Jack McKinney
Pullen Memorial Baptist Church
May 11, 2008 — Pentecost Sunday
Text: Leviticus 21:1-6, 10-12
The Cost of Separation
Every sermon has a specific moment of origin when it is born. Sometimes sermons are born of inspiration when the preacher is suddenly struck with an idea so invigorating that she or he cannot wait to begin constructing it. I calculate that about one of my sermons a year is born this way. Many times sermons are born out of desperation. Sunday is always coming, as they say in my business, and like a journalist working on deadline many preachers find that the desperation of running out of time can produce all manner of creative theology.
But beyond inspiration and desperation, there is a third context in which sermons come to life. And that third way is invitation. Ministers get asked to preach somewhere else and a text or theme is given to us from which to speak. And that third is way is the genesis for this morning’s sermon.
Recently Rabbi Eric Solomon asked me to preach at Beth Meyer Synagogue in North Raleigh. Some of you will remember the wonderful sermon Rabbi Solomon gave at Pullen for our Martin Luther King, Jr. service earlier this year. I was thrilled to receive the invitation to speak in his synagogue yesterday morning and said yes immediately. And then he told me the text for the day was Leviticus 21. And I said “Oh.” If you asked Christians to rank the hardest books of the Bible to read Leviticus would be at the top of the list. Many people start the New Year with the intention of reading the whole Bible in twelve months, but those plans almost always die half-way through Leviticus. Plus, Leviticus is a book that some mean Christians turn to for scriptural support of whatever bias they are looking to uphold. Of course the problem with applying Leviticus that way is that as soon as you use the book to condemn someone you turn the page and some activity that you are involved in is being given the death penalty. So, as a general rule, I don’t preach a lot from Leviticus. In fact, until yesterday morning, I had never preached from the book in the 900 or so sermons I have given in my life.
After I received the invitation to preach on Leviticus at the synagogue I spent a couple of days struggling with this text. Then I called Rabbi Solomon, and just out of curiosity, asked him how he would approach this passage. I don’t recall what his exact words were, but I think it was something like, “Oh, I try not to preach from Leviticus.” Which shed some light on how I was invited to speak on this particular Sabbath.
So, like with many texts in the Bible, I was forced to wrestle with this one. And using the theory that what is good enough for the Jews is good enough for the Christians, I thought I’d share some of what I said at Beth Meyer yesterday.
My first inclination when reading Leviticus 21 is to think this is completely foreign to me. The text describes the restrictions placed on the priests in general, and the High Priest in particular, when it came to mourning a deceased relative. Much of the material here is strange if not shocking. The priests were allowed to attend the funerals only of their closest relatives because being around a dead body would defile them. The High Priest couldn’t even do that. He could not attend the funeral of any family member, even his father or mother, or it would defile him. All of which makes me think: What do I know about such unusual limitations? Why in the world would someone voluntarily live under such restrictions? Does this really have anything to do with my life in the twenty-first century?
And the honest answer is “no” if I read this passage too narrowly. The particular restrictions placed on the priests concerning funeral rituals have about as much application to my life as riding in a horse and buggy. But if I push beyond the literal reading of this passage to the principle behind it, then something shifts in me. I start to sympathize with these priests. After all, they are giving their lives to do work they feel God calls them to do. And in doing that work there are ways they must separate themselves from the larger culture. And that separation comes with a cost.
This feeling of being separated from those around me because of my calling hit home recently in an odd way. I was driving to meet someone after church on a Sunday afternoon and I passed a restaurant with an outdoor seating area. Many people were sitting in shorts and T-shirts, enjoying a leisurely meal with friends and family, seemingly without a care in the world. And I thought to myself, “I wonder what that is like?” To spend a Sunday eating brunch, not worried about a sermon to preach or a person in need, I wonder what that feels like? And it wasn’t a feeling of deprivation, because it is pretty obvious I’ve had my share of brunches, but it was just that awareness that my life is different. My Sundays are spent in different ways than most people. And there is a cost that is associated with that separation. There are things I will never experience because I am doing other things I feel compelled to do.
On this Pentecost Sunday when we celebrate the birth of the church, we should note that one of the things God calls the church to be is different. As followers of Jesus we are called to act and react in distinctive ways that can separate us from the culture around us. In a world where violence and force are the preferred methods for resolving disputes, the church teaches reconciliation and forgiveness. In a world that counts financial success as the ultimate sign of the good life, the church teaches us to store up treasures in heaven not on earth. As we rejoice today in the coming of the Spirit to call the church to life we should tell the truth that part of that calling separates us.
But if we take this principle of the cost of separation out of the specifically religious arena, we will see that it applies in many ways. On this Mother’s Day we would immediately recognize that there is a certain separation that comes with being a mother, and that separation has a cost. KaKi and I sometimes sit around playing the game Remember When. “Remember when we didn’t have children and we went where we wanted to without regard for how late we would be out?” “Remember when we didn’t have children and we watched the kind of movies we like?” But before we get very far into that game, KaKi will say something like, “Remember when the kids came into our life and how much love they brought to us?” And she is right, of course, but I also understand that when a woman becomes a mother there is a separation that occurs. It isn’t that KaKi has lost her identity as an independent woman, but much of her identity is now associated with Stephen and Allie. Being a mother separates KaKi from other relationships that used to be primary, it separates her from other interests that used to fill her days, and it separates her from her own needs much of the time. Doing something as important as raising children will separate you in ways that come with a high cost.
And the obvious question is “Why?” Why would those ancient priests in Leviticus separate themselves in ways that cost them so much? Well, the biblical word used to describe their action is holiness. To remain holy they were set apart. But that word tends to irritate modern ears. We hear “holy” and we think of perfection or self-righteousness. We know we are far from perfect and we hate to think that we might be self-righteous, so once again we doubt this text has much to do with our lives. But if we understand the concept of holiness in this passage as being set apart for a specific purpose, then that isn’t a completely foreign notion. All of us are set apart for specific purposes. Maybe we teach, or we raise children, or we volunteer for causes that are important to us. And if I could lump all of those holy callings we are fulfilling into one statement, this would be it: We are called by God to live lives full of justice and mercy. And if we take that calling seriously, if we really are seeking to be just and merciful in our work and relationships, then we will almost certainly find ourselves separated from a culture that doesn’t always value such virtues. But we will pay that price, pay it willingly in fact, because we care more about the causes and commitments that are important to us than whatever the cost may be to keep them.
I imagine those priests described in Leviticus felt like every new mother feels, like every teacher on her first day of school feels, like all of us feel when we are separated to do a task that seems overwhelming. We feel unworthy. Who are we to think we can make a difference and change people’s lives? Which reminds me of Annie Dillard’s quote that would be as applicable to those ancient priests as it is to us today:
Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? Or who shall stand in God’s holy place? There is no one but us. There is no one to send, nor a clean hand, nor a pure heart on the face of the earth, but only us, a generation comforting ourselves with the notion that we have come at an awkward time, that our innocent fathers are all dead—as if innocence had ever been—and our children busy and troubled, and we ourselves unfit, not yet ready, having each of us chosen wrongly, made a false start, failed, yielded to impulse and the tangled comfort of pleasures, and grown exhausted…. But there is no one but us. There never has been. (Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm)
Not a one of us comes to the holy work God calls us to do unblemished. God calls us anyway. Not a one of us feels worthy to be set apart for some noble purpose. God sets us apart anyway. Not a one of us is certain we can pay the cost required to live just and merciful lives. God says we can. And if we are looking for someone to come along who is better qualified or more able to fulfill this calling, then we should stop looking. Because there is no one here but us. There never has been.