Leviticus 19:1-2, 15-18
The Lord spoke to Moses, saying:
“Speak to all the congregation of the Israelites and say to them: You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy.
“You shall not render an unjust judgment; you shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great: with justice you shall judge your neighbor. You shall not go around as a slanderer among your people, and you shall not stand idly by when the blood of your neighbor is at stake: I am the Lord.
“You shall not hate in your heart anyone of your kin; you shall reprove your neighbor, or you will incur guilt yourself. You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord.
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Matthew 22:34-46
When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them, an expert in the law, asked him a question to test him. “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” He said to him, “ ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.”
Now while the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them this question: “What do you think of the Messiah? Whose son is he?” They said to him, “The son of David.” He said to them, “How is it then that David by the Spirit calls him Lord, saying,
‘The Lord said to my Lord,
“Sit at my right hand,
until I put your enemies under your feet” ’?“If David thus calls him Lord, how can he be his son?” No one was able to give him an answer, nor from that day did anyone dare to ask him any more questions.
So believe it or not, this is the only time in the common lectionary that gives us the opportunity (and the challenge) of preaching on the book of Leviticus. And I wonder, if some of you today, when you opened your bulletins and saw Leviticus listed, if your stomach lurched a bit. I don’t blame you if it did. In modern times, Leviticus has become sort of persona non grata of the scriptures in many mainline Christian churches. For decades now, some people have cherry-picked certain verses from the book of Leviticus in order to justify their hatred of LGBTQ+ folks. But I’m not preaching today to debate that passage in question—that’s been done plenty, and I think, considering our Open and Affirming policy, you all know where we stand in this church when it comes to our beloved queer siblings.
And you know who else doesn’t attempt to debate that passage at all in the Gospels? Jesus Christ. No. Instead, the passage from Leviticus that Jesus quotes to the oppressive Pharisees is about not slandering our neighbors. It’s about watching out for our neighbors. It’s about not hating your neighbor. It’s about loving your neighbor as yourself, and this being one of the greatest commandments, alongside the ultimate commandment of loving God.
Remember— Matthew 5:17, in which Jesus says: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.” But then, soon after our passage today, in Matthew 23:13, Jesus says,
Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint, dill, and cumin and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith. It is these you ought to have practiced without neglecting the others.
This is Jesus telling the people what really matters. This is Jesus telling the people what they should be prioritizing. This is the law and the words of the prophets that Jesus has some to fulfill.
And so here we have Jesus being quizzed, being tested by an “expert in the law.” An expert in the law is a lawyer, and in Jesus’ day, this meant a scribe, a scholar whose job, who’s life’s calling it is to write and interpret and enforce the Jewish law. So he’s really being taken to task here, but Jesus doesn’t balk. First, he answer’s the lawyer’s question… kind of. He’s asked what the greatest commandment is—singular. Jesus refuses to say just one:
‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.'
As the Pharisees are mulling this over, Jesus decides turn the tables on them, as he is wont to do, and to ask them a question—who do they think of when they think of the Messiah. They answer, as it’s prophesied in the scriptures, ‘The son of David.’ Now, Jesus’ lineage is something that’s often debated, in part because the Gospels themselves present disparate genealogies; but for all intents and purposes, when it comes to the Gospel of Matthew, we can make the assumption that he’s a part of the Davidic line.
But regardless, he makes it clear that he’s more than that… he quotes Psalm 110, a pslam purportedly written by David, which begins, with the the line “The Lord says to my lord, sit at my right hand…” which, according to Jesus, means that this “lord” David speaks of could not possibly be simply a mortal son; because a parent would never call their child “lord.” This silences the Pharisees. Jesus is a master at tripping up scholars and anyone else of his own faith with their own scriptures. He turns their often misguided beliefs on their heads and forces them to think differently about their preconceived notions. He does something similar in chapter 4 of Luke’s gospel, and the people are so angry at him using their own scriptures against him, they try to throw him off a cliff. At least in this case, the Pharisees are simply stunned into silence.
Jesus is up against some very zealous, very educated people here, people who are testing him, and trying to get him to slip up, trying to prove that he’s not, in fact the Messiah. He’s up against people who feel deeply threatened by the peace and justice he’s preaching and practicing, people who feel threatened by him calling out their hypocrisy, and their prioritizing all the wrong things, their disregard of the most important aspects of the law: faith, justice, and mercy. And so it’s genius that he’s able to so delicately and articulately parrot their own scriptures back to them. It both shows his deep knowldge of the scriptures, as well as his authority, pointing to him truly being the Messiah.
Something about me that I’ve been very honest about is that I’m often not great on-the-spot. I’m an internal processor, I often need a bit to think about my answers; that’s why I encourage pre-submitted answers for my Ask-the-Pastor services. I’m “married to the manuscript” as they say. I’m not ashamed of this at all, this just happens to be how my brain works. I wish I could have quick, witty retorts. I wish I could have well-articulated answers to any question right off the top of my head, ready to satisfy (or even confound!) with an answer in a second; but alas, I do not have that gift. And so when I read passages like this one, I often wonder… how do I show my authority (for lack of a better word) as a Christian out in the world? In a world in which the loudest Christian voices are, sadly, often oppressive ones, how do any of us show ourselves to be loving and welcome Christians in this world?
