Wednesday • 5/18/2022Wednesday of the 5th Week of Easter
This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 72; Leviticus 19:1-18; 1 Thessalonians 5:12-28; Matthew 6:19-24
This morning’s Canticles are: before the Psalm reading, Pascha Nostrum (“Christ Our Passover,” BCP, p. 83); following the OT reading, Canticle 11 (“The Third Song of Isaiah,” Isaiah 60:1–3,11a,14c,18–19, BCP, p. 87); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 16 (“The Song of Zechariah,” Luke 1:68–79, BCP, p. 92)
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Leviticus is a closed book to too many people. That’s not as it should be. Eastertide is a season for instruction on the “So what?” of Easter, and these chapters from Leviticus are valuable for just that. Yesterday, we saw that Yahweh has dealt with sin by covering it and by removing it. Now, as a result, the Lord proclaims his people “holy,” which means “set apart” for relationship with himself. He says that because he is holy they are to be holy as well (Leviticus 19:2), and he shows them what that looks like.
Holiness in worship. The people’s holiness means their worship does not look like that of the surrounding world. The Lord’s people have their own way of measuring time: the Sabbath. They don’t make images of Yahweh. To do so would make him look just like the deities that surrounding cultures imagine for themselves. The Lord invites his people to commune with him in feasts of “well-being,” but on his terms, not theirs (Leviticus 19:5-8). Unlike peoples they encounter, they don’t try to curry favor with their deity by selling their daughters to perform sacred sexual rites (Leviticus 19:29, from tomorrow’s reading).
Holiness in life. The people’s holiness means they differ too in the way they treat one another. The way of the world seems to be: “I will treat you the way you treat me.” Yahweh’s way is: “Treat one another the way I have treated you.” He summarizes his approach at the end of tomorrow’s reading: “You shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God” (Leviticus 19:34). The shorthand is: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” It means, for instance, that all the profit from my labors do not belong to me—a portion belongs to “the poor and the alien,” those who live under conditions like the slavery I endured in Egypt. It also means that my neighbor deserves truthfulness from me in my interpersonal dealings with them—even when that means I have to tell them they are wrong (Leviticus 19:17). And Yahweh’s justice system is “neither partial to the little man nor overawed by the great” (Leviticus 19:15 Jerusalem Bible).
For the Lord, the ritual and the ethical support one another, and so he instructs us: “Be holy” and “love your neighbor.”
The coming King. Give the King your justice, O God, and your righteousness to the King’s Son; that he may rule your people righteously and the poor with justice. — Psalm 72:1. Israel’s hopes remained focused on the coming of a King who would rule justly, make Israel a showcase for God’s kind intentions towards the poor and the distressed, and cause the nations to bow before him and “do him service.” Solomon’s psalm captures a moment in Israel’s life when a measure of that hope was being realized. And Christians have always seen here a prefiguring of the coming of Christ. Thus, the splendid hymn text by Isaac Watts (Hymnal 1982, no. 544):
Jesus shall reign where’er the sun
doth his successive journey run;
his kingdom stretch from shore to shore,
till moon shall wax and wane no more.
To him shall endless prayer be made,
and praises throng to crown his head;
his Name like sweet perfume shall rise
with every morning sacrifice.
People and realms of every tongue
dwell on his love with sweetest song;
and infant voices shall proclaim
their early blessings on his Name.
Blessings abound where’er he reigns:
the prisoners leap to lose their chains,
the weary find eternal rest,
and all who suffer want are blest.
Let every creature rise and bring
peculiar honors to our King;
angels descend with songs again,
and earth repeat the loud amen.
Collect for the Fifth Sunday of Easter. Almighty God, whom truly to know is everlasting life: Grant us so perfectly to know your Son Jesus Christ to be the way, the truth, and the life, that we may steadfastly follow his steps in the way that leads to eternal life; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Be blessed this day.
Reggie Kidd+
Image: Stained Glass, Cathedral Church of Saint Luke, Orlando, FL