Surgery

Passage: Leviticus 20

The 8^th episode of the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation, finds the crew of the USS Enterprise in a veritable paradise. “Rubicon III” is a lush, flawless world inhabited by beautiful people whose society is enlightened and peaceful. Order and harmony abound in this seemingly perfect world. The visitors discover too late that this order is maintained by an unwavering system of law that stipulates only one consequence for any infraction: death. Fear of execution keeps the locals in line.

Leviticus 20 gives the impression that this is how God’s people maintain order. Leviticus 20 follows on the heels of several chapters’ worth of various rules. Many of the rules seem strange; their purposes mysterious to us. Our mystification about God’s rules is only heightened by the harsh consequences spelled out in Leviticus 20: death or banishment. Why the extreme measures?

It pays to revisit the relationship between God and the Israelites. God has rescued them from slavery, and claimed them as his chosen people. It is God’s intention to restore within their communities something of the conditions of paradise. To establish for his people life as it was meant to be lived. This is God’s gift to them. In turn, it’s the mission of God’s people to model for the world around them this better life – life the way it was meant to be lived. All humanity, the Israelites included, had lost an innate sense of how to live right. It’s as though humanity’s common sense had gotten distorted by the fall into sin. God intervenes and becomes common sense for the Israelites, offering them unparalleled insight into his good design for Creation. They become God’s people – a redeemed people, and a light to the nations.

However, they cannot be either of these things if they give themselves to the reprehensible, and ultimately destructive, practices of the rest of the world. God identifies certain practices as sins – forbidden for his people because of the wedge they create between people and God; forbidden because of the way they infect healthy community. God provides redemption for certain sins. But for others God offers only one remedy: surgery. The perpetrators of certain sins can only be cut from within their people. God’s people. This harsh response deters those potentially drawn to certain behaviors; as well, it eliminates the possibility of certain sins spreading throughout the community. God is concerned for the health of each member of his people. Even more, God is concerned for their health as a nation. If they are infected and corrupted by sin, God’s intervention on their behalf will be for naught, and their mission to the world will be compromised. God insists that his people identify the kinds of infection that will prove deadly to the body, then perform surgery.

There is some danger in applying this view of sin to the context of the church. We continue to be God’s chosen people. We are called to be holy – to be set apart in such a significant way that the rest of the world takes notice. We are vigilant about sin, and rightly so. However, this vigilance is most often exercised in our preoccupation with the sin of other people – fellow members of the church and even non-Christians in the world around us. We are on shaky ground when we think it's our job to do away with the other sinners while remaining oblivious to our own sin. The imperative for members of the church is to begin with vigilance about one’s own sin. Jesus warns regularly against judging other people. And in his teaching about sin, Jesus encourages people to examine themselves for signs of the deadly infection. For example, in Matthew 7 Jesus uses this metaphor:

Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye.

Jesus does not reduce the necessity of cutting out sin. Jesus does not deny the deadly effects of sin in the life of a child of God. But Jesus recognizes the ways in which the commands of Leviticus 20 will go awry in the life of the church. His command is to be relentless in one’s pursuit of holiness; to be meticulous in the removal of sin; but to start with you. Hear what Jesus says in Mark 9:

If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life maimed than with two hands to go into hell, where the fire never goes out. And if your foot causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life crippled than to have two feet and be thrown into hell. And if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into hell, where "their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched.

Leviticus 20 establishes that sin is a life and death business. Whereas Jesus changes drastically the way this principle is put into practice, the principle itself is the same. Anything that separates us from God will lead to our ultimate demise. This is true for our lives as individuals, and our life as a community of faith. We bear responsibility for ourselves and how we live. And we bear a responsibility to each other. Our connection with God is life; it is in our best interest to remove anything that threatens this life.