"We are just renting. . ."

      Before we begin this morning I want to say a few words about Leviticus---the third book in the Bible.  It's traditionally thought to have been written by Moses around 1400 B.C.  Modern Bible scholars have alternate theories for who wrote Leviticus, but we will never really know.¹

      What scholars can agree upon is the purpose of Leviticus.  Leviticus is devoted to understanding how the people of God maintain a relationship to the Holy God.  Leviticus is about the Holiness of God, and the holiness of people who strive to be faithful.

      Included is a bewildering array of rules and regulations about how to live:  making proper sacrifices, what to eat, what not to eat, how to treat slaves, what the proper feast days are, how priests are to carry out their duties.

      We may all have heard about the prohibition against eating pork, but holy Hebrews avoided eating rabbits and camels, too.  It was, however, OK to eat grasshoppers, locusts, and crickets! (Who knew we had a bounty of food on the floors here at the church this summer?)  There are rules about eradicating mildew in your home, laws against wearing clothes woven with both wool and linen, laws about how to ritually purify yourself when you become 'unclean' (which was pretty easy to do).

      These laws seem curious and strange to us today; they hardly have much to do with our lives.

      Still, we find there are some valuable insights to be gained.  Leviticus is concerned with the whole of life (eating, drinking, sexuality, work, family life, commerce, clothing) and how these everyday aspects of life affect our relationship with God.  We are not used to thinking of such things in terms of holiness.  Leviticus even concerns itself with such practical matters as how we are supposed to treat the land.

      The church has in large part ignored Leviticus not only because it has so much strange stuff in it, but because it demands we look at nitty gritty aspects of real life.

      Jesus did not ignore Leviticus. Jesus quoted the book of Leviticus when he told people to 'love your neighbor as yourself' (Lev. 19:18).  Jesus released people from the laws of ritual purity (see Matthew 15:10-20, Mark 7:14-23,) but he called all the louder for people to live holy lives.

      The portion we will hear today is concerned with Sabbath, rest, and the proper disposition of the land---the very earth itself.  It has to do with loving the land and treating it right.  It is eerily prescient of the dreadful environmental conditions we face in the 21st century, at least in part because we have not been living lives that prioritize care for the earth.

      The LORD said to Moses on Mount Sinai, ”Speak to the Israelites and say to them: ’When you enter the land I am going to give you, the land itself must observe a sabbath to the LORD.  For six years sow your fields, and for six years prune your vineyards and gather their crops.  But in the seventh year the land is to have a sabbath of rest, a sabbath to the LORD.  Do not sow your fields or prune your vineyards.  Do not reap what grows of itself or harvest the grapes of your untended vines.  The land is to have a year of rest.  Whatever the land yields during the sabbath year will be food for you-for yourself, your manservant and maidservant, and the hired worker and temporary resident who live among you, ⁷as well as for your livestock and the wild animals in your land. Whatever the land produces may be eaten.

      “ ‘Follow my decrees and be careful to obey my laws, and you will live safely in the land.  Then the land will yield its fruit, and you will eat your fill and live there in safety.  You may ask, “What will we eat in the seventh year if we do not plant or harvest our crops?”  I will send you such a blessing in the sixth year that the land will yield enough for three years.  While you plant during the eighth year, you will eat from the old crop and will continue to eat from it until the harvest of the ninth year comes in.

      “ ‘The land must not be sold permanently, because the land is mine and you are but aliens and my tenants.

      This reading concerns itself with the use of the land.  Every seventh year the land is to have a Sabbath.  It's to be rested, not farmed year after year after year until it's no longer good for anything.  There is certainly a lesson there we can carry with us today---a lesson about respecting the earth, realizing its limits, and utilizing earth's resources in sustainable ways.

      What underlies this, however, is a more fundamental and much more radical view of the earth, a view that doesn't become completely clear until the very end of the passage.

      "The land must not be sold permanently, because the land is mine and you are but aliens and my tenants."

      The position of land ownership posed here is very strange to us.  What are our attitudes about owning land?  Who 'owns' the earth?  Who 'owns' the oil fields beneath the ocean?  Who 'owns' the oceans?  Where do we draw the line?  And how?

      Here we see a particular view of land ownership that is completely antithetical to almost everything we have ever been taught.  It rejects common attitudes we have about land----attitudes buried deep in our history.

      America (like most civilizations) was founded, colonized, and expanded on this premise: the conquerors own the land and all that is in it.  This conquering posture made it possible for European immigrants to demolish tribal societies with absolute entitlement.  This conquering attitude inspired the tilling of the Great Plains in the 1920s and 30s.  Millions of acres of prairie sod were destroyed in order to create farms.  These actions ultimately led to the great Dust Bowl of the 1930s and 40s.

