Holiness With Dirt Under Its Fingernails

When Peter wrote "be holy in all you do," the Greek word he borrowed — hagios — didn't mean pristine. It meant set apart, dedicated to a sacred purpose. For too long, holiness has been reduced to personal purity codes, a checklist of behaviors that conveniently excluded the people we were uncomfortable with while ignoring the suffering right outside our doors.

Rachel Held Evans once observed that Jesus was declared unclean not by sinning but by touching lepers, eating with tax collectors, and letting a hemorrhaging woman grab His cloak. His holiness moved toward people, not away from them. It was contagious rather than fragile.

What if holiness looks less like moral gatekeeping and more like showing up at the community garden on Saturday morning, turning compost with formerly incarcerated neighbors rebuilding their lives? What if it looks like a congregation voting to become a sanctuary church, risking their tax status because they believe the immigrant family sleeping in their fellowship hall bears the image of God? What if being "set apart" means refusing to participate in systems that grind people down — choosing discomfort over complicity?

Peter's call to holiness was written to marginalized communities scattered across the Roman Empire, people who knew oppression firsthand. They understood that holiness was not about withdrawal but about embodying a radically different way of being human together.

The invitation stands. Be holy — which is to say, be fully, courageously dedicated to the healing of the world.