Ever since I was at school, the relationship between holiness and love has fascinated me.
Etymologically, holiness means to be "set apart", to create a social and moral separation between the "clean" and the "unclean", between the "holy" and the "profane".
So, typically, we think holiness and love go in two different directions. Those most concerned with holiness tend to emphasize rules over love; think the biblical Pharisees. For them, being holy meant withdrawing from sinners, and not extending love and hospitality toward those one judged to be "unclean".
Jesus resolves the tensions by radically rethinking what it means to be holy. According to Jesus, loving God (the pursuit of holiness) is equated with loving your neighbor (the pursuit of hospitality). This is illustrated time and again in the gospels where the Pharisees achieve holiness by moral and social exclusion and separation from tax collectors, sinners and prostitutes. By contrast, Jesus regularly eats with and welcomes tax collectors, sinners and prostitutes, declaring that God desires mercy (hospitality) and not sacrifice (holiness via exclusion).
In my reading this week I've been struck my something in 1 Peter 1: "Therefore, with minds that are alert and fully sober, set your hope on the grace to be brought to you when Jesus Christ is revealed at his coming. As obedient children, do not conform to the evil desires you had when you lived in ignorance. But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; for it is written: 'Be holy, because I am holy' ... Now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for each other, love one another deeply, from the heart".
Notice how the holiness imperative ("Be holy in all you do") has a very specific goal ("so that you have sincere love for one another").
There's no doubt about that vocation to holiness: We're called to be holy as God is holy.
But the goal of that holiness isn't withdrawal. It's engagement. It's love. It's hospitality. It's embrace.
Holiness and purity are not the opposite of love. Holiness and purity are the cultivation of love. The holy person is the loving person. The pure person is the loving person.
What amazes me about the gospels is how Jesus declares all people clean. Let that sink in. All people. Jesus can touch the scabby, the bloody, the dead, and cavort with whores and other notorious "sinners", rabbinically untouchable, not because he is (spiritually) set apart but because there is nothing to catch. And what Jesus does we may all do, in fact, we are all called to do, viz., transcend the anthropological concept of boundary altogether. Hence, yes, radical hospitality.
That sounds revolutionary.
And rightly so. Because it is.
It's so revolutionary that disciples don't get it. Think Acts 10 here. It requires nothing less than the conversion of our thinking (as it did Peter). Whereas Peter wanted to keep certain people at arms' length out of a concern for holiness, Jesus declares them "clean" and calls for their embrace.
We're still doing this Pharisee thing, of course. Each time I hear gays called "disgusting" or "filthy", I think Jesus. And reject that clean/unclean dichotomy.
The only purity that now counts is "the purity of heart" from Matthew 5. This is a purity that welcomes the Other qua other out of love.