Leviticus 19: 1-18 (links validated 1/24/23)

In his book, Now and Then, Frederick Buechner describes how as a seminary student, he was assigned to work part-time in an East Harlem parish. He says about the regular parish staff members whom I think Leviticus 19 would call “holy”: “They had caught something from Christ, I thought. Something of who he was and is flickered out through who they were. It is not easy to describe. It was compassion without sentimentality as much as anything else, I think—a lucid, cool, grave compassion. If it had a color, it would be a pale, northern blue. They never seemed to romanticize the junkies and winos and deadbeats and losers they worked among, and they never seemed to let pity or empathy distort the clarity with which they saw them for no more if no less than what they were. Insofar as they were able to approach loving them, I got the impression that they did so not just in spite of everything about them that was neither lovely nor lovable but right in the thick of it.

Our inherent religiosity, our deeply human impulse to create God in our own image, is so strong and dangerous that the Swiss theologian Karl Barth (1886–1968) called the gospel revelation the Aufhebung of all human religion — its abolition, annulment, or invalidation. That’s too extreme and conveniently binary for my taste. But Barth was repudiating Hitler, who claimed divine sanction, and his own theological professors, who had signed on to Hitler’s genocidal program, so his warning is well taken — divine revelation and human religion are not the same thing.

A man by the name of Bryan Anderson was driving home late one night along a lonely stretch of highway when he noticed a woman standing by a car at the side of the road. She was an older woman and looked like she needed help. Bryan pulled his old truck over and got out to see if he could lend a hand. The woman looked frightened as Bryan walked toward her, but he smiled, introduced himself and asked if he could be of any assistance. She told him that she was on her way home and had a flat tire. She said that she couldn't get any reception on her cell phone, so she couldn't call for help. Bryan looked at the tire on the lady's fancy new car and he told her he would do what he could to change it for her...

("Among other things Leviticus 19, by focusing us on the vulnerable people we so often encounter in life, reminds us that although being followers of God means more than just being good and gentle and kind, it does not mean less. These are things we ought to celebrate in one another and encourage in one another...")

He was driving home one evening, In his beat up Pontiac When an old lady flagged him down, Her Mercedes had a flat He could see that she was frightened, Standing out there in the snow 'Til he said I'm here to help you ma'am, By the way my name is Joe She said I'm from St. Louis, And I'm only passing through I must have seen a hundred cars go by, This is awful nice of you When he changed the tire, And closed her trunk And was about to drive away, She said how much do I owe you Here's what he had to say...

A similar tale is told by the Danish author, Isak Dinesen, Karen Blixen, in her gothic story, "The Roads of Pisa." Set in the larger story, there is a marionette play entitled "The Revenge of Truth." In it a puppet witch comes to a village and puts a curse on all the townspeople. Everyone would really be what they only appeared to be. So the man who pretended he was generous would really be generous. The miser, who told other people he was poor, became poor. The woman who only acted kind would become kind. The woman, who said she loved a man, but only wanted his money, really did come to love him. The lies of the liar became true. In the end the witch comes back and says that life is really a marionette play and what we want to be, we become...