When my family lived in Connecticut and the kids were much smaller, we spent a lot of time enjoying the local hiking trails. One sunny spring day, the kids and I were out walking on the trails when the kids noticed a tiny bright orange translucent newt in the middle of the trail and then another, and another, and another. There were so many of them and they were so small and fragile. We saw several that had been crushed by unobservant hikers, smashed into the dirt. The kids were upset and concerned about the safety of these tiny newts and wanted to help. So, they began carefully lifting the newts onto leaves and gently placing them out of harms way on the side of the trail. It ended up taking us hours to walk a single mile.
We had set out to enjoy nature, the fresh air and trees, but we ended up spending our Saturday rescuing baby newts from disaster.
At first, the trail was a route through the woods, an activity to burn off some energy. But what it revealed was an entire world, a habitat filled with countless other creatures. The baby newts weren’t obstacles on a human path. We were trespassers in their world and their lives made a claim upon ours.
That afternoon didn’t only change the way we walked, it changed the way we understood the world around us. And that difference, between the way we ordinarily understand the world and the way God invites us to understand it, is at the heart of today’s readings.
God says, “You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy.” In this short section from Leviticus, God directs Moses to speak to the entire congregation of Israel, to tell them they are holy. Think about the significance of this statement. “You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy.” This means holiness isn’t reserved for a few exceptionally religious people. Holiness is for everyone.
In this sermon, I will be talking about a theology of holiness and what that means for your life. We’re going to talk about holiness in the context of Leviticus. We’re going to talk about Kingdom Logic in the gospel. And then, we will apply that Kingdom Logic to Leviticus, before bringing it back to our own lives. Are you with me?
Holiness is for everyone and God is giving Moses instructions about what this means. Holiness is about the relationships that sustain communal life. We tend to associate holiness with moral perfection, purity, or separation from ordinary life. But holiness can also be understood through the biblical lens of being set apart for God’s purposes. Holiness is ordering your life in accordance with God’s intentions. It isn’t about denying your humanness but rather, participating more fully in the life God intends for humans and the rest of creation. That is what happened when my kids noticed the baby newts and spent the afternoon protecting them one at a time.
I love how this passage in Leviticus make holiness concrete. Holiness is:
- Justice without favoritism.
- Truthfulness rather than slander.
- Honest accountability rather than concealed resentment.
- Forgiveness rather than vengeance.
- And, always, love of neighbor.
These are practices through which a community or society reflects God’s character. Holiness is not something we achieve by separating ourselves from the world. It is something we practice through our relationships within it.
But if holiness means living according to God’s purposes, then we need to ask a larger question: What does God intend for the world? That question brings us to the Kingdom of God.
At Epiphany, we like to talk about the Kingdom of God as the place where what God wants to happen always happens the way God wants it to happen. God’s Kingdom is the place in which God’s will is done 100% of the time.
We pray for it every Sunday: “Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” The Kingdom of God exists in God’s time and is both present and yet to come. It is already breaking into our world through Jesus Christ, but we don’t yet experience its fullness. We live in the tension between what God has already made possible and what has not yet been fully realized. And every once in a while, you know it when it happens, you catch a glimpse of God’s Kingdom, like I did on that sunny Saturday afternoon in Connecticut picking up baby newts.
In the Kingdom of God, justice isn’t determined by wealth or status. Love is not restricted to those who are just like us. Truth is not subordinate to convenience or personal gain. Forgiveness interrupts cycles of vengeance. Creation is not valued merely for what humans can extract from it. And all life is ordered toward the flourishing of God’s creation.
The Kingdom is God’s reality. Holiness is our participation in that Kingdom.
It’s important to recognize that we cannot build this Kingdom with our hands. It doesn’t come about through our actions and God’s reign doesn’t depend upon our accomplishments. But….we can pattern match our lives to God’s will. And when we do that, we step into holiness and participate in something larger than ourselves.
The Kingdom doesn’t become real because we behave differently. We behave differently because the Kingdom is real.
But living according to God’s Kingdom requires more than adopting a new set of behaviors. It requires us to reconsider the assumptions through which we understand the world. It requires a different kind of logic.
In the gospel reading, a lawyer asks Jesus which commandment is greatest and Jesus responds saying, “Love God with all your heart, soul, and mind. And, love your neighbor as yourself.” Jesus is quoting Leviticus. Love of God and neighbor is the underlying principle that makes it all make sense. Everything depends on these relationships. Love God. Love your neighbor. They go together and cannot be separated. This is Kingdom Logic.
Consider how you organize decision making in your life. Sometimes it is about efficiency, success, stability, or control. But Kingdom Logic starts somewhere else. It asks what love requires. What does justice require? What are you responsible for because you belong to a family, a community, to all of creation?
When you are operating under Kingdom Logic, justice isn’t about maintaining order, it is about dignity for every human being. Under Kingdom Logic, forgiveness isn’t about reducing conflict, it is about reconciliation. Under Kingdom Logic, truth-telling is about honoring the interconnectedness of all beings.
In response to the lawyers, Jesus asks a different question. “What do you think of the Messiah?” He asks. “Whose son is he?” And they respond, “David’s son.” For that was the traditional answer. The Messiah must be the Son of King David from the Hebrew Scriptures.
Jesus quotes Psalm 110, written by King David himself, and asks how David can call the Messiah Lord if the Messiah is simply his own descendant.
What Jesus is doing here is quite clever. He isn’t rejecting scripture. He is using it, along with reason, to expose the limitations of an inherited way of seeing. Jesus is encouraging them to expand their worldview.
That’s the way it goes with Kingdom Logic. It doesn’t ask us to abandon reason. It requires us to examine our assumptions in light of God’s purposes. What if our understanding of who belongs is too narrow or limited? What if our assumptions about power, value, and success prevent us from recognizing the Kingdom already here?
The Kingdom of God does not simply ask us to do different things. It asks us to understand reality differently. And when we begin to understand reality differently, the consequences are not merely intellectual. They change how we live.
Now, let’s see what happens when we apply this Kingdom Logic to the reading from Leviticus. God is talking with Moses about justice and says, “you shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great.” Kingdom Logic guides us towards seeing the dignity of every human being, regardless of wealth, power, or status.
But let us recognize that impartial justice is not the same as indifference to suffering. There are a lot of very complicated situations in our world, but complexity doesn’t release us from responsibility. In this world, we belong to each other and because of that, another person’s suffering makes a claim upon our lives. Kingdom Logic doesn’t require us to have all the answers, but it does require us to have compassion.
The Kingdom is God’s reality. Holiness is our participation in that Kingdom.
The behaviors God is talking about with Moses are more than instructions for living. They are spiritual practices that form us to live according to Kingdom Logic.
God’s justice teaches us to see dignity. Truth-telling keeps us accountable to reality, even when it is uncomfortable. Forgiveness interrupts the cycles of resentment that diminish our relationships. And love expands the boundaries of our responsibility.
We don’t practice these things to earn the title of holy because you are already holy. We practice these things as a way of participating in God’s Kingdom.
On that Saturday afternoon in Connecticut, we didn’t change the world. We couldn’t save all the baby newts in the forest. But my children learned that these tiny fragile creatures belong to a world much larger than themselves. And they allowed that recognition to change their behavior. The kids didn’t do anything extraordinary. However, they did get us to slow down, to spend an afternoon participating in the flourishing of God’s creation.