The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.
The book of Leviticus is a rather large book. For the most part, it can be divided into two halves, and the Day of Atonement is the centerpiece, sort of right in the middle of the book of Leviticus. The first half of Leviticus shows how the Lord God gave his holiness to his children by way of the sacrifices in the tabernacle and the temple, and the institution of the priesthood to oversee — excuse me — worship and the atoning sacrifices in the temple, all of which were a foreshadow of the Lamb of God who would die and take away the sins of the world, Jesus Christ. So the first half of the book is about how the people of Israel became holy in God’s sight, acceptable to him as his children. The second half of the book of Leviticus describes what the life of a holy people looks like: what the Old Testament children are to be to one another and to all of their neighbors. And in that section we get a clue about what it means to be Christians in daily life.
Through the Old Testament covenant, the children of Israel were made holy, but they weren’t made holy to go about doing whatever they darn well please. They were made holy for a purpose. So chapters 1 through 16 teaches that God provided everything that the children of Israel needed to be holy in his sight. Chapters 17 through 26 are about how they were to live in relation to God, to one another, and to the strangers, sojourners that they would encounter throughout the life. The assigned text for Fifth Sunday in Pentecost is from the second half of the book, or the holy life section of the portion of Leviticus. And when reading the second half of Leviticus, one always needs to keep in mind that the instructions and the commands we find there in the second half have absolutely nothing to do with whether a person is righteous in God’s sight. That is, they aren’t made righteous by their own efforts, by keeping the commands. And this is where a lot of Christian denominations and Christian individuals get askew. They run afoul of the biblical text, because they read these commands and they assume that those commands are the way in which we present ourselves as holy before God, that by keeping those commands we earn our adopted status, or we merit the grace and favor of God. They don’t distinguish the life of a Christian from the moment of conversion, of being made holy by God. People don’t become children of God by doing things — namely, the things commanded in chapter 17-26. The people to whom Moses is preaching have already been delivered in the exodus. They’ve already been chosen because they are descendants of Abraham and the promise God gave to Abraham and his descendants. He’s preaching to people who have already been called, gathered, enlightened, and sanctified — that is, made holy — by God’s Word and by God’s deeds.
Think of it this way: a child who was adopted into a family, once adopted, is a full member, an heir of that family. The child belongs to the family, and the family belongs to the child. After the adoption, though, the child grows and learns what it means to be a member of the family. As I’ve said over and over again, what my job was supposed to do as a father was to teach Stauffer children what Stauffers believe, what Stauffers do, generally speaking, how Stauffers are to think. And as part of that package — central to that package — it’s all about the Christian faith. After the adopted child grows and learns what it means to be a member of the family, they’re expected to behave, to think, and to do as the family does. The child does not think and act and do. If he doesn’t — if he or she forfeits the right to be an heir in the family — they can reject the right by rejecting all that, for example, Stauffers believe and do, and say, “I don’t want that heritage.” But the child, upon adoption, is a member of the family. It’s a matter of losing it now. That’s the issue, not becoming it.
So also with us, sons and daughters of the heavenly Father. We’ve been adopted into the family, the family of saints, the heavenly family. Romans 8:15: “The Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship, and by him we cry, ‘Abba, Father.'” Now, as children of this holy family, we are to learn what it means to be a holy one of God, and we are to act accordingly. Though we know we do it imperfectly. In fact, we seriously violate it time and time again.
Leviticus 19 records an address, a speech, a sermon, from God’s mouth through Moses to the adopted children, in which he’s teaching them what it means to be an Israel, a child of the Lord God, Yahweh Elohim, in contrast to the gods and pagans of the world. So we begin: “The Lord spoke to Moses, saying, ‘Speak to all the congregation of the sons of Israel and say to them: You shall be holy, for I, the Lord your God, am holy.'”
The speech consists of various sections — statements, really, for us, the way in which the Bible has been organized. Each section consists of two verses, and you know the section is moving to a new section because each section ends with one or two phrases: “I am the Lord your God” or “I am the Lord.” That marks the new paragraph, the beginning of another command from God. Now, the speech itself is too long to fit in a nicely condensed — yeah, that’s what this is — nicely condensed sermon on Sunday morning. So we’re going to focus only on the verses that are prequel to the gospel lesson this morning, Luke 10:25-37, that is, the parable of the Good Samaritan, in the conversation between Jesus and the lawyer about who is his — slash our — neighbor.
