Category Archives: OT Lectionary

Old Testament Lectionary 4th January Christmas 2 Jeremiah 31:7-14

Regular thoughts on the oft-neglected Old Testament Lectionary passages.

On one level this is a very tricky passage indeed for us to cope with. It is essentially a failed prophecy. Spoken to the people of the Northern Kingdom, who were overrun and scattered by Assyria, these words promise restoration at many levels. The scattered will be gathered, the sick and pregnant will be healed and restored, privation will give way to plenty and weeping will become singing and dancing. The hard fact is that this simply did not happen. So what do you do with unfulfilled prophecy?

Christians have answered that question in several different ways. First, you can recycle it. The Northern Kingdom never did see restoration, but it has been suggested that Deutero-Isaiah, who announced restoration to the Southern Kingdom, based his work on these chapters of Jeremiah, known as Jeremiah’s ‘Book of Consolation’ . Our passage ends with ‘comfort’ (v 13) which is where Isaiah 40 begins. God’s purposes may not have worked out perfectly this time, but they remain his purposes, and if the fulfilment delays, wait for it, because it will surely happen. In fact we constantly read prophecy this way, and we understand that a ‘word’ might not just have a single fulfilment. Witness the claiming of Joel 2 in the late 1960s as the charismatic movement burst into life, even though the Bible sees the passage as having been fulfilled on the Day of Pentecost AD33.

Secondly, we can discount it and become cynical about it. Jeremiah was just indulging in a bit of wishful thinking, that’s all. It was, frankly, a bit rash of him to utter as a prophetic world something he would have loved to have seen but clearly had no mandate from God for. Again, don’t those charismatics do that all the time? Or maybe it was a good word, but its time just hadn’t yet come. the blind and the lame people might have heard it as a promise of immediate restoration to their homeland, but that was never what God intended: in fact, as we now know, it was actually all about Jesus.

Or thirdly we might take a more radical approach, and suggest that the ‘word’ really did represent the heart’s wish of God, but the fact is that God doesn’t always get his way, or he doesn’t get it as soon as he and we would like. Pete Grieg’s masterful study of unanswered prayer, God on Mute, suggests, convincingly to my mind, that if God always got his way Jesus wouldn’t have taught us to pray that his will would be done here on earth, just like it is being done in heaven. God looks at our world, and although he longs for justice, peace and restoration, he clearly isn’t getting it just yet. It is the great mystery of all all-powerful and all-loving God who chooses for a while to let things take their course.

So what do we do with prophecies like this? Might it be that they keep us in tune not with what is going to happen in a week or two, but rather with the heart and will of God for his world. Might it be that words like these are there in the middle of the mess and evil of real life (as indeed they are in context here – we looked last week at the passage which follows from this one, about the inconsolable grief for Rachel’s lost children) to remind us that through it all we have a God who weeps with us, and who eventually will have his will done perfectly. What is going on is not God having lost the plot, punishing us, or all the other explanations which Deutero-Isaiah is subverting. It is a temporary, if protracted, state of affairs until God’s kingdom comes in all is fullness.

You’ll have to ask someone a lot wiser than I about why God chooses to delay so long, but in the meantime Jeremiah and many others keep us in touch with what his actually will really is, and that ought to give us some strength towards enduring and steadfastness.

Old Testament Lectionary 28th December Holy Innocents Jeremiah 31:15-17

 

Regular thoughts on the oft-neglected Old Testament Lectionary passages.

One of the things which makes me sad is the fact that we rarely get to celebrate the Feast of the Holy Innocents. It rarely hits a Sunday, and even then it sort of spoils the mood, coming as it does so close on the heels of Christmas. I’ve always wanted to read this Jeremiah passage and then play the congregation a recording of Pink Floyd’s Great Gig in the Sky. I’m aware of course that my sadness in not being able to do this is nothing compared to the sadness of parents watching their children get slaughtered, which of course many parents are still having to do today.

