For a good chunk of this Fall season, we’ve been following the story of Moses as he led the people of Israel out of Egypt and into the desert. We’ve heard of the good decisions that the Israelites made, and we heard of the poor decisions that they made. We’ve seen God leading them with gentleness and patience, and we’ve seen God become furious at the Israelites for breaking their promises to him.
As the book of Exodus ends and the book of Leviticus begins, we find ourselves in a section of scripture that is very easy to get bogged down in. Exodus wraps up with God providing detailed instructions for every aspect of the Tabernacle or Tent of Meeting where the priests will guide the people through their acts of worship. Leviticus goes into greater detail about what that worship looks like: primarily, making sacrificial offerings. Burnt offerings, grain offerings, fellowship offerings, sin offerings: they would take their sources of food, their sources of wealth, these animals that they had invested time and money and energy into and give them to the priests to be killed and to be given to God to express their desire to be right with God, or to remember how God has blessed them, or to celebrate friendship with God, or to say “I’m sorry” to God. Worship for the early Israelite community was focused on sacrifice; worship is sacrifice, sacrifice is worship; put a tack in that thought, because we’ll be returning to it later.
God continues to provide instructions for how his people are called to relate to the rest of the world and to each other, describing what sort of creatures may and may not be eaten, and when people are “clean” (publicly presentable) and when they are “unclean” (needing private care). God shares how to treat the lifeblood of other creatures (allow it to flow back into the ground, don’t try to take it into yourself), and how to live sexually (don’t dishonor people by taking their spouse for yourself and don’t twist family relationships by changing them into sexual relationships). The part we’re going to be focusing on today in Leviticus 19 is God’s command with regard to neighbors. Join me as we listen to God’s command together, first in verses 1-2, and then in 15-18:
The LORD said to Moses, “Speak to the entire assembly of Israel and say to them: ‘Be holy because I, the LORD your God, am holy… Do not pervert justice; do not show partiality to the poor or favoritism to the great, but judge your neighbor fairly. Do not go about spreading slander among your people. Do not do anything that endangers your neighbor’s life. I am the LORD. Do not hate a fellow Israelite in your heart. Rebuke your neighbor frankly so you will not share in their guilt. Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone among your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the LORD.”
Back in September, we had a decision to make as a Consistory, and it was a very serious decision, too. We had to decide whether to hold October’s Consistory meeting on the last Tuesday of the month, as usual, or to move it up to this past week, the 24th. Even though Pastor Chelsea and I tried to argue for it, the Consistory ended up not being in favor of wearing their Halloween costumes to the meeting and so we pushed it up a week. Seriously though, we didn’t want to have our Consistory on Halloween night because we wanted to be present to our neighbors, we wanted to welcome the kids and parents that would be wandering throughout the neighborhood, we wanted to share smiles and candy and greetings with people when they’re out and about. Halloween night is actually a time when Fairview comes alive in a way that it doesn’t often throughout the rest of the year; you get to see friends and neighbors not only dressed up in silly or funny ways, but you get to see them out on the streets, period!
As strange as it might sound, sometimes it’s possible to forget that we have neighbors. Maybe you’ll want to push me on that, saying that you only wish you could forget your neighbors, or remind me of the old saying that “good fences make good neighbors”. But beyond all the complaints and points of contention between neighbors, I think that God had a good reason for giving us such a deep and abiding need for community.
Think about it. After God created the Man and set him to work in Eden, he said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.” Even though Adam found himself in a place of beauty, with all kinds of creatures to live alongside and all kinds of work to do to help the garden grow and flourish, it was not good for him to be alone. He needed to have others like him to work alongside, to interact with, to grow and to learn with, to help him; he needed to have someone else to learn to love.
Often in our culture today, we pride ourselves on our independence, we don’t want to be a burden to anyone, we don’t want to ask for help, we want to do it by ourselves. And that sort of thinking has led to an epidemic of loneliness that isolates many in our culture. On average, half of all American adults report feeling lonely. Those in poverty were even more likely to say so. Almost 80% of young adults say that they feel lonely. And loneliness doesn’t merely affect our state of mind, there are profound health effects too: for those afflicted with loneliness, the risk of heart disease and stroke increase by about 30%. It’s gotten so bad that the Surgeon General of the United States has declared that this epidemic of loneliness is a public health crisis. But it doesn’t have to be so.
In our passage today, God shares some ground rules with Moses about how neighbors should relate with one another: treat each other fairly, don’t spread lies about each other, don’t endanger each other, don’t hate each other, if they’re doing something wrong, warn them, but don’t even think about trying to get revenge on each other or even bear a grudge against each other. But all of these commands are then summed up in the line, “love your neighbor as yourself.” “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Jesus loved that command so dearly that he said it was the second most important command in the Law, right after “Love the Lord your God.” “Love your neighbor as yourself.” If we loved our neighbors as we loved ourselves, do you think we would still have an epidemic of loneliness? If we loved our neighbors as ourselves, would we feel isolated? If we loved our neighbors as ourselves, would we fear becoming burdens, or would we come to enjoy the give and take of friendships and relationships with those we’re privileged to live and work alongside?
At the start of the sermon, I asked you to hold onto the thought that worship was an act of sacrifice. If sacrifice was the way that the ancient Israelites were to maintain a healthy and fruitful relationship with God, then I think sacrifice might also have a role to play in our role with each other. And no, I don’t think that Jim and Joann would like it very much if I splashed bull’s blood on their porch, and Trey and Tiffany would probably be quite confused if I plopped a bunch of goat meat on their firepit and started fanning the smoke toward their house. But living in a healthy relationship with our neighbors requires sacrifice all the same. Some sacrifices are small - the classic examples of a stick of butter or a couple of eggs. Others require more time, shoveling a neighbor’s driveway, or raking up a bunch of leaves, or knocking on the door just to say, “Hi!” But the richest relationships with neighbors require sacrifice of more substantial things: sometimes they require the sacrifice of our habits or the way we usually do things - refraining from burning our leaves like we’ve always done because the new neighbor has emphysema and the smoke would make it hard for them to breathe; learning some words in the language of a neighbor who didn’t grow up speaking English, and saying “hello!” or “goodnight!” or “have a nice day!” even if you’re worried you’ll get the pronunciation wrong or look silly, just because you want that neighbor to know you care; a sacrifice can even be putting your pride to the side to accept the help from a neighbor that you really wish you didn’t need.
Love your neighbor as yourself. How do we do that as people here in Fulton County? How do we do that as a church? What does love look like to our neighbors here and how might we show that to them, not just once in a while, but consistently? That is the mission that God has sent us on as a church, as his Body here in this place: to love our neighbors as we love ourselves in the name of Jesus. As we do so, our loneliness will begin to evaporate, our worship will become richer, and we will change from what we have been into what God would have us become. Amen.
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