Leviticus 19:1-2, 17-18 | 1 Corinthians 3:16-23 | Matthew 5:38-48

Grant, we pray, almighty God, that always pondering spiritual things we may carry out in both word and deed that which is pleasing to you through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God forever and ever, amen.

Linda’s voice carries the words in a special way that she sings.  It’s beautiful.  What I kept hearing and feeling in those words is a cry for the human heart that we know somehow, deep inside of us, that the most important thing we can have in this world is clear sight to see what’s real, to see what’s true, to be freed of all illusions that lead us into places of shame and fear and anger, stress.  It seems like such a simple thing to ask God to do and not in any way, shape or form difficult for us if we are willing to change — change.  It’s so interesting to me, when I talk to a group of people, and so often I am talking to people who already listen to my program, and they’re there, and they’ve already more or less grown in their understanding of this ministry that God has given to me.  He’s given it to every person.  It’s to open the eyes of those around them so they can see the truth, see themselves as they are, God as he is, and know what those two amazing things, persons can do together: renew the world, change the world into a place of life and peace and goodness from darkness and bitterness and destruction.  We all have that gift.  

So what I listen to in the first reading from Deuteronomy is such a simple, simple truth.  Let me see.  Let me see what’s real.  Let me see you.  Let me see what I’m here for, and the indication of that reading — it’s interesting.  It’s from the Book of Leviticus, which is filled with all rules and laws, but the simple cry of this prophet is just, “Let me be holy.  I want to be holy.”  Now, it’s interesting.  The Vatican Council had a major, major impact on me, as it has on so many.  Many haven’t paid much attention to it, because it does demand radical change, but one of the things that the Council said that was so clear was that every human being has the right and the potential to become truly holy.  You don’t have to leave this world, enter a monastery or give up all kinds of things in this world that can certainly be distracting and go to a place where you’ve got a regimented life and, in a good sense, a pattern of life that’s consistent with your nature, and then you work, and then you pray, and then you rest, and then you work, and then you pray, and you rest.  It’s beautiful.  It’s a very special calling, and I think the gift of those people is their capacity to pray for us that are in the world and to find wholeness, holiness, but the real challenge is to find holiness in our ordinary life, in the life that you have, I have, with all of its stresses, with all of its problems, with all of its joys and struggle and great moments.  

How do you find holiness in that?  Well, the frightening thought at the end of the gospel reading, it sounds like he’s saying, “Well, holiness has to do with,” at least this is what I was taught, sinlessness.  And since we’re human, our human nature is such that it’s designed to sin in order to grow.  Then you get this strange, weird conflict saying, “I can’t be holy, because I keep failing.  So I have to go to the church and get forgiveness for my humanity so I can somehow continue a connection with God so that I might perhaps be less sinful next week or the week after or next season.  Next Lent I’ll be even better.”  There’s nothing wrong with those kinds of longings, but they’re so misguided because of the fact that we are not supposed to take these words of the gospel “Be perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect,” is to be God-like, in the sense of he never sins.  He can’t sin.  He’s pure love.  He’s pure goodness, and if we have to be like him, it’s impossible.  Humanity can’t be divinity.  It was in Jesus, but that was so, so unique.  No, we remain fully human, as Jesus was fully human, but he still had such insight and such knowledge and such wisdom that his failures were not anything other than his humanity working through its stuff.  It wasn’t ever his intention to separate himself from God the Father, and that’s what sin ultimately does and what it’s grounded in and where it comes from.  “I can handle this autonomously.”  It’s the story of Adam and Eve.  We too can be God, but being perfect as your Heavenly Father perfect doesn’t mean that kind of perfection.  No, God is perfectly God, and humans have to be perfectly humans.  For something to be perfect means that it’s operating exactly as it was intended to be.   You take a plane.  You design it, and it really flies well.  So it’s a perfect design, or there’s a note that the music requires, and you hit that note right square on.  It was a perfectly formed note.  The note’s not being more than it can be.  The airplane doesn’t also do other things besides fly.  

So it’s so interesting that this idea of perfection has to be corrected inside of us so that we’re not caught in what I was caught in so often in my life, is I get so discouraged when I finally see myself doing something sinful, and yet I have to realize that I’ve probably been doing it for a very long time without even paying attention to it.  So my awareness of the sin is some kind of gift from God.  Now I see I’m sinning.  I’m choosing something that doesn’t produce what it promises.  Without that rhythm, I can call it, without discovering new things as you go deeper into your psyche, into your background, into your nature, you realize, “Oh, my God, I’m doing a whole bunch of things that are really not what they should be.  They’re not according to my nature, and when I do them, it destroys me.  It distorts me, and I’m no longer perfectly Don, perfectly human filled with divinity.” 

