Here’s some trivia for you (some bible lectionary trivia.) The passage of scripture that we hear from Leviticus today is the only portion of Leviticus deemed important enough to get read in our Sunday lectionary (which is the Revised Common Lectionary used by Protestants, Roman Catholics, and Episcopalians in the US and Canada and much of Europe). Many of us have heard about other verses in Leviticus, but not through our Sunday readings. Leviticus is one of the five books of the Torah. These 12 verses are scheduled once every three years on the Seventh Sunday in Epiphany in Year A. That in itself is rare enough, except that the Seventh Sunday in Epiphany in lectionary year A doesn’t occur every three years. It hasn’t occurred for nearly a quarter century – since 1987. That’s because Easter has to be unusually late in the year for the calendar to accommodate a 7th or 8th Sunday after Epiphany. Easter won’t be as late as it will be this year (April 24) again until the year 2038.

The messages of our scripture readings, however, are not trivial. They are essential. I don’t know why verses 3-8 of Leviticus chapter 19 are omitted. They’re not long or irrelevant or out of place -- quite the contrary. They say: you will be revering your mother and your father, you will be protecting Sabbaths, you will not be turning for help to idols or worshiping false gods; and when you make your offerings (your sacrifices of well-being) to the Holy One in worship, you will not be offering your leftovers because that’s just gross and unacceptable (my translation).  

The context for this passage from Leviticus is this. Leviticus is a priest’s manual for how to help ancient Israelites avoid things which detracted from their well-being and seek things which promoted health and life so that they could do God’s work in the world. This is the climactic chapter of the whole book, and it addresses protecting the most vulnerable people – people who are without adequate resources, people with disabilities, and women; it addresses ensuring justice and social stability, preserving proper religious practices, and protecting the environment. The law is clear in its concern for both overt and covert behavior, both actions and intent: no vengeance or grudges, no tricking people or stealing (that’s listed twice!) No profiting from the blood of another; no slander or unjust judgments. It’s also clear that the law is addressed to the entire community, not to selected individuals, and that it is designed to protect foreigners as well as citizens.

The part that I’ve always particularly loved is in verses nine and ten: when you reap the harvest of your land, you will not be reaping to the very edges of your field or gathering the gleanings of your harvest. You will not be stripping your vineyard bare, or gathering the fallen grapes of your vineyard; you will be leaving them for those who are poor and those who are alien. If you are growing food, you will be making provisions for those who do not have enough to eat. And then the refrain: I AM, the Holy Name, our God. (1) While the detailed instructions and descriptions of life in ancient Israel aren’t necessarily all edifying for 21st-century people, our concerns are much the same: caring for and defending people who are at risk, promoting a just and peaceful society, maintaining meaningful and edifying rituals, and being good stewards of creation. And, as far as I can tell, those were Jesus’ concerns as well.

This portion of the Sermon on the Mount is a hard one. Someone said the other day – it starts out hard and it just gets worse. Whenever I have that reaction to a passage of the Gospel, and I often do, the question I ask myself is, “for whom, then, is this good news?” Who, among Jesus friends, his early audiences, would be thrilled to hear this? It’s such a dense collection of sayings, that it takes some unpacking for us to have chance to understand it.

First of all, an eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth was a radical improvement in ancient Israel over ‘if you knock out my tooth, I will kill you; if you put out my eye, I will kill you and your whole family.’ This principle did not justify retaliation; it controlled retaliation. In first century Palestine, this rule had been supplanted by a system of court hearings and fines – and I would say the same is true today – in theory. But in practice, we still have a very strong sense of retributive justice that runs through our veins and through our legal system. In this country, thirty-five states, as well as the military and the Federal Government, all still have the death penalty and in some cases, have capital punishment for crimes where no death occurred.