So listen to Leviticus 19:11 through 18 again, only divided into the sections. Verse 11: “You shall not steal, nor deal falsely, nor lie to one another. And you shall not swear falsely by my name so as to profane the name of the Lord your God.” Then in the end, the cap: “I am the Lord.” They’re together. They’re together. Why? Because when people often lie, they invoke God’s name to sort of indicate they’re trying not to lie, or they don’t want you to know that they’re wrong. Next section: “You shall not oppress your neighbor, nor rob them, and the wages of a hired worker are not to remain with you overnight until morning.” And, a joke: withhold your employees’ pay — you pay them when they’re due. “You shall not curse the person who is deaf, nor put a stumbling block before a blind person, but you shall revere your God. I am the Lord.”
Oh, here’s one for our day: “You shall not do injustice in judgment. You shall not show partiality to the poor — oh, just because they’re poor, they get to break the law — nor preference to the great — just because they’re big tech corporate guys, they don’t get a break either. But you are to judge your neighbor fairly. You shall not go about as a slanderer among your people, and you are not to jeopardize the life of your neighbor. In that: I am the Lord. You shall not hate your fellow countrymen in your heart. You may certainly rebuke your neighbor — so if he’s doing something wrong, you can rebuke him, let him know — but you are not to incur sin because of him. And you shall not take vengeance, nor hold any grudge against the sons of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” The end cap: “I am the Lord.”
Then, not in our reading this morning, but Leviticus 19 verses 33 and 34 expand the code. So far, the code is talking about Hebrew to Hebrew, Israelite to Israelite, family member to family member. But verses 33 and 34 expand this code of conduct to the sojourner, to the stranger: “When a stranger resides with you in your land, you shall do him no wrong. The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as a native among you. That is, when he lives among you, you’re gonna treat him as one of your own. And you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” And in the end: “I am the Lord your God.” And then the Lord ends the entire sermon in verse 37: “So you will keep all my statutes and my ordinances and do them. I am the Lord.”
So here’s the fundamental fact about human beings and about God: the Lord God, Yahweh Elohim, is holy, and we — all the rest of us — are not. And we can’t do a thing about it. We cannot make ourselves holy. God alone is holy. Yet we see time and again, throughout both the Old and the New Testament, and especially here, repeatedly in Leviticus, God calling on his people to act that way, to think that way, and to be that way — namely, holy — something we cannot be or cannot do under our own steam. So God is either demanding something that we can never do, and thus we’ll end in despair, or he has his own way of going about making us holy before him, in his sight. So as for you, people born in time after the first advent of Christ and the giving of the New Testament: God in the New Testament has not released you from being a holy people and acting and thinking accordingly. God repeatedly calls you to be holy, just as he did the children of Israel back there in Leviticus chapter 19. For example, in Matthew 5:48, Jesus told his disciples, “Therefore you shall be perfect, as your Father in heaven is perfect.” I always tell people: give that a try. See how it works out for you. Or First Peter 1:16: “It is written, ‘You shall be holy, for I am holy.'”
To the untrained ear, those verses and all those commands of Jesus and in the New Testament and all the rest of those verses — they sound like a demand that we must meet in order to merit some kind of favor from God. But that way of interpreting the passage runs afoul of a great many verses in both the Old and New Testament, like Romans 3:28: “For we maintain that a person is justified by faith apart from works of the law.” Or Ephesians 2:8-9: “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not of yourself, it’s a gift from God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.” Or Galatians 3:11: “Now that no one is justified by law before God is evident, for the righteous one will live by faith.”
It’s true: grace alone, faith alone, Christ alone. God makes us holy by giving us the person and work, the life, death, resurrection of Jesus Christ. He’s rescued us from sin and death, the power of the devil, darkness. The epistle lesson made that clear this morning: “For he rescued us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.” Now, by the way, scholars call this the analogy of faith. I talked about it a couple of weeks ago in one of the classes. In regard to how a person is made righteous and holy, the analogy of faith says that the supreme doctrine of the Bible, the clear doctrine of the Bible, is that we are saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ, for Christ’s sake alone, apart from good works. So when we run into difficult Bible passages that seem to say something different than that, we must come to understand and interpret those passages in light of the analogy of faith. Then we can’t adopt and accommodate an understanding, an interpretation, of a Bible passage that openly contradicts the analogy of faith.
Remember, Leviticus is divided into two parts. The first part is how they have become holy in God’s sight: it’s by grace, faith. It’s by believing in the promised sacrifice to come, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. It’s by going to the service and listening to the priests as they speak the words of God, and they sacrifice for the atonement of sin. That you just heard in the epistle reading: where there is the forgiveness of sins, there is automatically redemption. There is one and the same. Remember, Leviticus chapter 1 through 16 shows God provided the children of Israel with the holiness that they needed. 17 through 26 was an educational exercise to tell them how they are to be different than the rest of the world, what in fact love and faith look like in everyday practice. And here’s what it looks like: not stealing, dealing falsely, not lying, not hurting somebody else, not swearing by God’s name to somebody that is simply not true, not oppressing or robbing a neighbor, and so on. In other words, we aren’t to hate and mistreat other people. We instead are to love one another as he loved us.
