Preparing for Holy Week

MTS Chapel  4-8-2014                                   Preparing for Holy Week

1 Peter 1:13-21

Therefore, with minds that are alert and fully sober, set your hope on the grace to be brought to you when Jesus Christ is revealed at his coming. As obedient children, do not conform to the evil desires you had when you lived in ignorance. But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; for it is written: “Be holy, as I am holy.” Since you call on a Father who judges each person’s work impartially, live out your time as aliens here in reverent fear. For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your ancestors, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect. He was chosen before the creation of the world, but was revealed in these last times for your sake. Through him you believe in God, who raised him from the dead and glorified him, and so your faith and hope are in God.

“Be holy as I am holy” writes Peter.  He was drawing upon the injunction in Leviticus 11:44-45, “For I am Yahweh your God, so you must consecrate yourselves and be holy because I am holy. You must not defile yourselves….  For I am Yahweh, who brought you up from the land of Egypt to be your God, so you must be holy because I am holy.”  And also Leviticus 20:26, “You shall be holy to me, for I the Lord am holy and have separated you from the peoples, that you should be mine.”

            But going beyond the Old Testament, Peter is clear that our holiness is predicated upon our being joined to Christ.  The holiness of Christ is what makes us holy as God is holy.  Our holiness must be that of the holiness of Christ who joins our humanity to God’s divinity.  Given these passages from Scripture, and with Holy Week bearing down upon us, it might be helpful to consider what it means to be holy, or how in our humanity we can be joined to God’s divinity.  Holy Week, after all, is when we celebrate our redemption through Jesus Christ, a redemption which practically means our humanity is joined to God’s divinity.  It is in this redemption that we are made holy.

            Peter is clear that our holiness is grounded in the holiness of Christ.  Peter writes, “with minds that are alert and fully sober, set your hope on the grace to be brought to you when Jesus Christ is revealed at his coming. As obedient children, do not conform to the evil desires you had when you lived in ignorance. But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do.”  Redeemed by Christ, graced by Christ, we are to be holy as Christ as Christ is holy.

            And Peter emphasizes, as does Leviticus, that holiness has an inherently ethical dimension.  Holiness separates us from the world, sets us apart, and sets us on a distinctive way of life.  Jesus not only redeems us by his life, he redeems us in giving us his way of life.  In being disciples of Jesus, we are set us apart as we are set upon a distinctive way of life.

            But we need to be clear, Jesus’ way that sets us apart is not a way of life that sets us upon self-righteousness.  Jesus spends much of his life and teaching undercutting an approach to holiness that makes holiness a method of self-righteousness.  He, in fact, takes particular care to puncture the hardness of heart that typifies self-righteousness. 

He tells one self-righteous group of religious folks, “Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you” (Mt 21:31).  If you go to a banquet Jesus says, don’t seek the highest place of honor, but rather be humble. 

And Jesus tells the host of a banquet, “When you give a dinner or a banquet, don’t invite your friends and family and relatives and rich neighbors. If you do, they will invite you in return, and you will be paid back. When you give a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. They cannot pay you back. But God will bless you and reward you when his people rise from death” (Lk 14:10-14).

            Throughout his life, Jesus overturns the usual expectations of who is holy and who is not.  Instead of the professionally holy, such as the Scribes, Pharisees, and Sadducees, Jesus’ list of holy ones would likely include the following:  the woman who anointed his head who was accused of wasting money (Mt 26:6-13), blind people, lepers, children, the Canaanite woma-n whose faith he saluted (Mt 15:21-31), a centurian whose servant was sick (Mt 8:5-13), a Samaritan woman at the well (Jn 4:3ff), a man born blind who is panhandling near the temple (Jn 9:1-41), and finally the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the naked, the sick, the imprisoned, all of whom Jesus directly identifies with in Matthew 25:31-46.

            What do all of these holy folks have in common?  If you hang out with them, you will be separated from the usual order of things.  If you offer them hospitality, you will be rejected by the powerful folks who reinforce the status quo.  A fancy term for all of these folks is that they are “the Other,” they are people on the margins. 

            In making this claim, that those considered “the Other” are closest to God, and are most holy, Jesus shows his faithfulness to the God of Israel.  After all, it was the God of Israel who made an enslaved people, God’s chosen people.  God’s holiness continually undercuts notions of holiness that are about superiority or self-righteousness.  God’s holiness rejects the way we typically value other human beings, by their attractiveness or power.  Instead God in God’s holiness values those not considered attractive or powerful.

            I think holy people in the history of Christianity reflect this kind of holiness, a holiness in which being set apart is being set upon a way of life in solidarity with those who are hurting, oppressed, other. 

St. Martin of Tours took his cloak off for a poor man and came to reject participation in the Roman military.  St. Francis kissed and ministered to lepers.  Saints Martin Luther King, Jr. and Fannie Lou Hamer stood with those beat down by Jim Crow and by poverty.  St. Dorothy Day stood with men and women who are homeless, mentally ill, addicted, despised.  St. Cesar Chavez stood with farm workers, many of them immigrants, some of them not “legal.”  St. Andre Trocme stood with the Jews hunted down by Nazis.  St. Dietrich Bonhoeffoer was martyred in his resistance to Hitler.  St. Oscar Romero was martyred because he stood with peasants and those subject to death squads.  Saints Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth stood with African American slaves.  The martyrs of Memphis stood with those suffering from Yellow Fever who because of their poverty couldn’t escape the city.

            As we remember Jesus in the Holy Week which is about to begin, we are called to enter into his way of holiness, a way holiness that is set upon a way of love for those who are despised, rejected, neglected, and set upon a way that seeks justice.  Dietrich Bonhoeffer describes this way of love with justice, “[The church's] task is not simply to bind the wounds of the victim beneath the wheel, but also to put a stick in the wheel itself."    

Peter tells his first century follows of Jesus, “you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your ancestors … with the precious blood of Christ.” 

That empty way of life was the way of the Roman Empire.  The Roman Empire’s way was a way much like the way of empire today.  Such an imperial way is premised upon powerful domination of others instead of hospitality for others.  Such a way is premised upon criminalizing and exploiting and despising the poor.  Such a way uses violence and war to intimidate and control others.  Such a way creates “vagrant free zones” in downtown Memphis and puts up “no panhandling” signs in Overton Square to criminalize the poor.

            The good news is that in Jesus Christ we have another way, a way of truth and of life.  Jesus sets us upon a way of welcome and inclusion.  Jesus set us upon a way that recognizes the dignity of each person.  Jesus sets us upon a way of peace with justice.  It is the way of Jesus that embraces the Other, embraces those on the margins, and so also embraces us, the broken and sinners of this world.   

So during Holy Week as we remember the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, may we remember the holiness of Jesus, how he was holy, how his holiness makes us holy, and how he sets us upon a way of holiness in which we share life with God who is Other.  

May we meditate upon that call to holiness to be holy as Christ is holy.  In doing this, we might focus our holy week meditation not only on First Peter, but also on the words of the New Testament book of Hebrews, “Jesus also, that He might make the people holy through His own blood [that is His own life], suffered outside the gate. So, let us go out to Him outside the camp [that is to the margins], bearing His reproach. For here we do not have a lasting city, but we are seeking the city which is to come.” 

In that holy city we are joined with those Jesus invited us to invite to the banquet, and in that holy city we thus all sit down together at the welcome table, a welcome table Jesus prepared for us all!