I grew up on the edge of the “City and Royal Borough of Dunfermline” in Scotland, a grand name for a place with a population of 56,000. Dunfermline is a hilly city. The New Row, the main way into the city from the south, is at least as steep as the Jolley Cut, steeper in places. So, for most of my childhood I could look out of my bedroom window, across the roofs of the houses in the next four or five streets, to the countryside that started right at the edge of our council housing estate. As I looked out of my window around this time of year, one of the common sights was “ta’ie howkin”. Can anybody tell me what that is? (Richard and Ruth are disqualified.)
When I was growing up, before all the farms were mechanised, people used to harvest potatoes by hand. A tractor would turn up the ground, then a line of people would work their way across the field, pulling potatoes for the farmer. I grew up in the years immediately after the end of post-war rationing in Britain, so in the evening you would see another group of people all over the field, picking up the potatoes that had been left for one reason or another; too small, damaged or just plain missed. They were “gleaning”, that’s what verses 9 and 10 of Leviticus 19 refers to.
9 “‘When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to
the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. 10 Do not go over your vineyard a second
time or pick up the grapes that have fallen. Leave them for the poor and the
alien. I am the Lord your God.
Like Old Testament Israel, Scotland has a gleaning law. It isn’t theft to take what the harvester leaves in the field. In fact you can pull produce from a farmer’s field so long as you eat it on the road and don’t take it home. We used to pull turnips (“tumshies”) and munch on raw turnip when we went hiking. (Scotland also has no trespassing law. You can’t stop people walking across your property unless they are doing damage.)
One of my pet peeves is the headings that some translations put in the text of the Bible. Sometimes they can prejudice you before you even start. For instance, the NIV has a heading at the beginning of this chapter that reads “Various Laws”. Now, isn’t that exciting? “I think I’ll just skip that chapter.” I much prefer the heading in one of the commentaries I looked at. It calls this chapter “Israel’s Social Charter”, because it’s about living as the people of God, living as people called to be holy and serving a holy God.
One of the biggest issues for the Israelites was, “How do we live in God’s presence?” “What is required of us so that we can continue to experience God’s blessing?” “What do the ten commandments look like in real life?” This is the question that the book of Leviticus sets out to answer, “How should the people of God live, in the presence of the Holy God?”
Some of the answers may surprise you. We have come to think of holiness in purely personal and religious terms. Holiness has been narrowed down to things like attending church, not using foul language or (in some churches) being someone who doesn’t “smoke, drink, spit or chew, or hang around with those that do”. There is a lot in this chapter, and I can’t address all of it, but as we look at some of the material in this chapter in Leviticus we might be surprised at some of the things that are tied to holiness.
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.
If we walk away from this chapter with nothing else but this verse we
will be on the right track. “Speak to the entire assembly.” That means
everybody, all of us. There isn’t a special rule for pastors and missionaries.
[You have no idea how many people put pastors and missionaries up on some kind
of pedestal and then excuse themselves from wholeheartedly following God
because they aren’t “called”.] No! This is for the whole church, “Be holy,
because I, the Lord your God, am holy.”
Holiness is a difficult thing to define. The word’s basic meaning has to
do with separateness, but the Bible goes beyond that and fills it with
practical, ethical content. Much of it has to do with integrity or wholeness,
being honest and trustworthy irrespective of who you are dealing with. When God
calls us to holiness, he doesn’t leave us in the dark about what that means. In
this chapter he gives us very explicit examples of what holy people look like.
Verse 2 says “Each of you must respect his mother and father,
and you must observe my Sabbaths. I am the Lord
your God.” Verses 29,30 say “Do not degrade your daughter by making her
a prostitute, or the land will turn to prostitution and be filled with
wickedness. Observe my Sabbaths and have reverence for my sanctuary. I am the Lord.”
When Jesus said that people were not made for the Sabbath but the Sabbath was made for people he wasn’t saying anything new. The Sabbath is seen here as crucial to a healthy family life, whether is it children respecting their parents or parents not abusing and exploiting their children.
If the whole family works 12 to 14 hour days in the fields, as they would have done in Israel, then the only time they have together is on the Sabbath. Despite labour laws, it isn’t that much different for many people today. What with Marilyn, myself and Sharon all working and Marilyn, myself and Jason all in school, we struggle as a family to make time to be together. And I know that other families have the same kind of challenge.
And it’s no accident that these verses come next to verses about idolatry and other religions. If we make something else our god, whether it is a golden idol, or success, or money, or education, our families will suffer.
Nova Scotia just voted by a 55% majority to keep Sunday free from shopping. A small gesture in the face of a 24/7 culture, where people who work for minimum wage or in retail can’t guarantee that the whole family will have the same day off even once a month, never mind once a week.
Holiness demands that our priorities build up families, not destroy them.
I started off talking about gleaning in Scotland when I was a kid. Verses 5 to 10 are about what holiness means when it comes to giving the hungry access to food.
It is easy to forget, but most people in the world don’t have refrigerators. Pakistan was no different, so whenever someone killed an animal, they would share the meat around, inviting their friends and neighbours to share in the meal. The Old Testament fellowship offering mentioned in verse 5 was the same. The meat had to be eaten within two days, so people would have to share it with family, friends and neighbours. They weren’t allowed to hoard it for themselves.
