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here. Now from the Gospel of Matthew the fifth chapter, you have heard that it was said. An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. But I say unto you, do not

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resist an evildoer, but if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also, and if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat , give your cloak as well, And if anyone

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forces you to go one mile go also. The second pile give to everyone who begs from you and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you . You have heard that it was said, You

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shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say unto you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you so that you may be Children of your father in heaven, for he makes

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the sun to rise on the evil and on the good and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous nous. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not

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even the tax collectors do the same. And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than the others? Do not even the gentiles do the same. Be perfect. Therefore

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, as your heavenly father is perfect, this is the word of the Lord. Thanks peter Gade, I'm generally not a lecture Neri preacher. I like to find that portion of scripture that with a little

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conceit, I think nobody has ever preached on before . But occasionally the lecture lecture Neri is a little wiser than the preacher. These passages assigned for today draw me in a direction that I do not normally

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follow in the pulpit, where I tend to lean towards the political, always within the bounds of the johnson amendment. These passages speak to me of the journey inward, a journey uncommonly necessary for these times

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. So this first passage in Leviticus that we read this morning, it is from that infamous book of Leviticus, I say infamous because for most christians, leviticus represents the worst of Judaism. It's tedious,

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picky infatuation with rules and regulations, the legalism that infest the Judaism that poll seems to reject in place of that we christians have the simple law of love , what more is necessary. This particular passage from

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Leviticus is the only one included in the entire three year cycle of the election. ErI It is cited here and presented as an alternative later in the season of Pentecost, Where it is matched up with the

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Great Commandment in Matthew 22. But many jews would tell you that Leviticus lies at the very heart of the Torah because of its emphasis on the holiness of God and the heart of Leviticus is these 10 chapters

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of the Holiness Code, in which the commandments and statutes given to Israel on Mount Sinai are justified with the words You shall be holy for the Lord. Your God is holy, what we have today in

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today's reading is a portion of that code and what lies around these words. Those important words are a series of thou shalt and thou shalt not some of the regulations and the Holiness Code, our ritual in

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nature, but not in this particular selection and none of the civil statutes are here. This portion focuses on the ethical leave, the corner of your fields and your vineyards unharvested, so that the poor may

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glean on the remnants do not slander, do not bear a grudge. Some of these commandments repeat some of the 10 commandments. You shall not steal, you shall not lie, you shall not swear falsely

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in God's name. Now, it's tempting to get into the weeds here and sort through some of the really interesting detail of these mandates the particular phrasing and the juxtaposition here and there. But that would take

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us well beyond the noon hour. And I suspect that the Eucharist here, however fulfilling it is, is less than filling. You will want lunch, so I want to develop on the core of this

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which is Holiness. You shall be holy if we want to crack the holiness code, this is where we need to start now. In traditional terms, we think of holiness as the opposite of the profane

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. The temple in Jerusalem was a holy site at the edges of the holy space of the courtyard were stones, warning foreigners not to enter into the holy courtyard because they were not pure enough. They could

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not enter on penalty of death, though it is a little unclear whether the death blow would be caused by human or divine instrument, But that's not this holiness. This holiness is all encompassing here. The

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holiness of God makes everything else holy. Since the Lord Your God is holy, therefore you shall be holy. You do not have any choice in the matter. You may read to the very edges of

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your field. You may play, you may defraud your neighbors, You may steal wages from your laborers . You may taunt the death and scatter stones in front of the blind, but but you are not

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thus unholy. You have rather betrayed the holiness. You have. Your holiness is inalienable. It is the image of God branded upon your soul. You may deny it. You may abuse it. You

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may defy it, but you cannot lose it. You are holy because the Lord, your God is holy. Get used to it. This may not be entirely good news. Like an itch that will

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not go away. Your holiness nags at you like an uneasy conscience, which is exactly what it often is. You cannot be rid of it, but it's not an itch. It appears as an endless

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catalogue of rules. You shall do this. You should not do that. And if you do this , and if you do not do that well, I am the Lord need I say more. Got

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a problem with that. Read Amos. Yeah, but it's not really like that though. Chapter After Chapter of Leviticus stacks, Commandment upon Commandment. It is not simply a rule book. How do we

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know? We listened to the psalmist? The psalmist does not say, teach me your statutes. The psalmist says, teach me the way of your statutes . The psalmist does not say give me a list

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of your rules, the psalmist says, give me understanding. The psalmist does not say, open for me, the brook book of your Laws, the famous says, Lead me in the path of your

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commandments. For I delight in it. Note carefully here, though, that the psalmist does not delight in the commandments. The psalmist delights in the path . It is not about the rules, it's about

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the path. The rules do not make for holiness . The commandments are but the paving stones on the path to holiness. So what we seek is not to really live within the Rules, though we don't

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want to live outside of them, but that the rules live within us, as the Salma says. Give me life in your ways. Note also that in leviticus, these rules are given to the community