So what are we to make of this vitally important and horribly tragic story? I’m writing this the day after 132 children were slaughtered in Pakistan by Taliban gunmen, which reminds us that this is not just a Bible story. I’m also writing whilst engaging with the results of the Church Growth Research Survey. At a recent conference we heard one of the researchers tell us that the problem wasn’t children leaving church, but children never starting. Within generations numbers are fairly static: it’s just that we’re having less and less impact on new generations, and that we’ll die of old age if we don’t do something to re-engage pretty quickly. Elsewhere I’ve been blogging on the importance of discipling children. All these things coming together have led me to what I believe is an important insight: the Enemy hates children.

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However you conceive of the devil (and personally I have no problems believing in him as a real being), he does seem to take delight in harming children, especially those who are going to be significant later. Both Moses and Jesus narrowly escaped neo-natal slaughter, which is more than can be said for the other infants at the time, whom he presumably regarded as collateral damage if he could wipe out these two key leaders. More recently we’ve been doing his work for him as millions of unborn lives have been ended, sometimes as little more than a form of contraception. And now he can use terrorists with guns.

That, of course, is a bit extreme, but he can do it in subtler ways too. If he can use parents who don’t feel that passing on their beliefs is important, and a combination of multi-faith confusion and New Age wooliness to kill children’s faith, then that’s a job well done. And as the figures for the C of E tell us, he isn’t doing a bad job of it.

I wonder how the more upbeat second half of today’s passage will have come across to cruelly bereaved parents? ‘Keep your voice from weeping’ sounds like jolly advice from someone who could do with some basic counselling lessons. ‘There is a reward, and you will get them back’ may sound like hollow words. But when God utters them, it’s different, and we have to listen. Like all of us I find these stories, both biblical and contemporary, shockingly appalling. But I have no option but to believe that ‘there is hope for your future’. This passage is in a typical biblical ‘lament’ form – taking the bad news seriously without glossing over the real pain and anguish, but moving towards hope. The Enemy has always had evil people (and sometimes just misguided people) to do his filthy work for him, but he will not have the last word, however real the grief he can cause now. We simply have to hold on to Jesus’ words ‘Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted’. As a church we are there to sit in the ashes with grief-stricken people, but not to leave them there with no hope.

Old Testament Lectionary December 21st Advent 4 2 Samuel 11:1-16

Regular thoughts on the oft-neglected Old Testament Lectionary passages.

Our passage today is about two houses: the physical house of the Jerusalem Temple, and the dynastic house of David the King. The first is easily dealt with. The fact is that Solomon built it, but you can’t help but get the impression that it is a bit of an embarrassment to the writers that it wasn’t David himself, who in so many ways epitomises the golden age of Israel. So to have David getting the idea to do it but then being told by the prophet that in fact God wants Solomon to carry out the work is a win-win situation.

But more difficult is the royal and dynastic house which God promises to build on David’s line. This passage is full of promises, promises built on recollections of the past. God called and used David, he has been faithfully present throughout his ministry, and he has led the nation down the years. Whilst it obviously wasn’t his will to build a physical house at this point, he did intend to continue David’s royal line for ever: the text is full of promises to that effect. Note that the promises are completely unconditional: elsewhere God’s promises are dependent on the continued faithfulness of the people, and their avoidance of idolatry, but not here. There is one small clause, conveniently filleted out by our lectionary compliers, in v 14, which says that if one of David’s descendants does go off the rails God will punish him at the hands of human oppressors, but that will not invalidate the promises or remove his love and favour from him.

So of course the huge question is simply put: why did God not keep his promises? Why is the ongoing story in 1 and 2 Kings a story of rebellion, depravity, and final abandonment by God to the Babylonian exile? Why are the extravagant and unconditional promises in this chapter not followed up in real life?

It is true to say that God’s favour does to some extent form a buffer between the nation and punishment. Without this favoured relationship one gets the impression that they would have been in exile much sooner, but God is patient and faithful, and withholds punishment as long as he can. But the fact remains that the promises of this chapter don’t seem to be fulfilled as the history of Israel unfolds.

Maybe that’s why this text is set just before Christmas, when the church focusses on the calling of Mary to bear the Christ to a waiting world. Great David’s greater king is soon to appear, and in him the royal line continues, and will continue for ever, although like his ancestor David it will take a while before he is recognised and acknowledged as king, and he will have to face opposition and violence before he is crowned through his victory on the cross.