Well… in our case, I would certainly not start spouting scripture at folks… that’s not something that goes over super well up here in New England.
But let’s look back at our Leviticus passage that Jesus quotes. Something very important gets lost in translation from the Hebrew to the Greek to the English. In verse 18, in which God says to Moses, “you shall love your neighbor as yourself;” because love here, is an action. It is not just a feeling verb. It is an active verb. Love your neighbor means act with love towards your neighbor. It means help your neighbor. It means be neighborly… with everyone. Because yes, our passage today talks about our nieghbors and our kin, but if we were to read on, verses 33-34 read: “When an alien resides with you in your land, you shall not oppress the alien. The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the native-born among you…”. And in these proclamations to Moses, God repeats Godself over and over and over, “I am the Lord,” or, “I am the Lord your God.” God says this a staggering 24 times in this chapter. God is saying, “I’m your God, so listen to me. Do as I say. And I say: practice justice, love your neighbor, love the foreigner as a neighbor, help the poor.”
And then, we have Jesus being very deliberate in the scriptures he’s emphasizing. They are scriptures and laws of love. They are of mercy, and faith, and justice. They are scriptures of active love, of a love that is more than just an expression or a feeling; it’s a doing kind of love.
In Rev. Caleb E. Campbell’s book Disarming Leviathan: Loving your Christian Nationalist Neighbor, (which has you may guess, is all finding a way to connect with those who have gone down the wrong, often hateful, Christian path), he writes,
How can we reach those caught in Leviathan’s grasp? The same way we reach any [person, or any] group with the gospel—we live as ambassadors, committed to consistent prayer, pursuing…justice, proclaiming the gospel of peace, abiding in the truth of Jesus, and resting in his salvation by [the] strength of Spirit.[i]
Ths is the doing kind of love. When we are met with people whose ideologies are offensive, even dangerous to us, we do what we are called to do as Christians. We act with love. Our job, as Campbell explains, is not to “win the war by dominating or defeating the bad guys,” but rather “to be peacemakers, winning…hearts…through service, love, and restoration. Restoration is the goal.”
When I first started here 6 years ago, deep in the middle of pre-vaccine Covid, I think there was a lot hope for restoration. I think there was a lot of longing that this world, this country, this town to be restored to what it was before the pandemic. That just… didn’t quite happen. Yes, stores and restaurants opened again, we’re sitting in church together without masks on, with vaccines, we feel relatively safe being out and about, but this country is as divided as ever, there’s still a certain type of anxiety in the air that just never quite left, it simply ebbs and flows with the times. But my time here has showed me one thing about this community, and this faith community in particular—that anxiety tends to quiet around a table. Whether it’s the town’s community breakfasts, our shared ministries witf our friends at the UU with our community breakfast on Fridays at the foodshelf or our community Thanksgiving here; whether it’s our own roast beef suppers, or a Dinner Churches, or baking bread together, when we sit for a meal together, with the intention of breaking bread with a variety of people, whoever decides to show up, something great is, indeed restored.
In his book Cambpell notes,
The majority of Jesus’ mission work was done at tables. It has been said that Jesus ate his way through the gospels. At the table fellowship he welcomed his enemies to become friends. He spoke heart-to-heart, in hospitality and love. He invites us to this approach today, to learn how humble subversion can lead to profound transformation.
It’s around tables, in vulnerable, intimate, sacred places, where things are really shared and learned and changed. It’s by making sure our table is open to everyone, whether that be a communion table, or a family-style roast beef supper table, that people can connect, can reconnect, can let down their defenses.
Now Campbell notes in his book, which I really appreciated, that there is a time and a place for the (figurative) flipping of tables—for the moments of righteous anger and protest that help to bring about change and progress. But, “Jesus…set more tables than we flipped.”[ii] Flipping tables might shock someone into attention, but setting an open table for people is the real active, doing kind of love that we are called to show.
God says to Moses before a long list of commands to relay to his people: “You shall be holy, for I the LORD your God am holy.” In Matthew 5:48, at the end of his first Sermon, and right after he commands us to love our enemies, Jesus says, “Be perfect, therefore, as your [God] is perfect.” Both these commands are impossible. We cannot be as holy as God. We cannot be perfect like God. But these are clear calls to strive for these things. These are clear calls to act as holy as possible. And the holiest things we can do in this world is to love God and to love our neighbor as ourselves… to actively love. The doing kind of love.
The setting the table kind of love.
We all know the Golden Rule—treat others as you want to be treated. Love your neighbor as yourself. We’re taught this in public schools and church alike. But let’s remember that when Jesus emphasizes it as he does in our passage today, he’s emphasizing a particular active love that requires action, doing, work; that requires community, togetherness, and conversation. And so may our minds and hearts; our doors and our tables be always open. Amen.
[i] Campbell, Caleb E. 2024. Disarming Leviathan: Loving Your Christian Nationalist Neighbor. InnerVarsity Press
[ii] Campbell, Caleb E. 2024. Disarming Leviathan: Loving Your Christian Nationalist Neighbor. InnerVarsity Press
