Holy (Lev 16-27)

What does it mean to be holy? When I think of the word I imagine stained glass, candles, and old books with pages that smell of dry paper and dust. I can smell the oil Crystal, my favorite of the old guard alter guild ladies from the church of my youth, used to clean the railings. I remember the fear she placed in me that the sanctuary was holy and there was to be no horsing around therein. Even when she was threatening my life, there was a kind wink that would inevitably ease my fears just enough to know she cared deeply for me and was trying to teach me something special.


As I read the scriptures I see both similarity and drastic difference in holiness. Over again God says in Leviticus, "be holy for I am holy." In jewish culture and language it simply means separate. "Be set apart from everyone, everything else. Much like Crystal tried to teach me that the Church building was to be separate, different from ordinary space. This is the similarity. Holiness means different.


But what should be holy? Is it a tabernacle? A special sacrifice? A building, or a railing, a special garment or cloth? Are these items holy because there is something special about them or do they become holy because we separate them? What was God trying to teach us? Or maybe he is still teaching us the same lesson... 
"Be holy because I am holy."


Just as holy as the sacred space is the dirty, smelly sheep that lives in the lower room of the family home.  The holy invades the ordinary as a reminder that it isn't about the stuff, but about you and I. We are what is holy. This is way Romans 12 reminds us that we are to live life as a living sacrifice to God and 1 Peter reminds us that we are Gods House of living stones. 
"Be holy for I am holy"   


The people of the bible, much like us, often forgot that what God was trying to teach them in a pattern of living was not about the rules in particular, but the lesson that to be holy, set apart, is to live in such a way that the nations around them would see God through them and come to worship him. The Jewish Law has more accommodations and inclusions for welcoming the foreigner than any other of its time. It has more accommodations for caring for the poor  and preventing injustice than any other I have read. This is what it means to be holy.... 

‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment.  And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
Matthew 22:37-40


How are we living differently than the world around us so that they, as we live among them, see God in the way we live and love? May you be holy as God is holy.


In Jesus' Name,
Amen