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The take home from this, I think, is that sometimes the stream of God’s promises flows underground. We can lose sight of it, and it appears to have drizzled away into the soil and come to nothing. But then when we least expect it, it can spring up again as the flow continues. Like that famous but somewhat twee footprints poem, there are sometimes only one set of prints in the sand. The challenge is to keep believing that the river of God’s purposes and promises continues to flow when we can’t actually see it for ourselves.

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In the words of Tim Vine:

“My precious child, I love you and will never leave you, never, ever, during your trials and testings. When you saw only one set of footprints, it was then that I thought it would be fun if we both hopped.”

Old Testament Lectionary December 14th Advent 3 Isaiah 61:1-11

I don’t know about you, but I’m a bit confused about Advent themes. In the good old days it was all about death, judgement, heaven and hell, but there’s also that stuff about prophets, patriarchs and the rest. The ASB helpfully gave us weekly themes, and Bible Sunday used to be around here somewhere too, but then in reaction to the ASB themes Common Worship is a bit shy and prefers us to see what we hear as we meditate on the readings, rather than telling us what we’ve got to find in them. Confused …? However, from the gospel for today we’re apparently supposed to be thinking about John the Baptist, so what does Isaiah have to say about that?

 

The first thing which strikes one is the similarity of this passage to the ‘Servant Songs’ from the middle chapters of the book. The Spirit of God had anointed someone or other (discuss!) to bring redemption to Israel through sacrificial suffering. Indeed the nation had suffered in exile, but now they are back in their homeland and have the task of rebuilding not just the physical city but also the national life. So now a new ‘servant’ is being called and anointed, like the previous one unidentified, but probably in this case the prophet himself. His message is one of hope, new life, restoration and redemption, and he speaks to a people whom one might imagine literally standing in the ruins of the city, among the broken and scattered stones of the once great buildings, hearing his good news of a new start. It’s not difficult to see how the ministry of John was foreshadowed in this passage.

 

But what is interesting is the hints we get here about the foundations of this renewed community. In v 8 we get a glimpse of God’s values, the things which are important to him: he loves justice, and he hates robbery and wrongdoing. And then again in v 11 God promises to make righteousness and praise spring up. This, I think, helps us to deal with the question prompted by all the lovely stuff in this chapter ‘Well where is it then?’ The ongoing history of Israel after the return from exile was anything but as rosy as this text paints it. We’re still waiting today for the glorious future of Israel as they fight within their own land and as a mosque occupies pride of place in Jerusalem.

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Righteousness and praise, robbery and wrongdoing. We know clearly what God likes and doesn’t like, but, as with the people in the time of John the Baptist, we have a choice as to how we live. Choose the right things and we choose life, hope and a future. Choose the other way, and there is no certainly of God’s best will becoming reality. God never forces his blessings on us, and the story of the Bible as a whole is the story of God’s plans for blessing and prosperity being thwarted again and again by twisted human rebellion. There is hope, there is a future, but as a human race we need to hear again, more urgently than ever, John’s cry to repent.

OT Lectionary December 7th Advent 2 Isaiah 40:1-11

Regular thoughts on the oft-neglected Old Testament Lectionary passages.

Usually it’s good to hear a passage read before listening to a sermon about it, but I have found that there is great impact from this particular text if you do it the other way round. It marks the transition from Isaiah of Jerusalem to so-called ‘Deutero-Isaiah’, who was writing around the end of the exile in Babylon. So why not just take a moment to think yourself into the world of his original hearers?

You’ve been snatched from your homeland and marched across the desert to a strange, foreign land with a weird language, an unknown culture, all kinds of alien gods. You are suffering from what sociologists nowadays would call ‘cultural dislocation’, with all its attendant anxiety. Some of you are working like slaves at hard physical toil, under taskmasters who can be extremely cruel.