Something else I think is so important about the age we live in: we’re growing in our understanding of human nature.  We’re seeing that sin, mistakes often are extremely valuable when we deal with them properly, but also something happened in the ‘60s when I was in the seminary.  It was the Vatican Council, and it made a very, very brave statement to the world.  It was basically saying, “Listen, we’re a church.  We’ve been around for 2,000 years.  We’ve defended the teaching of Jesus against 1,000 heresies.  We’ve always been the voice there saying, ‘No, that’s not the tradition.  No, no, that’s wrong.’”  And finally the church realized that it was coming into an awareness that the church itself is made up of the laity, needs to pay attention to the laity, needs to pay attention to each individual as they’re struggling and working through and becoming more and more aware of what it means to be fully human.  So what they realize, the church realizes, we need to address the needs of our people.  We need to stop being the voice that says, “Stop thinking differently than you’re supposed to think about doctrine or our moral teaching.”  But now we need to pay attention to your needs and your wants.  So the church made this dramatic statement in Vatican II where it said, “You, the laity, you are the body of Christ.  You are the church.  The hierarchy, the clergy are there to serve you.”  The church has always revealed itself as a community of people that God serves, loves, forgives, perfects — so important, and so what we’re realizing then, in this age, we are living in a time when the laity is king, so to speak, yet most of the church hasn’t listened to this.  What’s underscoring is the whole teaching of this set of teachings — so beautiful.  What is the church?  The church is human beings living, loving, connecting as God longs to connect and live and love with us.  That’s the church, not the hierarchy, not all those rules and regulations, not all the practices.  Those are all valuable, but the real issue is, if you’re living in a community led by a hierarchy and the hierarchy creates in you tremendous shame and fear over your humanity, you’re going to be so limited in being able to feel the perfection of your humanity as God intended it to be, as a source of God living inside of you, making his dwelling within you.  Your body is the temple of God, and this temple has a God in it that wants to resonate through you, through your unique self.  And that resonance of this Spirit of the Father that was incarnate so clearly in Jesus, and we watched the things that Jesus did, in terms of healing and transforming people, that’s us.  That’s you.  That’s laity. That’s me.  Human beings being able to resonate a Holy Spirit, and that Holy Spirit moves through this human being much as the Israelites believed that the temple, which held the arc, which was the presence of God — as much as they felt that was the place from which resonated all this loving energy or this wisdom from God, now it’s in everyone.  That’s the mystery of redemption.  We all bear the presence of God within our hearts, and it guides us.  But more important to me than it guides us, once we see, with open eyes, the truth of what the church is and who we are, then the Spirit is able to flow through us so easily, so simply, so, in a way, effortlessly, even though there’s times of real struggle when it comes to change.  You have to see the world differently.  You have to see people differently.  I love it.

It’s implying in this set of readings that you must treat others as you would want to be treated, and you will treat others as you treat yourself.  And the wisdom in that is so awesome, and I just hope I can capture it in these last few moments I have with you this morning.  It’s simply to say that the way you treat yourself is exactly the way you treat others, and the way you treat others is exactly the way you treat yourself.  I know I’m saying the same thing, but the point is, look at the way you treat others.  Look how easily it might be that you’re irritated by something they said or did or how vulnerable you are to a negative feeling from them or a negative criticism or something like that.  Well, that’s exactly how you’re treating yourself every single moment.  That’s the beauty of this teaching.  It’s so easy to ask — to find out how you treat others.  You can’t go and — you could go around and ask everybody, “Do I treat you really well?  Am I a good friend?  Am I critical?  Am I judgmental?”  They’ll tell you perhaps, but you don’t need their feedback.  Just think about yourself, what pressure you might be putting on yourself that you have to be this perfect friend or this perfect partner or this perfect parent, perfection not in the best that God has intended you to be, no, not that, but you say, “I should be better.  I should be better.  I should be better, and then I’m upset with myself.  So I try to be nice to people so I don’t put them through the same thing.”  Well, you’re going to put them through it, I guarantee it, if you’re putting yourself through it, without every realizing it. 

What a gift, an understanding, open our eyes to see what holiness really is.  It’s radical self-acceptance, willingness to look at yourself without judgment but just with a longing to change and somehow beginning to feel, as you accept yourself as you are without any judgment, in terms of you should be better at this moment — yeah, you’ll probably improve, but you don’t have to be better than you are right now.  Where you are right now should be fine, and you’ll have the same feeling toward your brothers and sisters.  And they will know it, because the resonance of this Holy Spirit is not something that’s communicated with words.  It’s a force.  It’s a thing.  I don't know how to describe it.  Grace is what we call it, more secular, energy, resonance, frequency.  It doesn’t matter what you call it.  It’s just that it’s real, and if your eyes are open, you’ll know it.  You’ll feel it.  You’ll feel when you give it, and you’ll feel when you receive it.  What a gift, to be able to be in that place of richness.  

Father, you’ve revealed yourself through Jesus, your Son.  You are like us.  He is like us.  We watch him. We ponder his life.  We wonder about him.  We see the incredible power that he had to bring life to others, and we sometimes don’t fully understand how much we are called to be like him, to do miracles, not in the dramatic sense, perhaps, that he did but certainly no less effective in bringing life to people who are longing for it.  So bless our awareness of this mysterious power that you have — this breath of your love in us that breathes through us and others, and let this be like a fire that gets ignited and just flows throughout all of humanity.  And we ask this in Jesus’ name, amen.