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A once--popular book, The Varieties Of New Testament Religion, by E. F. Scott needs a hearing in our time. Scott reminds us that New Testament faith offers a wide variety of responses to Christ. We cannot say that there is a unity of doctrine in the New Testament. Scott's point applies to the Hebrew Bible as well. It, too, is a collection of various theological insights coming from several centuries of faithful reflection. In both the testaments, varieties of religious viewpoints sit side by side, making impossible the claim of "the faith once and for all delivered to the saints."

In today's lection from Leviticus, we are dealing with a work disregarded by many Christians because its mood and style are so different from the spirit of the New Testament. One reason for this negative judgment about Leviticus focuses its emphasis on the obligations and practices of Old Testament worship. Many find much attention to worship a form of escape from Jesus' indictment of ritual obligations of neglecting "justice and the love of God" (Luke 11:42). Jesus seemed to hold that ethics has priority over worship. When at worship and remembering that there is a rift between us and our neighbor, Jesus says our duty is to leave the service and make reconciliation with that person before we return to the service.

Certainly we have to be sleeping not to notice Leviticus in the church's struggle with sexual orientation. Many find Leviticus an ally in their attempt to deny religious approval of committed same--sex relationships. These folks are strenuous in their blocking the ordination of practicing homosexuals. Those on the other side are forced to surpress any appreciation for Leviticus. Sooner or later the question rises: Can we really find godly and spiritual resources in this book?

I

First, we ought to admit that troubling parts abound in our scriptural writings, not just in Leviticus. There are historical, geographic, factual, and mathematical errors in the Bible. Some New Testament sayings attributed to Jesus make him wrong about the arrival of the kingdom of God in his lifetime. Joshua makes the earth halt its orbit about the sun. Luke creates his own historical record saying that Jesus was born during a census by Emperor Augustus when no such census has ever been documented.

Again, the writings of Paul prove troubling because of some anti--feminine statements. However, it is likely that many of these male--superiority comments are the work of a later person upset by the prominence of women leaders in the early church. Such anti--women sentiments do not square with Paul's great words in Galatians where he is seen affirming the equality of women in the church, along with slaves and Greek Gentiles.

II

We need to cut loose from our terrible passion for certitude. On the hunt for a certainty delivering us from having to think for ourselves, we pander for perfect evidence. We want absolute answers and clear directions about the living of our lives. We strike out for something that will settle the issue for us, from which there is no appeal. Wanting to know beyond doubt what Stanley Hauerwas has called "the grain of the universe," we poison our lives with a destructive quest for certitude.

This discontent with "incertitude" sits at the beginning of scripture. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil are prohibited to the Garden couple. But Adam and Eve are driven to defy the godly restrictions on certainty. The same issues arise in the story of the Tower of Babel. Humans are unable to resist the quest for certitude. They cannot quell the unsettling need to live without total knowledge. They want to storm heaven and claim the heavenly wisdoms.

Justification by faith, rooted in Paul and grounded in the Protestant tradition, through Luther, Calvin, and the reformation tradition covers more of life than sin and grace. We can find ourselves discovering that this doctrine is about more than what it is ordinarily taken to mean. Justification by faith is our basic stance of human life. It is our shorthand statement for our trust in the grace of God who always approaches us through the terribly frightening, yet wonderfully delightful mix of life. Even the hard--bitten old naturalistic scientist "faiths" his science, and also the unbelievers faith their unbelief. Life requires axiomatic faith decisions. The scientist is justified by faith in the rationality of the universe. The unbeliever justified by a humanistic faith. If we go about insisting that we must be presented with a clear, unquestionable certitude, then we have deadened something godly within us, including honesty about our hidden faith assumptions. We will find ourselves missing something of the creative struggle that hallows life before God.

III

Finally, what does this have to do with Leviticus? How are we going to muster up three cheers for Leviticus, given its very uneven witness? Where would our cheers begin in this text?