But at a level deeper than the mere physical and mental pain there are a set of theological questions to be answered. What are we to make of God in this current situation? Prophets (like Isaiah) have been warning you that unless you turned back to God you’d be in trouble, but, hey, those prophets can get a bit grumpy: they need to lighten up a bit and enjoy life. Maybe they were right all along, and God has washed his hands of us. We know that God has been patient with us for years, but now maybe we’ve blown it once and for all. He’s used up all his mercy and now we’re on our own.

Or maybe there’s a different problem. Lots of the nations around us treat their gods as though they were in the Anglican parish system. Depending on where you live you have a different god looking after you. So while we were back home in Jerusalem Yahweh was our God, but now we’re in Babylon, have we moved out of his patch? Should we be praying to Bel, Nebo or one of the others to save us? We know our God is a mighty God, but maybe his power doesn’t extend this far.

Or is it about punishment? OK, we can now grudgingly admit that we might just have been a little bit naughty as a nation, and we know that God hasn’t always been pleased with us. But is this it now? Is he going to punish us for ever, with no hope of forgiveness or restoration?

You can just hear the agonised theological questioning, can’t you? And then, without warning, a new voice is heard in the land: a new prophet. We know nothing about him except what we can discern from his writings. But the message he brought, in fact the first sentence of the message he brought, swept away all their anxious questioning in one go.

‘Comfort, comfort my people, says your God’

Doesn’t sound all that, does it, until you put in some italics:

‘Comfort, comfort my people, says your God‘

When you look back through the OT there is a formula which is used again and again of the covenant relationship between God and Israel – ‘You will be my people and I will be your God.’ Isaiah deliberately uses this phraseology in his very first sentence, and the meaning is abundantly clear: the deal is still on! Whatever you’ve done, God’s mercy is still there for you. Imagine the relief!

But there is one more beautiful twist to this tale, and it hangs on the Hebrew word translated ‘double’ in v 2. The word Kiphlaim does mean ‘double’, but not in the sense of twice as much. If you have a ‘double’ it means that someone somewhere looks exactly like you do, a complete match. So the prophet is  saying that the punishment you have received for your sins is the exact equivalent. It’s done, it’s over, appropriate sentence has been served, and there is no more debt to pay. You’re free! You’re going home!

The next 15 chapters merely unpack there themes further, but the real good news comes all in the first two verses.

OT Lectionary 30th November Advent Sunday Isaiah 64:1-9

Regular thoughts on the oft-neglected Old Testament Lectionary passages

In the past one of my fave worship-songs was Graham Kendrick’s Restore, O Lord. It was a call for God to get up and do something, so that people would recognise his power and sovereignty as he shook the earth again, and come to him in reverent fear. This passage his a similar feel to it, although when we look more deeply there are several inconsistencies which draw our attention. So as always, let’s look at the wider context.

Isaiah 63:7 to 64:12 is a psalm of corporate lament. People are beginning to return from Babylon to Jerusalem, but the with exhilaration of freedom comes a sense of a daunting task of rebuilding, and the fact that actually we are never going to be able simply to turn back time. Sadder and wiser, the people are aware that the experience of exile has scarred them and dented their relationship with God. This psalm celebrates the glorious past when God did intervene in their lives, calls upon him to do it again, but also blames him for his absence.

So our passage begins with a cry for God to manifest his power so that his enemies will see and be very afraid. But the enemies quickly become ‘us’ – indeed ‘all of us’ is a repeated refrain which loses the prominence in English which it has in the Hebrew. Whilst there is an acknowledgement that the nation has sinned, there is an apparent excuse for this: God has hidden himself from them and left them to it (v 7). Like an adulterous husband who blames his wife’s lack of attention for his own playing away from home, Israel claims that it is God’s ignoring of them which has left them no option but to sin. No-one bothers to call on God because he has deliberately turned away from them, so what’s the point?

And yet this blaming of God is bracketed between two examples of the people doing exactly what they claim no-one does: calling on him. In v 1-2 there is a desperate cry for his attention, and in v 9 there is a call for him to put aside his anger and ‘look upon’ his people. What are we to make of all this?

It’s worth noting first that lament is not always logical. When we’re upset and pour out our hearts to God, we don’t always do it with faultless logic or sound theology. God, and the Bible, seem big enough to understand and take it. But it is also interesting to ask some questions about who exactly are the players in this little drama. Just who are ‘we’? I wonder whether a prophetic picture from my past might be apposite.

