Day: March 29, 2022

Sermons

Lenten Meditation #3 on Leviticus

This is the third of four Lenten meditations on Leviticus. The first is posted here and the second is posted here.

“You shall be holy; for I the Lord your God am holy”

The Holiness Code of Leviticus (ch. 17-26) is particularly significant since it sets before us the conditions of holiness – not just of being set apart but of wholeness – which is to be found in terms of our relation to God and his grace moving in us. The Holiness Code is repeatedly punctuated by recurring refrains about God as the I AM, the principle of our liberation and sanctification. That important spiritual idea is complemented by the ethical demands which belong to that sense of our identity with God.

In other words, holiness is necessarily connected to our identity with God which, in the Christian understanding, is about our identity and life together in the body of Christ. It is not accidental, then, that the second half of the Summary of the Law is based on Leviticus where the principle of loving your neighbour as yourself is first expressed (Lev. 19.18) and then later joined to the Deuteronomic principle of loving God. Love of God and love of neighbour belong together. If nothing else, the Christian understanding simply intensifies that way of thinking and acting.

As such, the ethical demands in Leviticus are grounded in the identity of God who identifies himself to us as the fruition and perfection of our humanity. In these chapters which seem to be forbiddingly particular and restricted to the limits of a tribal culture, we see the aspects of something more universal: an ethical understanding about the stranger in our midst, about the sabbath of the land, about the concept of jubilee, and about how one deals with the inequalities of wealth. Though Leviticus seems to point to older tribal forms of identity, the text makes clear that it also points forward to ‘the gestalt of the spirit,’ to our openness to the grandeur and grace of God; in short, to our wholeness as holiness in Christ.

This does not take away from some of the troubling forms of worship in its injunctions and prohibitions that we find in Leviticus. There is a rigour to the Holiness Code precisely about the holiness of God and thus about any disdain and dismissal of God’s holiness. The latter constitutes a form of blasphemy not just from within Israel but for all of humanity. The penalty is severe – being put to death for blasphemy whether one is of Israel or not! This challenges our contemporary viewpoint which, since it sees all religious conviction as essentially a personal matter, cannot help but regard the idea of blasphemy resulting in death as something utterly abhorrent and inhuman, primitive and barbaric. Yet the point in Leviticus is, I think, fairly clear. We only live when we are alive to God and his word. Those who do not are ‘the already dead,’ we might say, dead to God and to his word as Law. Like the deaths of Aaron’s own sons in Leviticus because of their presumption about ritual – namely, acting independently of the order, as it were – the stoning of the blasphemers, both Jew and non-Jew, is about their presumption in the denial of God, effectively making themselves God, but violating the conditions of life itself.

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Prayers and liturgy

John Keble, Scholar and Poet

The collect for today, the commemoration of John Keble (1792-1866), Priest, Tractarian, Poet (source):

Father of the eternal Word,
in whose encompassing love
all things in peace and order move:
grant that, as thy servant John Keble
adored thee in all creation,
so we may have a humble heart of love
for the mysteries of thy Church
and know thy love to be new every morning,
in Jesus Christ thy Son our Lord,
who liveth and reigneth with thee,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Epistle: Romans 12:9-21
The Gospel: St Matthew 5:1-12

John KebleJohn Keble’s Assize Sermon entitled “National Apostasy“, delivered at Oxford on 14 July 1833, is regarded as the beginning of the renewal movement known as the Oxford Movement or Tractarian Movement. In that sermon, preached at the University Church of St. Mary the Virgin, Rev. Keble condemned the growth of liberalism in the Church of England and took the nation to task for turning away from God and ignoring the prophetic calling of the church. The sermon caused a sensation across Britain.

Between 1833 and 1841, Rev. Keble, John Henry Newman, Edward Bouverie Pusey, and others issued a series of 90 pamphlets called Tracts For The Times (hence Tractarian Movement), in which they presented their views on ecclesiology and theology. Tractarianism emphasised the importance of the ministry and the sacraments as God-given ordinances and ultimately developed into Anglo-Catholicism, which has been highly influential in the Anglican Communion as well as other Christian traditions.

Keble College, Oxford, was founded in his memory in 1870. The College was designed by William Butterfield, a leading exponent of Victorian Gothic who had been raised in a Nonconformist family but later became a convinced High-Church Anglican. He and other architects influenced by the Oxford Movement looked to medieval cathedrals for inspiration and designed churches full of colour as a celebration of God’s creation. The walls of Keble College Chapel are lined with brilliant mosaics showing scenes from the Old Testament and the life of Christ, and patristic and medieval saints. Some see Keble College and Chapel as the high point of Butterfield’s architectural achievements.

John Keble’s page at Hymnary.org lists dozens of hymns. Some of Rev. Keble’s writings, including “National Apostasy” and seven Tracts For The Times, are posted here. All of the tracts are posted here.

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