Year A: Proper 25 | Leviticus 19:1-2, 15-18; Matthew 22:34-46
St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church
October 25, 2026
the Rev. Jonathan Hanneman
To watch the full service, please visit this page.
“You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy.” – Leviticus 19:2[1]
Back during my first round of grad school, I was having something of an existential crisis. My dad had been diagnosed with stage four cancer. I was deeply depressed. The weight of the sin I saw in myself was truly unbearable. On top of all that, I was struggling to reconcile what I was reading in the Bible with how we in the religious community that ran my school were actually treating people.
Weekday chapel services were required for undergrad students, and grad students were “encouraged” to go—meaning we were required to attend unless working a school job. With my internal turmoil, I found it hard to listen to what the preachers continued to tell us, so I managed to arrange for my work schedule to largely conflict with chapel. After some time, one of my coworkers (who was no longer a student) told me that he thought I might appreciate the current preacher. This guest speaker was saying things much more in line with what I had been coming to understand in my own study, so I decided to attend.
The speaker was indeed good. He was challenging a lot of the things I thought we were doing wrong, and people seemed to be listening. As he launched into a series of rhetorical questions asking us whether or not we really thought God would send people to Hell for the minor offenses and misunderstandings we constantly judged outsiders for, I couldn’t believe where he was heading. Would someone actually dare confront us for our arrogance and pretension? Just as he hit his stride, he suddenly answered his own questions with a simple, “Well, yes.” Sitting in the balcony amidst roughly 1800 other students, faculty, and staff I heard my voice ring out, “No!” My friend immediately grabbed me and threw his hand over my mouth.
Lunch followed chapel, and I was furious. My friend kept trying to talk me down. As he drove us the mile or so back to work, I choked out, “I will not have their god! I am morally better than their god!”[2] My friend slammed the bakes and gaped at me with huge eyes. I don’t remember what happened after that or if I even ended up riding the rest of the way to work with him, but it was a defining moment in my life as a Christian. And that’s because, spontaneous as the statement may have been, it was completely true.
The god we worshiped was cruel and vengeful. He (and we did understand him to be male) talked a good game about mercy and forgiveness, but the follow through was tenuous at best and almost always soaked in brutality. I was about as close as you could get to being a moral perfectionist, but clearly, even in my desperate shame, I was kinder, more generous, and more lenient than our god. What kind of monster were we actually serving? What kind of “loving” god condemns people to eternal damnation for not just listening to but simply hearing an unpreferred style of music? What kind of “merciful” god casts people into hell for inhaling tobacco smoke or sipping liquids containing a particular molecular structure—one that god had created? What kind of “longsuffering” god sends people, undying and fully aware, to a Lake of Fire because they didn’t manage to keep their hair the right length?[3] Eternal life with a god that fickle would be nightmare. Having to be present (and perfect) before that god—forever—would be far worse than Hell itself.
Roughly two-and-a-half decades later, I still believe that. None of us should worship anything as god once we realize it’s morally inferior. I can’t bow before someone or something cruel or exclusionary or exacting to the point of despair. I cannot be perfect before God—I’m just a human. There is no choice for us but to make mistakes and misunderstand and cause offense from time to time. A god that condemns us for being exactly what they made us to be is an abomination. That kind of god cannot be God; if they were, the physical universe would have no choice but to consume itself with violence and chaos.
Surprisingly, this realization didn’t turn me off to religion, probably because the God I had begun to recognize in the course of my voracious Bible reading—particularly the one Jesus and Isaiah presented and spoke for—didn’t line up very well with the god I had been taught to serve. That God was forgiving and kind. They didn’t expect perfection. That God was more like a parent or grandparent caring for a two-year-old. They weren’t offended if I fell asleep while praying—they were just happy that I had wanted to spend time with them in the first place. That God understood my limitations and had enough maturity and sense of self not to throw my own tantrums back into my face. That God might not give me the cookie I kept begging for, but they would feed me a healthy dinner at the right time. That God truly was good, and patient, and merciful, and loving. That God was better than me—a god I could actually worship and respect and long for.
Under the influence of Modern American Christianity, a lot of us have learned to worship that same, sickening god I had. We’ve learned to be exacting and cruel with everyone we view as weaker and fawning of who- or whatever it is we think holds power, no matter their flaws. We’ve been taught to misread the Bible. We’ve been trained to worship a false god.