I had recently been appointed by a bishop to turn around a church which he perceived as being in need of the gospel and the Spirit. Fairly early in, and experiencing some stiff resistance, I found myself pondering the famous Laodicea passage in Revelation 3. In my head I heard God asking me ‘How many people does it need to get up from the table and open the door when Jesus knocks?’ The obvious answer is ‘Just the one’. If the doorbell rings during a dinner party, it is not normal for the entire company to get up to go and answer it. In the same way I felt that for Jesus to have greater access to the life of the church, it didn’t really matter that not everyone was keen on the idea. As long as there was someone to welcome him in, that would do. That little conversation became formative for our prayers over the next few years, and we did indeed see significant renewal and a far more central place for Jesus.

I wonder if there is something similar in play here? Maybe the ‘we’ crying out so desperately in verses 1-2 and 9 is a just a subset of the ‘we’ who have sinned so grievously. It is, of course, biblical bad form to pray about ‘them’ from the lofty moral high ground: great intercessors always identify with the sinful community even if they personally haven’t been involved[1]. When I pray for the church which I belong to, love deeply, but hate for its weakness, sin and compromise; when I cry to God for his earth-shaking presence to be felt once again, I need to remember that ‘I’ am included in the ‘we’.

[1] See for example Ezra’s prayer in Ezra 9 about how ‘we’ have intermarried. In the next chapter there is a list of the guilty parties, a list from which Ezra’s name is gloriously absent.

OT Lectionary Nov 23rd Christ the King Ezekiel 34:11-24

Regular thoughts on the oft-neglected Old Testament Lectionary passages

(First of all apologies to my faithful readers for the missing edition last week – I’ve been in bed with flu for seven days. That might also excuse this week’s ramblings)

If ever there was a passage which needed its context this is one. You only really get the ‘myself’ of v 11 and 15 if you read v 1-10, where the prophet is having a go at the ‘rulers’ of Israel for their self-centred ‘fat cat’ lifestyles. In a series of attacks on the ‘shepherds’ of Israel, God, through the prophet, condemns their selfish and indulgent lifestyle, their failure to care for the weakest in society, their brutality, their lack of concern that the people had become scattered across the land. The picture of ‘shepherd’ is not primarily about pastoral care: it is often used to describe kingship. The role of the king is to rule over people well so that they and the nation as a whole thrive. Get that wrong, and both the people and the corporate life of the nation suffer. So, says God, because you have got it so horribly wrong, and because I simply cannot find anyone who is up to doing the job properly, there is only one possible alternative: I myself will do it.

So to v 11: God himself will search for his lost sheep, rescue them, gather them once again in Israel, because they have been so badly led down by their human leaders. There is clearly a reference here to the restoration of the nation after the Babylonian exile.

But the text moves on: after the completely unnecessary piece of filleting of v 17-19 the prophet turns from the rulers to the people themselves. By all accounts they have not behaved any better. There are still fat and lean in society, and an unholy scrabbling for position, things which again God himself will have to sort out.

But this raises an important question, to which we already know the answer. What is the relationship between corrupt rulers and ungodly people? Obviously that bad leadership trickles down and affects the general behaviour of the public. You simply can’t have corrupt politicians running a godly nation. Whatever people see in their leaders they will imitate. Our own times have seen a massive loss of respect for political leaders who are seen to be sleazy, dishonest, often corrupt, possibly child-abusers, and ultimately self-serving. Other institutions such as the monarchy, police, the judiciary, banks and of course the Church are treated with the utmost suspicion. The rich elite get richer as the poorest get poorer still. The cry goes out ‘Whom can we trust?’

Into a world like that the prophet’s words ring out. What we need is a shepherd, a king, in whom we can put our trust, one who is for us not against us; one who will care for us rather than harm us. The festival of Christ the King reminds us not just of the possibility but actually the certainty of such a reign, and our daily newspapers remind us how desperately we need it. That’s why from Advent Sunday next week we’ll be praying all the more fervently ‘Come, Lord Jesus!’

