First Reading: Leviticus 19:1-2,17-18
Psalm: Ps 103:1-4,8,10,12-13
Epistle: 1 Corinthians 3:16-23
Gospel: Matthew 5:38-48
Do you not know that you are the temple of God,
and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?
Leviticus:
The Book of Leviticus may seem like one of the most boring books in the Bible. It is a book of laws, rules and regulations given to Moses concerning how people should live. If we look at this as just a book of laws we will get bored, we will get frustrated, we will wonder why God bothered with some of this.
What we need to have in our heats as we study this book is the sentence found in the second verse from today’s reading: “Be holy, for I, the LORD, your God, am holy.” The book is about what it takes to be holy, to approach God in His temple, prepared to meet Him. God asks us to meet Him in a state of personal and communal holiness and perfection.
Let’s remember that, we are going to meet God, and we need to be holy to do it.
Where’s God:
I have a question, Where does God live?
What do we hear: God lives in heaven. God is everywhere. God is with us.
Fr. Stephen Freeman recently wrote a book which will be available starting March 1st, , “Everywhere Present: Christianity in a One-Storey Universe.”
He asks that we think about our encounter with God, how we perceive Him, how we perceive our world. How we encounter Him, how we encounter our world. If God dwells in heaven, on a spiritual plane, somewhere we cannot see or know, He dwells apart from us. He lives upstairs. We live in a natural world where we try to make sense of how stuff works, why rain falls, why the sky is blue, why the energy of atoms can be configured in so many different ways that they make up all we see. We live downstairs.
In the world we have science, medicine, arts, entertainment. Sure, we acknowledge God, but He is in the spiritual realm in a place we can’t quite touch. When we chance across the holy, and receive communion, or get splashed with holy water, or get the cross we have, on the chain around our necks, blessed, we briefly touch on the spiritual world, but don’t quite go there. We don’t dive into it. God isn’t really encountered in the two storey world because God is upstairs and we are downstairs.
Think how Hollywood loves to use the spiritual realm to scare us, to heighten our senses. We get demons, exorcists, all sorts of spooky stuff, and in the process we recognize a god, who lives apart from us, upstairs in the spiritual realm, who is only there to do magical and spooky stuff, raising the dead, healing the sick, creating these well publicized tourist attractions called apparitions.
God is there, we are here, God and the world are apart, and we’re no more holy and perfect for it. In fact, we are going backwards.
Remember, we are going to meet God, and we need to be holy to do it. How do we get there?
Getting there:
Leviticus tells us that to get there, to become holy and perfect, we are to be like God. We are to be holy like He is holy. We should not hate outwardly or in our hearts, because we are to be like God who bears no hatred. We shouldn’t take revenge or cherish grudges against anyone, Because we are to be like God who doesn’t seek revenge and who doesn’t bear grudges. We are to love our neighbors as we love ourselves, because if we are like God, we must love like He does.
St. Paul goes on to tell us that we are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwells in us. Not just lives with us, like a roommate, The Spirit doesn’t stop by every Sunday like an invited guest, He dwells in us, lives in us, in our hearts, in our hands, in our minds, in every aspect of who we are as people. He is there when we wake and when we sleep, when we work, and pray, and eat. He is there when we cry, and laugh, and even when we sin. He is right there in us and with us continuously calling us to be holy and perfect as I am holy and perfect.
Is God crazy?
Now we need to pause, and look at ourselves. My first question would be, Is God crazy? God wants me to become like Him? But He lives upstairs on the spiritual plane, sure He’s everywhere, but that’s just like saying He’s nowhere. I can’t see Him or grasp Him, or be with Him, He’s just too different, too far away, too spooky. And perfect! I’m the farthest thing from perfect. I sin. Maybe I gamble, or eat, or drink, or smoke, or yell at the kids, or get frustrated with co-workers and annoying drivers a little too much, but perfect and holy, no. What does the Man Upstairs expect from me?