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, not just individuals, moses, is instructed not just to speak to the people of Israel, but to speak to the congregation of the people of Israel . Holiness is both individual and collective. You may

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have heard that the common hindu greeting to one another is nama stay, which means the God in me greets the God and you, and this is like unto that the holiness and me greets the holiness in

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you. This is the substance then of every encounter . Whether we recognize it or not, it is the basis of all the logistical requirements. God's holiness pervades everything and everyone. It is the ground of

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being all the tangles of the statutes of God, lead back to holiness and emerge from holiness. But still do we know what holiness is? I will say that holiness is mindfulness, that's a word we

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hear mostly in the connection in the context of buddhism , but it is thoroughly a christian concept as well in muslim and shared with other traditions as well. The enormous detail that comprises the Jewish law, the

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613 minutes vote and all the footnotes to those Mitts vote which go on and on and on unto the present day. They're still writing footnotes. These are reminders that holiness is not some vague and vacuous call

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for piety. It is manifest in every moment of our lives and work in every detail in every motion in every word. It thus requires mindfulness. It requires attention to each moment, to this moment to

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this that is before you. This that is facing you, a friend of mine, Omid Safi, who is a professor of Islamic studies at Duke University . God bless him. And a frequent contributor to

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the Wonderful to a wonderful blog on being he tells this story. The prophet Mohammed was once asked what was the one essential quality for prayers to be valid ? Many in his community thought they knew the right

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answer. Some thought the prophet would say it is the perfect grammar of Arabic, the language of God . Others thought the answer would be the most beautiful and melodious recitation of the Koran. Others expect would

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be the perfect performance of the ritual of prayer. Oh, but Mohammed's answer was none of these. He said, what is essential is presence in the heart. Now, it is not the presence of

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God. Oh Meade explains, For God is always present. It is we humans who are often absent from our own heart. So much of our lives is spent in a fractured state of heart. We

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speak about being scatterbrained, but the truth of the matter is that the scattering is much more systematic. We are scattered at every level in our body and our mind and our soul and our spirit. And

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we do this to ourselves. To pray with the heart is an unscratched oring to have our heart where our feet are in the moment. The jewish philosopher , Abraham Joshua, Heschel. See, I feel

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obliged to include lots of religions. Uh, he said It takes three things to attain a sense of significant being God, a soul in the moment, and these three are always here. Or maybe it

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is a muslim. The priestly editors of Leviticus were jews as is special. Those who canonized the gospel of Matthew were christians. We have this human dilemma in common, but as leviticus implies, and Jesus

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states more clearly, the inalienable gift of holiness is also held in common. B. E. Holy , for the Lord, your God is holy with the full authority of God As holiness incarnate, Jesus

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tells us to go beyond our contractual sense of ethics in which we give what we receive pay, what is owed and respect the clear division between friend and enemy. He reminds us Jesus does that the holiness

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of God is reflected not only in the people of Israel, but in all the Children of Eve and Adam, God makes the sun to rise on the evil and the good and send rain upon the righteous

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and the unrighteous. All are held in the cup of God's Holy Hand. The ethic of jesus is an ethic of excess for God's holiness. Unlike the temples, holiness has no boundaries. Jesus ends his

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discourse with perhaps the most frightening words in the gospels . Perhaps the most frightening words in the whole bible be perfect, be ye perfect. Therefore, as your heavenly father is perfect, this idea of perfection

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gives the impression of completeness, which is precisely why it is so scary. We are so incomplete. But it is clear from the psalmist that we are talking about a path, not an arrival. God

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does not set us up for failure. God sets our feet upon a path of understanding, a path for delight and life. All of this has everything to do with this moment in our nation's being.

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We have nothing to offer this world, this nation , this community, this place. If we cannot offer it in holy mindfulness and mindful holiness, there is a time for anger, a time for sorrow

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, a time for joy. There is a time to march and a time to rest. There are times for speaking, even shouting and times for silence . There is never a time when mindful holiness can

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be set aside and there is nothing that can resist it, no injustice, no greed, no slander , no grudge can withstand the power of the heart bent on holiness, and that is as political as

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it gets. I'm going to end with words of Wendell, berry familiar to many of you, I am sure, and he brings these strange ideas of holiness down to earth. He writes. So friends

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every day. Do something that won't compute. Love the Lord love the world, work for nothing. Take all that you have and be poor. Love someone who does not deserve it. The echo of

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the sermon. Their love, someone who does not deserve it, denounced the government and embrace the flag . Hope to live in that free republic for which it stands, give your approval to all that.

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You cannot understand praise ignorance for what man has not encountered. He has not destroyed. Ask the questions that have no answers, invest in the millennium Plant Sequoia's and his final line is practice resurrection, all

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of which is to say B. E. Holy . For the Lord, your God is holy Army