Leviticus 19:1-1, 9-18

As we are wrapping up the season of Epiphany, where we saw a lot about the laws Jesus presented, we get a rare taste of Leviticus. When asked about the “greatest commandments”, Jesus combines Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18 to get ‘Love God and your neighbor as yourself’. That’s my short version.

I’m reminded of Monty Python’s Life of Brian, when Brian says, “okay, I’m the messiah” then tells them what to do. They look at him perplexed and ask how they should do that? If you know what Jesus meant by “neighbor” or how we should love them, please let me know. Leviticus actually does expand on it a bit, so let’s see what we got here.

We have some crazy farming practices where you don’t reap everything you sow. Instead, leave some for the poor and the “alien”, a.k.a. “immigrant”. Recent politics and decades of increasing greed would seem to disagree with that. Also, you shall not even hold on to wages overnight, kinda outdated, but the point is to treat your workers fairly. Justice is directly related to treating the poor impartially to the “great”. You shouldn’t even feel hate, let alone express it or profit from it.

As always, these rules get nearly impossible to follow. You’re not allowed to have human feelings. You’re supposed incur guilt if you do. Verse 18 seems like it might be giving you some wiggle room with it's use of those slippery two words “your people”, as if this only applies to a local tribe, or believers in God, but that is really stretching two words given the full context of the passage.

Overall, it's a pretty clear statement of thinking globally, or at least as global as you could think in the time of Leviticus.

1 Corinthians 3:10-11, 16-23

Sometimes Paul sounds a little more like the Gospel of Thomas and sometimes more like the Gospel of John. This passage straddles those two. In Thomas, Jesus is in all of us and we just need to recognize it and tap into that power. In John, Jesus was there at the beginning, creating the word, and we need to accept it so we can gain access to his power.

There have been a lot of “it is written” verses in these last few Corinthian passages. I haven’t been able to track them all down, sometimes those reference extra-biblical texts. Sometimes they help illuminate the verse, sometimes not so much. Verse 19 here are from Job 5:12-13, which is pretty cryptic. 20 refers to Isaiah 29:14, I'm not sure if that adds much. Isaiah uses the phrase, “disputer of this age”, sounds like that guy on the internet who wants to argue about everything. It's a rather bold claim that Jesus can take them all on.

Most of this passage is spent talking about foolishness and wisdom. I can find nothing but name-calling in this. I can’t find any standards in the text for measuring just what wisdom is, other than Christ. But Paul gives us nothing with which to measure Christ. He says you don’t get to. He doesn’t want the Corinthians arguing about whether he or Peter (Cephas) or Apollos explain Christ better. He just wants them to hear Christ’s wisdom. This is a rambling piece of non-advice as far as I can tell.

It reminds me of a quote from Bertrand Russell, "When two men of science disagree, they do not invoke the secular arm; they wait for further evidence to decide the issue, because, as men of science, they know that neither is infallible. But when two theologians differ, since there are no criteria to which either can appeal, there is nothing for it but mutual hatred and an open or covert appeal to force."

Matthew 5:38-48

We will explore more bits and pieces of the Sermon on the Mount later, but this will be the last of it for a while. Much of this section is familiar. It sounds kind of nice, turn the other cheek, give your coat away, all that. Under the right circumstances, such charitable notions are wonderful. What this sermon doesn’t give us is any context. Is this a way to increase the flourishing of all in a more just and equitable society? Is it a way for the oppressed to act with each other? Is it a way to present yourself to your oppressor to show them a better way?

This is not something that we need to just discuss in abstract terms anymore. There are studies of game theory, as in this video, that have determined how people react when presented with choices of being charitable or of taking advantage of other’s charity. Through experimentation, we can predict that if you offer cooperation, you will be rewarded with cooperation.

Then we get to a version of the “greatest commandment”, loving your neighbor. In this instance, even loving your enemy. Obviously this is problematic. He can’t mean the same type of love we give to friends and family, since then we would have no enemies. He can’t mean putting the same kind of trust in our enemies, or our enemies would take advantage of that. I don’t think a logical analysis of this is possible. Bart Campolo talked about loving those not like us in an interview in 2016 with Tripp Fuller of Home Brewed Christianity. He talked about getting past the differences of the secular and religious debate, where religious people put faith above reason and secular people put reason above everything, but we all need to put love first. We need to look to what people are valuing and find those common values of caring for one another and encourage that in each other.

The sermon talks of tax collectors and Gentiles, so it is clear he is talking about those representing the oppressor and those who believe differently. Although Jesus and the other prophets speak at length about how God will shine on you if you do the right thing, here he talks like a pantheist or deist with the sun and the rain shining or falling equally on everyone. He talks about getting out of our echo chambers and bubbles because if we don’t, we are just tax collectors, looking for payment of services.

And that last little bit of advice, “be perfect”, how perfectly un-useful. Perhaps this is that little bit of Buddhist philosophy sneaking in. Some say these authors were influenced by it, although I don’t recommended spending too much time researching that. But it does fit with the above, that there is good and evil everywhere, and the important thing is balance.