Well, we can cheer our Leviticus lection in its concern for the poor. Harvesters are to leave the grain around the edges of the field for the needy after the field is done. Long before South American Christians portrayed God's justice as heading in a "preferential option for the poor," Leviticus and other biblical witness already made the same point. Leviticus knows that the injunction surrounding the harvest is not simply a sympathizing for those of lesser means. Leviticus knows that concern for the poor comes straight from God's wishes, giving this legalism an edge that provokes obedience and gratitude.

We can loft a second cheer from our Leviticus lection for its calling for management to deal justly with workers. Modern America, uncritically awash in "free market" economics, needs to listen up. The reality of corporate managers and corporations, often propped up with tax abatements and federal dollars, is one of the dangerous idols of our times. Enron's collapse meant that thousands of employees lost their savings, their retirements, and their jobs. Corporate free--wheeling in the wake of an orgy of deregulation, deceptive accounting practices, and the seduction of the complying accounting firms combined to hurt an enormous number of innocent people. We shall see if our politicians have the courage to enact standards and laws that might prevent this in the future. And they could do worse than to spend a moment or two with Leviticus 19:13.

Thirdly, our final cheer for Leviticus is because it senses that vengeance is a destructive way of life. Leviticus knows that vengeance can only be trusted to God. Humans are not to deal in vengeance. Our national passion for capital punishment is under Leviticus' indictment. Moving away from capital punishment in the 1960s, we have reversed ourselves and reenacted it in most of our states. In a frantic response to the rising crime rate, capital punishment was re--instated where it had formerly been abolished. Thinking that vengeance and punishment can deter crime and allow some sense of justice for its victims, we have become the execution capital of the western world. Seldom do we ever consider that crime is more likely to occur under conditions of impoverishment and despair or from untreated psychological problems. We could change many of this crime tempting if we would find the moral will to do so. Drowning with the abundance of guns, drugs, urban slums, rural poverty, racism, disintegrating schools, and inadequate health care, we simply encourage a high rate of violent and non--violent crime. We shy away from such conclusions because attacking these causes would be costly, and neither we nor the politicians seem likely to adopt this answer.

IV

So is this good news or what? Is the book of Leviticus just another grim reminder of duty to be done? Is Leviticus 19 a guide to godly health for our world? Granted we would like all our scriptures to be sweet good news, having no questions still unanswered. But Bonhoeffer rightly called this syrupy stuff "cheap grace." Instead we might find the costly, but saving, grace found in Leviticus. We might not be wonderfully popular, but we might be right with God. And this is all that really matters.

When Thomas Jefferson was President, he took scissors and paste to his New Testament. Enthralled with the Enlightenment's distaste for the mysteries and miracles in religion, Jefferson clipped out the parts of his New Testament that listed the miracles and pasted the rest into a small volume. It is now known as the "Jefferson Testament." Jefferson's Enlightenment worldview was too self--confident about knowing the truth. Even if we feel akin to him about the miracles, we find his approach troubling. He wanted his religious sentiments unambiguous and without question. We are tempted to do a "Jefferson" on Leviticus, even as we grant that there is much there that is quite unacceptable and beneath our sense of God's ways.

So a word from Jesus might be in order here. He said that the truth (wheat) is often mixed with error (tares). Goodness always comes in a mix with evil. The mature person learns this along the way. But our immature impulse is to cut down the whole field to get rid of the tares. Then we lose the wheat in our premature reaping. It is wise to let the field stand and when the time for harvest comes we have some good grain for our patience. Jesus warns against searching for an all--good reality beyond the mix of evil, sin, or corruption. We may not have answers for the question of why goodness is not pure and clear. Leviticus can give us truth alongside its unacceptable sections, and we shall be the richer for it. Leviticus does a terrible thing to those of same--sex preference. But we will not chuck Leviticus. After all, Jesus took the second part of his summary of the commandments from this highly ambiguous book: "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." Three cheers for Leviticus. Put down those scissors.