But what does Jesus teach? Do not resist an evildoer. I think that the Greek word for resist here means resist violently because that is how this word is used in the Greek version of the Hebrew Bible (the Septuagint) and in Josephus. (2) And it’s similar to this teaching in the Mishnah: ‘He who is yielding, who ignores a slight or a wrong, has all his sins forgiven.’ (3) Or, ‘If you are struck, you must forgive the offender, even though he does not ask for your forgiveness.’ (4) Turn the other cheek, give away your cloak, and go the extra mile are all variations on that theme that involve what I think is a very subversive assertion of dignity where there has been a display of an indignity. Jesus is encouraging an assertion of dignity in a way that does some power re-balancing.

I think this is old news, and I know it is for some of you, but it bears repeating (and demonstrating…I need a choir member). In a culture where only the right hand can be used for almost everything, the only way to strike someone on the right cheek is with a backhand slap. If the victim of the slap then turns that right cheek away and offers the left check, the only slap gesture possible is one that, in that culture, is associated with love and regard for another. Turning to offer the left cheek challenges, with a simple, wordless, non-violent gesture, challenges the striker’s assumption of superiority and asserts or re-asserts the dignity of the one who has just been struck. So here I think Jesus is teaching something about the importance of asserting one’s dignity in the face of the indignity of being physically assaulted.

Next he teaches something about asserting one’s dignity in the face of the indignity of being hit financially. In Jesus’ time, people wore two garments: an inner garment and an outer garment. If you were a creditor trying to collect on a debt which the debtor could not pay, you could, by law, take the debtor’s outer garment as collateral. But the law was clear that you had to return the collateral before sundown each night because that outer garment doubled as a sleeping blanket. The enormity of indebtedness in first century Palestine meant that many (maybe even most) people could never get out from the burden of debt, which in itself, was unjust. An offer to disrobe completely is a non-violent demonstration of the indignity of the socio-economic imbalance and an ironic assertion of dignity because in Jesus’ culture, nakedness did not bring shame on the one with no clothes. Rather, the one who viewed nakedness was cursed according to the Torah. (5) I think Jesus is teaching something about the importance of the socio-economic dignity of people who are poor.

And finally, Roman soldiers were legally able to compel a civilian to serve as a beast of burden to carry their packs for one mile (a Roman mile was a thousand paces). The limit was strict and any soldier who violated the law was subject to punishment. Continuing after a thousand paces would put the soldier in the position of having to beg the carrier to stop. I think Jesus is teaching something about dignity in a politically and militarily oppressive situation.

The biggest clue that this is not about New Testament vs. Old Testament, or Christianity vs. Judaism is in verse 43: you have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’” I want to get to the day (get back to the day) where hearers say, “Wait a minute! Scripture doesn’t say love your neighbor and hate your enemy. Nowhere in the Bible is there a commandment to hate your enemy!” If there is a “this” vs. “that” here, it’s Greco-Roman paganism vs. Jewish followers of Christ.

Finally, Jesus says, “Be perfect,” and I hear the collective groan of people who struggle with perfectionism (either one’s own or perfectionism asserted by another). The thing is that the Greek word teleios does not mean without flaw. It has to do with genuinely fulfilling one’s reason for being. Jesus is saying, “Be who (and Whose) you are meant to be – fulfilled.” Jesus is teaching a version of one of my favorite songs, “If not for love, what are you for?” (It’s too bad Kris Delmhorst isn’t here to sing it for us.)

So what difference does any of this make? I want it to make a big difference. Here’s what I want you to do – what I want us all to do, myself included: to actively and non-violently assert or re-assert the dignity of every human being today: our own dignity and the dignity of others. This might be hard, but the good news is that the day is nearly half over! But then tomorrow, I want us to do it again, and again on Tuesday, and so forth. Once we’re feeling like much of the time we can remember to assert our own dignity, and the dignity of others, in the face of various kinds of indignities, various kinds of hits, then I want more. I want us to examine our own collective involvement in the exploitation of others, in our interpersonal relationships, and in our social-economic, political, and military institutions, in our environmental relationships, and I want us to engage more deeply in dismantling systems of oppression. That is all.