OT Lectionary Nov 9th 3 before Advent/Remembrance Sunday Amos 5:18-24

At first sight it isn’t easy to see what this passage has to do with the ‘Remembrance’ theme which will be uppermost in everyone’s minds this week. Personally I prefer chapter 4, which I have preached on several times on Remembrance Day: ‘”I killed your young men with the sword … yet you have not returned to me”, says the Lord.’

 What we have today is something of a purple passage for the bashing of charismatics by those who think that social justice is the most important thing for Christians to be doing, and indeed that is what Amos appears to be saying, although of course in the broader sweep of the book he isn’t saying don’t worship, but rather when you worship make sure it is with integrity, holiness and concern for others.

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 So how are we to read this passage in the context of Remembrance, with all its associated and contradictory themes of courage, thankfulness, pacifism, if you’ve died in battle you get to go straight to heaven, and so on? What can we learn about the nature of God?

 The background, of course, is the Israelite belief in ‘the Day of the Lord’, that coming time when God would step in and intervene, defeat once and for all those nations who had been so nasty to the Jews, and put Israel back in their place as Top Nation. Yes, says Amos, the Day of the Lord is coming, but you lot are in for a nasty shock. If God is coming to punish and overthrow evildoers, you are at the top of his list. You’re longing for that day to come, but it will be you, not the nations around you, who will be in for a bit of divine smiting. Light won’t dawn for the nation: it’ll be pitch darkness instead. As such this oracle is a warning against presumption and comfortable neglect of God’s standards. Let those who think they stand beware lest they fall.

 

But the second part of the passage is more difficult. We know that God loves justice and righteousness more than mere music without integrity – that’s a given. So what are justice and righteousness? And in particular, what are justice and righteousness in the context of Islamic State, the Taliban, radicalisation and terrorism? Is the right thing to do to avoid violence and warfare at any cost? Or are there times when injustice and bloodshed demand a righteous response of military action? The pacifist point of view would argue that violence is never justified under any circumstances, but others would disagree. I can remember a Baptist minister who was influential in my teenage years, and who had been a forces chaplain in North Africa, on the beaches of Normandy and ultimately in Belsen, preaching on this subject. ‘When you saw what Hitler was doing’, he told us, ‘I knew that he just had to be stopped.’ So what is the just and righteous response today in 2014? I’ll let you answer that for yourself, but what we can say is that to bury our heads in heavenly worship without agonising over that question is not an option.

OT Lectionary November 2nd 4 before Advent (Kingdom 1) Micah 3:5-12

I find myself on a steep learning curve at the moment. I am an unashamed townie, but I am working at the moment with several different groups of deeply rural Lincolnshire parishes. I am discovering just how profoundly I don’t understand rural life, and how tempting it is to try to plant urban ways of thinking into the rural fields of the diocese. I’m also discovering how deeply ‘Norman Tebbit’ I am: ‘Don’t moan because you can’t get broadband – just move to somewhere proper where you can get it!’ I am aware that this attitude will only alienate me, and so I try to keep it quiet (apart, of course, from blogging about it), but I am aware of the need for me to learn and grow in my understanding, and for the church to discover a genuinely rootedly rural spirituality, but one which is also thoroughly biblical.

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But at the same time it may be that my distance can help me to see some things more clearly. So when people from country parishes tell me that their greatest calling is to ‘be there’ for people in case they might need them in hard times, I wonder what happened to challenge or a call to repentance. Christ and the apostles called people to repent, even ‘commanded’ them to do so. I see this deeply absent from rural Christianity, and, the more I think about it, from much urban Christianity too. Have we all become far too nice?

 

When I first began to learn about pastoral counselling, we were told about the need both to comfort and to confront. Either one without the other is counterproductive in different ways, but both together can be very effective. In the time of Micah in the 8th century BC, we appear to have ‘prophets’ who would only say nice things, but Micah himself, who is gloriously free from such a tendency, has the task of declaring Israel’s transgression and sin. Their failure to care for the poor, their perpetuation of class systems and injustice, their corruption, bribery and bloodshed are deeply abhorrent to God, and all this is made so much worse because of their presumption and complacency. ‘No disaster will come upon us!’, they believe, and it is the prophet’s job to burst their bubble and warn them of the danger of their presumption.