In the same way, gleaning rights, like those in Scotland, were part of Israel’s system to care for the poor. They were meant to help people on the fringes of society, like widows and orphans, who didn’t have the support of a family; or people who had no land, like foreigners, Levites and hired workmen who had to live by selling their labour or their skills. The right to glean is assumed. This instruction makes sure landowners leave something in the field for people to collect.
[My kids have a friend in their church, he’s about 20, and his dad owns a business so he does OK financially. Recently he went out and bought a $1600 camera, even though he really knows nothing about photography. My kids were appalled. They’ve grown up around the poor, and they know that their buddy doesn’t need a $1600 camera. His response, and the response of their other friends, was “It’s his money. He can do what he likes with it.”]
The Bible disagrees. We can’t just do what we like with our money. Private property is not an absolute right, even though there are people in business today whose goal is that everything should be owned by someone, right down to the coding of your DNA. But, no matter what the leaders of companies like Enron think, we don’t have the freedom to spend all our money on ourselves or to squeeze every last drop of income or profit from what we own. We have a duty to share with those who have less, or who have nothing.
That’s why I was so happy when Esther proposed sending 15% of the income from the Roper Estate to the Sharing Way and why I’m so happy that the church is hosting the Out Of The Cold programme this winter.
This too is holiness.
According to Jesus the whole of the Old Testament law, or “instructions for living”, is summed up in two commandments. “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength and love your neighbour as yourself.” This chapter is where he got the second part of that, in verse 18. It sums up a 4x4 of instructions. Four sets of four instructions, each set ending with “I am the Lord”
There are four blatant ones. Don’t steal, lie, or deceive, and don’t try and use God’s name to convince people that you aren’t.
There are four which are harder to prove. Don’t defraud anyone (including the government) by fudging the numbers.
Don’t hold back people’s wages. This was important in Pakistan, which has lots of day labourers, but it is important here too. Lots of people live from one pay cheque to another. Holiness demands that they be paid on time, or, if they lend us money, that we pay them back quickly.
Don’t curse the deaf, they can’t hear you and defend themselves; or trip the blind, they can’t see to avoid you. You don’t realise the impact that this idea has had in Christian countries until you go to other cultures where the disabled are hidden away in the house, or harassed and abused on the streets.
There are four concerning the courtroom. Don’t pervert justice, take bribes, spread slander or lightly make a serious charge against others.
And there are four that address our basic attitudes. Not only are we not to hate others; if we see them doing something wrong we are responsible to challenge them on it. (Not a popular idea in our individualistic culture.) We’re not to bear a grudge but love others like ourselves.
We typically blame all of society’s problems on ‘the professionals’; the failure of the courts, or the police, or the social workers. We find it too easy to turn a blind eye to the real roots of any society’s problems, our attitudes to each other. In its original context here, the second great commandment shows us that to “love your neighbour as yourself” isn’t about warm fuzzy feelings or even about personal generosity. It’s about very practical social ethics in daily life, including the legal process.
This too is holiness.
There isn’t time to look at all there is in this chapter, but I do want to touch upon a few more things.
Verses 26-31 are mainly about holiness in religious activities. Most of the instructions are about not doing what surrounding societies did. I don’t think many of us are likely to sell our daughters into temple prostitution, but if we read horoscopes or go have our palms read we’re not just having some harmless fun. We’re participating in a form of religion that denies God’s ability to care for us and direct our ways.
Likewise if we abuse our bodies for the sake of values in the culture around us we are abusing something that God has made. In that context, I’m much more concerned about young women falling prey to bulimia and anorexia or young men injuring themselves in search of the perfect “six pack” than I am with piercings for the sake of fashion.
Verses 32-34 talk about respecting the vulnerable. Verse 32 says that if we forget that life is a gift from God, we lose the respect for human life that protects those who are otherwise expendable; the unborn, the very young and the very old.
The same goes for foreigners. Almost everyone here is a foreigner or comes from foreign stock. But we can easily forget that once our families have been here for a few generations. God tells the Israelites never to forget how they suffered as foreigners in Egypt and to always treat foreigners well.
This too is holiness.
Finally, verses 35-36 address holiness in the marketplace. The government sponsorship scandal in Ottawa, the dishonesty of Enron executives, and Westjet’s industrial espionage that has been all over the Spectator, only point out how relevant this passage still is.
Any form of dishonesty, from the market stall to international trade, are detestable to God. That’s the word used in Deuteronomy. The same word it uses for sexual perversion and child abuse. That’s a little different from the society around us which is appalled, and rightly so, by child abuse; but turns a blind eye to a little dishonesty here and there, or even a lot.
Religious folks like us like to think we know what holiness is, but it is so much bigger than our little categories. God calls us to be holy as he is holy. That means having integrity in every area of our lives; our families, what we do with our money, how we treat our neighbours, how we behave at work, how we treat the vulnerable, how we buy and sell things. There is no part of our lives that falls outside of God’s call to be holy.
Paul writes, “At one time you surrendered yourselves entirely as slaves to impurity and wickedness for wicked purposes. In the same way you must now surrender yourselves entirely as slaves of righteousness for holy purposes…. now you have been set free from sin and are the slaves of God.”
This is part of what it means to be a Christian. Jesus has set us free to be good, and to do good to others; to be people of integrity and compassion like him. And he promises to empower us to live that way.
(Cooks needed for out of the cold programme.)