“Be holy, for I, the LORD, your God, am holy.”
Jesus:
The Gospel of St. John begins with a beautiful series of phrases about the coming of Jesus. At verse 14 we find: “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth.” The Word became flesh, the Word is Jesus, the Son of God, His Word sent forth who existed from all eternity. The Word became flesh, became human, and came to dwell with us. Not as a buddy, roommate, friend, traveling companion, doer of spooky miracle things, but as a man to dwell, to share in the world, with us.
God came to dwell with us. Dwelling with us He was tempted, He bore infirmities, He was like His brethren, He stooped and washed feet, He cried over Jerusalem and was moved to sorrow at the death of His friend Lazarus. He suffered and He died. He dwelt with us to raise us to holiness and perfection. He dwelt with us to show us the way to what was possible, here, now, on earth, in the present.
He teaches us:
Jesus teaches us how to live like God lives, how to be holy and perfect like God in today’s Gospel. The Message translation of the bible makes Jesus’ words very plain:
‘Eye for eye, tooth for tooth.’ Is that going to get us anywhere? Here’s what I propose: ‘Don’t hit back at all.’ If someone strikes you, stand there and take it.
If someone drags you into court and sues for the shirt off your back, giftwrap your best coat and make a present of it.
If someone takes unfair advantage of you, use the occasion to practice the servant life. No more tit-for-tat stuff. Live generously.
I’m telling you to love your enemies. Let them bring out the best in you, not the worst. When someone gives you a hard time, respond with the energies of prayer.
This is what God does. He gives his best—the sun to warm and the rain to nourish—to everyone, regardless: the good and bad, the nice and nasty.
“In a word, what I’m saying is, Grow up. Live generously and graciously toward others, the way God lives toward you.”
Jesus is teaching us that the requirement for meeting God is to be holy and perfect like He is. By doing these everyday, and sometimes difficult things, we will reach the holiness and perfection of God.
Where’s God?
Do any of you live in a two storey house, or an apartment building. If you do, you know what it like to have someone living upstairs. You kind of know they are there. Sometimes you hear them clunking about, maybe a little music or the TV, and once and a while you encounter them in the hallway. You nod and whisper hello.
Isn’t that how we treat God? Isn’t He that upstairs neighbor we never really see? Once and a while we encounter Him, brief miraculous seconds, in communion, when we feel particularly loved, or when we are scared. In those brief encounters a whispered prayer, a little hello and a nod to the upstairs neighbor.
Fr. Freeman’s book and today’s readings talk about a One-Storey Universe. God isn’t up there, He’s here. He dwells with us, in the same apartment, on the same floor, at the same supper table, in the same car on the way to and fro. We have to realize His presence in our lives and in our world. We have to encounter God full on every day as part of and essential to our lives. He isn’t going away. God isn’t hiding in heaven. God doesn’t dwell apart from us on a far away spiritual plane, upstairs, but is here, present and active, dwelling with us in this time and place. We need to immerse ourselves in Him.
When we come to communion today, let’s not nibble at God or quietly let Him dissolve on our tongues, because its not a magical spooky pill. It is God’s body given to us as food – EAT! When we bless ourselves on the way into or out of church, let’s grab a handful of that holy water and pour it over our heads, knowing that Jesus washed His disciples feet with that water, was immersed in that water at baptism, and that water flowed out of His side. Cherish it and bathe in it! When we confess, let us cry over our sins, and know that God loves us so much He has forgotten them. When we hear the sacrament of the Word, let us learn from it, and learn to live the way God lives. Completely feel and know that God is here, downstairs with us.
Then, let us go out, immersed in God, fed by God, dwelling with God, understanding God, and forgiven by God — to forgive others, wash others, baptize others, feed others, teach others. God is here with us and them, not somewhere else. As we do this, as we live with our God who lives with us, we — will — be — changed. We will become more and more holy, more and more perfect, and we will meet God. Amen.