 

Many in today’s church have bought into a package in which the belief that God loves us unconditionally, that Jesus was there to serve the needs of everyone, and that hell and judgement are outdated ideas, are all wrapped up together in a warm fuzzy gift-wrapped spirituality of inoffensiveness. Isn’t it ironic, therefore, that Micah is the one filled with the Spirit, power and justice. The implication, which we see so often in the pages of the Bible, is that to be Spirit-filled is not a nice option, and is likely to lead us to speak unpopular truth rather than beautiful lies. As we enter the ‘Kingdom’ season and approach Advent, with its themes of penitence and preparation, we need to watch this tendency to become infected with the spirit of the age and its highest value ‘tolerance’, a deeply sub-Christian sentiment. And we need to remember that ‘Gentle Jesus’, the Servant King, is also the one who proclaims woes against those who live in tolerant presumption.

OT Lectionary October 26th Last Sunday after Trinity Leviticus 19:1-2, 15-18

Those of you who, like me, are more interested in the bits filleted out of our readings by the lectionary creators than in the bits they have left in will be filled with joy this week. Leviticus is in many ways a fascinating book, but it does create some interesting difficulties, so those responsible for the RCL have decided to play it safe. The first two verses tell us what the rest of the chapter (indeed most of the rest of the book) is all about, and then as an example they pick a few motherhood-and-apple-pie examples. We’re to be holy, because that’s what God is like and we’re called to reflect his character. So what does that mean? Basically be nice to people: that’s the thrust of v 15-18, and who could argue about any of that? File:Two orthodox Jews (Jerusalem, Israël 2013) (8683269416).jpg

But what about the bits in between? I think we can go much more deeply into what it means to reflect God’s holiness if we take the trouble to tackle the more awkward bits of the chapter, indeed of the book. Here we find material about respect for parents, idolatry, sacrifices, horticulture, swearing, mixed economies in clothing, horticulture, who you mustn’t sleep with, kosher food, occultism, hairstyling, dishonesty and selling your daughter into prostitution. Read on a bit further and you get the really good bits about sleeping with another man as one would a woman, bestiality and child sacrifice. Put that together with all the stuff we’ve already had about not eating prawns or herons and you get a pretty bewildering array of definitions of holiness, which would leave most of us somewhere near the third division in the holiness league tables.

I wonder whether we might cut through the problem by stating a key principle: holiness very often means that we live differently from the prevailing culture, choosing to reflect God’s will and resisting the pressure to conform with those among whom we live. I can only assume that the things they were not supposed to do to be holy like God were things which at least some people around were doing. God’s call is a reminder that we dance to a different drum if we’re God’s people. Once we get that, we can begin to make sense of this bewildering variety of laws and prohibitions.

Some things are forbidden because they’re not good for us: we now know that many of the dietary laws do make some kind of sense in a more primitive society where pigs carried tapeworm, seafood carried goodness knows what, and people didn’t have the medicines to protect them.

Some things are forbidden because they’re not good for others. Selling your daughter into prostitution would be a good example, as would the prohibitions against fraud and dishonesty and the commands to respect others.

Some things are forbidden because they’re not good for society. The more 21st century life in Britain goes down the pan, the more evidence there is to suggest that stable marriage and family life are the solid foundations of a healthy society. Anthropologists know that no civilisation in history has survived very long once family life has broken down, yet we seem hell-bent on self-destruction in the West.

And some things are forbidden not because they’re harmful in themselves, but because they provide symbolic reminders and visual aids about our call to be different. Polycotton shirts might not be the world’s greatest sin, but for the Israelites to keep their clothing made of only one kind of material was a visual aid they literally carried with them all the time, as were the distinctive hairstyles.

The other side of the cross we know we’re free from the petty regulations of the Jewish law, but the principles behind it remain. How are we to live in ways which are healthy for us, which bless others, which strengthen society, and which constantly remind us of our call to holiness? That is something we have to work out for ourselves on a daily basis.