      Land ownership is a part of our national identity.  Along with the deeply embedded belief that the land belongs to us is the equally deeply held belief that we can do whatever we want with it, because it is ours.  The riches of the land are ours.  We take them and use them.  They belong to us.

      Here is where the Bible (once again) tells us things we would rather not hear.  This view appears not just in Leviticus, but in Genesis, the Psalms, and other parts of scripture.  The Bible says the land and the earth do not belong to us.  They belong to God. We are just renting.

      "The land must not be sold permanently, because the land is mine and you are but aliens and my tenants."

      We are just renting.  The land has been loaned to us for our care and provision.  It is not ours. This not only has implications for the environment, but also for immigration.

      How do we care for that which doesn't not belong to us?  I would argue there are two 'camps' of behavior.

      The first 'camp' says:  We do not care.  We do not own it, and so we are not responsible for it. It's not ours, so we don't treat it carefully.  If we leave it in a huge mess, too bad.

      The second 'camp' says this. We don't own this.  It doesn't belong to us.  Therefore, we must be extra careful to 'take care' of it, even at great sacrifice to ourselves.

      What is the difference between the first camp and the second?  At core is our relationship to the one who owns the land.

      When we respect the one who owns the land, we respect the land, too.  When we love the one who owns the land, we treat it with care and concern.  It is a precious gift loaned to us for a time.  This is where the care of the earth becomes a moral question, far beyond practical concerns.  The way we have treated the earth reflects our deeply torn relationship with its Creator.  The way we view everything as our own property, to be used up and thrown away at whim, ignores the gift-giving God.

      When we do this with a sense of complete entitlement, with an attitude of utter obliviousness, it also speaks to our lack of love and respect for the Creator.

      You can object to Leviticus on the grounds that it is not applicable today, but you cannot argue with the fact that the book of Leviticus is concerned with the whole of life (eating, drinking, sexuality, work, family life, clothing) and how these things affect our relationship with God.

      How we conduct our everyday lives reflects our relationship to God.  When we recognize this truth, we begin to see how everything relates to our relationship with God.  This is the beauty of the book of Leviticus, outmoded as it seems.  The details may be different today, but the concept remains.  What we do with our lives, what we do to the earth, actually matters to God.

      It is hard to argue that we have been taking loving care of this beautiful earth.

      These are such big questions that it is easy to pass them off, to avoid them, to say, "Well, what can one person do about the destruction of the earth?"  "What can I do about the poisoning of the oceans?"

      It has been said we must live more simply so that others can simply live.  Americans (5% of the world's population) consume 80% of the world's resources.  Reducing, re-using, and re-cycling are moral actions which reflect care for the earth and its people.  These kinds of actions are good for the earth, and they are also good for God's people.  When we live more simply, there is more to go around. When we consume less, there is less garbage, less pollution, less toxins in the environment.  When we buy fewer things, we can release our resources for the majority of people in the world who do not have food, education, or medical care.  Yes, these things are not easy.  They are counter-cultural.  They are faithful.  God did not promise that right living would be easy.

      Every one of us can examine the ways we live, the choices we make, and the impact they have upon the earth.  We must each realize each act of consumption makes a difference for the earth.  If every Christian in America would seriously consider these questions and make some individual sacrifices, (and I am not talking about the burnt offering kind), it would be a revolution.  And it would be faithful to God.

      No, it's not about avoiding pork, but it may be about consuming far less meat.  No, it's not about shunning wool and flax clothing, but it is about buying many fewer clothes and giving away the closets full of clothes we do not even use.  No, it may not be about not using machines on the Sabbath, but about driving less and relying on less technology all the time.  It's not that we have to take a ritual bath, but that we look twice at all the energy, water, and other resources we use and waste.  It's not about getting rid of mildew in the home, but faithful living may be about eliminating the use of chemicals and pesticides and materials that poison our homes and yards and our environment.

      If we are faithful to the Holy One, we will recognize that all of our lives, every single aspect of our decision making, reflects our relationship to God and to what God has loaned us.

      This kind of awareness calls for a level of sacrifice and change that, if effected by every Christian on earth, would completely change the course of our planet and provide for all humanity.

      This morning, what is in your heart that you know you need to do, to care for the earth, to honor God, to make your life whole?  What are the changes the Holy God is asking you to make in the way you live, in the way you use resources, in what you buy and in what you refrain from consuming?  May you be blessed as you make these changes, blessed by the one who has given us this beautiful earth for our care and our provision.

      We are just renting.