The children of God are not to bear grudges or seek harm. Holy people love their neighbor as themselves. The lawyer in today’s gospel — see, he understood the first part of the lesson. He understood, one would suppose, what the second greatest command was: “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” But like a lawyer, he’s looking for the loophole. He sought that loophole in the question: “So who is my neighbor?” It’s funny how that works, isn’t it? Selective memory or hearing. The lawyer understood and remembered what the second most important commandment is. He remembered that part of Leviticus chapter 19 that addresses Hebrew to Hebrew, Israelite to Israelite. But he forgot verses 33 and 34. Did he never learn them, or just put them out of his mind? In which the Gentile, the sojourner, the stranger who comes to dwell there, is to be loved and treated well — just like a fellow Hebrew, just like a fellow adopted child of God. The sojourner is to be loved.
Now that’s rather radical back in their day. It’s radical in our day, by the way. Right. Leviticus and the gospel lesson teach us that the holy people of God are to love unholy people. We’re to love the people who are despised. We’re to love the people that we have a tendency to despise. For the Old Testament, it’s the non-Israel. But now they’re being told in 33-34, they’re to love that non-Israelite as if he or she were an Israelite. The Samaritans were half Greek by the time Jesus is around. They only accepted the Book of Moses. They didn’t accept any other prophetic book of the Old Testament. They rejected Jerusalem and the temple as the holy city and the place where the Lord God, Yahweh Elohim, was to dwell. They were opposed to the Jews. The Hebrews had a lot of animus for Samaritans, and the Samaritans had a lot of animus for the Hebrews. Though they lived right next door to each other, they were hardly neighboring.
Just think of the groups of people, particularly adults, or people whose lifestyle openly contradicts what we know to be true in the Bible, and with whom we disagree. Think of the groups and the people who will stand opposed to everything we stand and believe in, who tear down all the good things that have been built, who are strangers to the Christian faith and enemies outwardly that we tend to dislike, yea, despise. We’re called upon to treat them and act as if they are our neighbors. For that, in order to teach his disciples about what it means to be a neighbor, Jesus told the parable of the Good Samaritan. And as you know, he tells a parable in which the religious leaders — two of them, a priest and a Levite — fail to care for their neighbor, a fellow Jew. How do you know that? Because he was going between two Jewish, important cities, right? He was coming from Jerusalem and going to Jericho. No Israelite — no Samaritans coming from Jerusalem and going to Jericho. That’s only happening if you happen to be one of the adopted children of God. First a priest and a Levite passed by the beaten and dying Hebrew man on the road. They failed. But the much despised Samaritan felt compassion. He rescued the man, and he provided everything for the man to be restored to good health. The parable shows the Samaritan had a neighborly love toward a man who belonged to a group that was hostile to himself, while at the same time showing the children of Israel failed to care for even one of their own.
Now think of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — the holy and undivided unity — looking down upon its creation and seeing a divided species of the human race at war with one another, unholy and doing everything possible contrary to his will and his ways. They were enemies, children of darkness. The Old Testament and New Testament teaches we are everything that God is not, and he is everything — he is everything we cannot be. Yet the Son of God, the one who is despised of men, became our Good Samaritan, and he rescued us. He obeyed all that was written in those sermons from chapter 17 to 26 of Leviticus. He not only did not do the bad things listed in Leviticus 19, he only did and does good toward us — chief among them: he died a sinner’s death in our place. He took our sin and gave us his holiness. Our sins are no more in God’s sight. We have been given the righteousness of the Son of God, and we’re even called, time and time again in the New Testament, saints — which translates literally “holy ones.”
We belong to a holy Christian church. 1 Peter 2:9: “But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession, so that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.” See, having been made holy in our baptism, by being baptized into Christ’s life, death, resurrection, and in the gift of faith, we possess the very love of God in the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. We know who our neighbor is. We recognize our neighbor’s needs. We love our neighbor because Christ has loved us. To confess our sins and to receive the forgiveness of sins. And where there is the forgiveness of sins, there are automatically those holy ones of Christ. And this we do over and over and over again throughout our entire life. We come back and get it again, because we fail again and again, day after day. And that’s how it’s going to be until the day that he calls you from this veil of tears to the heavenly realm, where there is no sin — there’s only saints. For what he has said is true, and it’s true of you: “You will be holy, for you are holy, because he is the Lord your God, the holy one, and he made you the same.” Amen.
May the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.