What is the point of holiness?
A light to the nations
What is the point of holiness? is an article in the Tablet Magazine by Jeremy England, he’s an American-born physicist and a rabbi. It’s part of a series on the Torah. If you wish, you may use the link to get into the weeds with Rabbi England. I’ll focus here on two areas in which his insights match up well with part of our Anglican tradition.
A practice
He acknowledges that holiness means different things to different people, e.g., “it is not a glowing substance or quality that comes from within a thing itself.” He goes on to explain that within the Jewish tradition. It does have a defined meaning, it is “a status we ascribe according to a procedural framework commanded by God.”
He goes on to use the creation story as an illustration.
‘And on the seventh day God finished His crafts (melakhto) which He had done; and He rested on the seventh day from all His crafts which He had done. And God blessed the seventh day, and hallowed it (vayikadesh ’oto), in that He rested from all His crafts which God in creating had done.’ (Genesis 2:2-3)
The Sabbath is holy because God “designates it to be kadosh” (holy). “The way He performs this designation is by acting differently on the day in question. This sacred rest in turn provides a model for how the Jews are meant to maintain the holiness of Shabbat through their own actions, by blessing God over a cup of wine each Friday evening and then refraining until after dark the next day from performing a wide variety of creative crafts (melakha).”
It’s holy because God has decided it is holy. And it is about practice. Doing something, “acting differently.”
Our understanding is that competence and commitment are interdependent. It takes some degree of commitment to a calling, institution, or cause to invest ourselves in learning new behaviors and attitudes. And, as a general rule of thumb, as our competence grows, we get more committed. -From Finding God in All Things: Contemplation, Intercession, and Intervention
We Anglican Christians have our practices: the Church Year and the Prayer Book Pattern. And like the Jewish people we may be more or less observant. Days and seasons, people and things are set apart. Separated from the routine and usual. All done because it is part of how God makes us holy in the process of sanctification. They are all pathways and resources of sanctification through which we participate in the Divine Life and in that participation we may be changed. (MORE: Also see “Four monastic practices,” “To open ourselves to holiness and to learn the habits of heaven” and “Self control.”)
The importance of those who are observant
Later in the article he looks at the idea of a people playing a particular role in relation to the larger body of people. He writes about Isaiah. How the prophet “laid out a stirring vision for the unification of all mankind around the Lord’s temple in Jerusalem. … “For my house shall be a house of prayer for all peoples” (Isaiah 56:7). … Isaiah underlined the potential for the temple in Jerusalem to become a center of justice and teaching for all mankind as a consequence of its being the heart of Torah knowledge: “For from Zion shall Torah go forth, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem” (Isaiah 2:3).”
He then connects it to being a “chosen people” who give themselves to the practices. He writes that this is “a special burden that leads to the development of a particular society in one place with an intensified awareness of and relationship with God.” The practices are so “ ‘You will remember to obey all my commands and will be consecrated (kedoshim) to your God’ (Numbers 15:40). And the fulfillment of this mission by the Jews is what is meant by them becoming le’or goyim, ‘a light to the nations.’ ” Later he continues, “The Torah further generalizes this idea by defining it as the mission of the ‘kingdom of priests” as a whole. Israel is selected by God to receive His Law and become “a holy nation” by keeping various strictures of the Torah, but this special privilege is seen to have value only if it is used to help others learn the parts of the Torah that apply to everyone.”
One of the main tasks of the parish priest is to train the militant core of his parishioners in such a way that they understand as fully as possible the true nature of a Christian parish. - Kilmer Myers
It’s an idea that when brought to parish life and worship shows itself in the apostolic core of the congregation. Martin Thornton holds that the parish church is “the complete Body in microcosm.” His Remnant Concept sees the importance of a core of proficient practitioners in the parish that plays a vicarious role., i.e., “in which power from the center pervades the whole.” The holiness and love of a Remnant at the center of parish life is for Thornton what makes a parish a true parish. (MORE - “Building an Apostolic Core” and “Power from the center.”)
Lord, you now have set your servant free *
to go in peace as you have promised;
For these eyes of mine have seen the Savior, *
whom you have prepared for all the world to see:
A Light to enlighten the nations, *
and the glory of your people Israel.
The Song of Simeon Nunc dimittis
This abides.
Brother Robert, OA