because Jesus faithfully and obediently lived out his teachings. When he was slapped and reviled, he turned the other cheek. When he was forced to bear the worst of Roman equipment, the crossbeam of the cross that would be used to execute him (which is what the extra mile was all about in Jesus’ day), Jesus bore it to his place of execution and then prayed for his enemies as he hung on the cross. This is why Jesus as well as Paul and the other NT writers urge us to follow Jesus’ example as well as theirs. When we imitate Jesus by taking up our cross and following him in the power of the Spirit (and it is critical for us to remember that we can only do this with the help of the Spirit), it not only changes our behavior but it forms our character. In other words, being holy is a Spirit-led and lifelong process in which our heart-sickness is gradually healed. That’s what it means to be sanctified and imitating our Lord Jesus is the chief way to become holy. It’s admittedly not sexy or spectacular in most cases, but it is the God-given way to attain holiness.

But why would we want to be holy people? The short and simple answer is that we are resurrection people and our ultimate hope is living as citizens in God’s new creation that has already started with Jesus’ resurrection and that will be fully implemented upon Jesus’ return. And like every form of citizenship, we have to learn how to be good citizens. Since we will get to live in God’s direct presence in the new creation, and since we will be required to fully reflect God’s holiness as we assume our rightful place as kings and priests in God’s new creation, we had better learn how to do that right here and now.

Paul alludes to this in our epistle lesson this morning. The specific context he is talking about is building up the Church, but there is a broader application to Paul’s teaching. First, Paul reminds us that the Church organized as God’s people in Jesus is precisely where the Spirit dwells and God’s holiness is seen. Consequently we are all called in various ways to build on the foundation that Jesus established. Why? Because on the Last Day, our work will be tested to see if there is any value to it for the new creation. If our work is good, it will survive the testing (fire) and we will be rewarded. If not, it will be shown as worthless but we will survive, apparently Paul’s way of expressing his view of Christian assurance of our victory over sin, evil, and death won for us in the death and resurrection of Christ. In other words, because God’s future has already burst upon us in Jesus’ resurrection, our work matters both now and in the age to come.

But there are also promises that accompany the warnings. At the very end of our passage Paul makes the astonishing and breathtaking promise that because we are Jesus’ people and because Jesus belongs to God, all things are ours, both in this life and the next, because all things belong to God. Paul has already alluded to the coming new age and here alludes to the promise that those who are in Christ are destined to rule in the new creation as his wise stewards, just the way God originally intended for his human creatures when he created us (cf. Genesis 1.26-27; 1 Corinthians 6.2). But we can’t be wise rulers with sick hearts and that is why imitating Jesus here and now is so important. As we have seen, in doing so, our hearts are healed by the Spirit who dwells in us and we are prepared to live holy lives in the new creation. If we understand this, we will certainly understand the various parables of Jesus with the stories about rewards and punishment (e.g., the parables of the 10 Pounds, Luke 19.11-19). Jesus was not embarrassed to talk about rewards and neither should we be as long as we remember that the promise of new creation is an act of sheer grace on God’s part toward us, that rulers in God’s kingdom are always humble servants in the manner of their Lord, and that there is only One who deserves praise and exaltation—Jesus because he is the very embodiment of God.

So this week, think carefully about these things, about what holiness looks like in the context of your life and as a member of St. Augustine’s, and then get to work (or continue to work). If need be, ask God to help you desire the things God desires and to transform you into a holy person who reflects God’s love and glory in his world by helping you develop holy habits. As you do, remember that living a holy life will necessarily entail suffering because it means to live contrary to the ways and values of the world. But in our suffering we will find our glory, the glory of the One who loves us from all eternity and died for us, and who calls us to be his holy people. That, folks, really is Good News, now and for all eternity. To him be honor, praise, and glory forever and ever.

In the name of God: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

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