As an example, take a look at our Leviticus reading, from which Jesus draws the second part of the Great Commandment we also listened to today, there we see, “You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy.” When you hear that statement, what does it bring up in you? What emotional reaction do you have? What do you think that god expects of you? Do you hear a stipulation or injunction? Is it something you interpret as a subtle threat?
Please know that what you’re feeling and experiencing are valid; you are in no way wrong to feel them. But those responses hint at the depth of our miscomprehension and the contamination of our expectations.
That’s because these words are not a command. There is no threat present within them. The only imperative verb in this entire passage appears in the previous sentence where God tells Moses to speak. The “shall be” we read throughout this text—along with many of the “thou shalt”s you might recall elsewhere—is in imperfect tense, suggesting future or ongoing action. All these “commands” are actually statements—descriptions or resultant expectations of reality—not demands regarding how we must always behave if we want to be good with God. The Hebrew people listening to Moses wouldn’t be holy because of what they might do or because they thought the right thing about God or because they followed the right rules. No, this and all that follow are declarative sentences: “you will continue to be holy.” Why or how? “Because I, the Lord your God, am holy.” So how, as a human, would a holy God behave? Just like the Hebrew Bible goes on to say: they would act with justice and integrity. They would speak honestly and defend the innocent. They wouldn’t retaliate when harmed. They would treat their neighbors with the respect they themselves hoped to receive. These aren’t demands as much as reflections or incarnate representations of how and who God is!
So then, who is your god? What are their expectations of you—or others? Do they demand perfection above all else—imposing strict rules about thought and behavior so as not to be offended? Do they functionally hate the Creation they made, dismissing it as unworthy until it complies with their ultimatums, whether tacit or explicit? Do they encourage you to mistreat the land and water, to neglect or dismiss the needs of other living creatures, or to belittle and demean—to subjugate—the Images of God that surround you? Is your god selfish and petty? Does their jealousy echo that of an abusive boyfriend? Do they demand that you avoid, control, or mistreat others, stripping them of their rights and agency, simply so everyone falls in line with a preferred political or social expectation? Do they blame you for things outside your control? Maybe most importantly, do you or others need to suffer so your god might feel satisfied, happy, or secure?
Then you’re worshiping the same beast I had been taught to serve. You can—and should!—do and be better—more merciful and more kind—than that vicious god.
The God represented in (or by) Jesus is none of those things. God—the true God—serves Creation. They provide for and uphold everything that exists, whether or not that thing acknowledges them or even thinks that they’re real. God is not a Sky Emperor demanding servitude and imposing oppressive measures until everyone complies with his demands. Our God is a fountain—an everflowing spring of generosity and love. There is no selfishness in God!
Modern American Christianity tends to approach Jesus’ Great Commandment[4] just as incorrectly as how we read Leviticus. Jesus is not establishing a hierarchy here. He doesn’t tell us to first love God and then—only if it’s compatible with our love for God—to love our neighbor. To phrase what he says literally, “‘You will be devoted to your provider, the Divine, with your full heart and with your full self and with your full intention.’ This is the great and primary decree. Now next, an equal one: ‘You will be devoted to one near you like to yourself.’”[5] Jesus presents these two “commands” not as an order of operations or list of priorities. He tells us they’re equivalent—the second is a restatement of the first. We as Christians have no injunction to love God first, others second, and self or country or whatever third. Anyone who tells you that is lying.
We, as Christians, follow Jesus in the pathway that he walked in following God. Loving God is not a demand. It’s an outcome—a reality that simply will exist. We demonstrate our love for God not by keeping particular rules or clinging to specific dogmas. We can’t show how much we love God by legislating moral standards or finding ways to somehow make ourselves more acceptable—more pure or “holy”—before God. Today, both Jesus and Moses have confronted us with the truth: the only way we can demonstrate our existing connection with or love for God by incarnating God on earth through how we treat those around us.
“You will continue to be holy, because…I AM holy.”[6]
[1] All Bible quotations are from the NRSVue unless otherwise noted.
[2] And I knew myself to be a moral mess!
[3] We drew this understanding from I Corinthians 11:14-15: “Doth not even nature itself teach you, that, if a man have long hair, it is a shame unto him? But if a woman have long hair, it is a glory to her: for her hair is given her for a covering.” (KJV)
[4] Which also contains no commands. Both verbs are future tense statements, not imperatives.
[5] Matthew 22:37-39 | my translation | Italicized words are implied or necessary for English sentence structure.
[6] Modifications are mine.