Be Perfect

(Uriel Presbyterian Church)

Communion Meditation

“Be Perfect”

Sunday, 3 July, 2011

Final Sermon at Uriel Presbyterian Church

At the Lord's Supper, "Receive who you are; 

become what you've received."

--St Augustine

Text:  Deuteronomy 10.17-22 

NRSV 17 For the LORD your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who is not partial and takes no bribe, 18 who executes justice for the orphan and the widow, and who loves the strangers, providing them food and clothing. 19 You shall also love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. 20 You shall fear the LORD your God; him alone you shall worship; to him you shall hold fast, and by his name you shall swear. 21 He is your praise; he is your God, who has done for you these great and awesome things that your own eyes have seen. 22 Your ancestors went down to Egypt seventy persons; and now the LORD your God has made you as numerous as the stars in heaven. 

Text: Matthew 5.43-48 ( NRSV) 

NRSV 43 "You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' 44 But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. 46 For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? 47 And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? 48 Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

    

There are a lot of texts in the bible that seem too difficult to preach. Sometimes they’re difficult to interpret, but sometimes the difficulty comes not in trying to understand the context of the passage, but that it’s just too difficult for people to hear and to bear. This is one definitely of those texts.

I mean, here we are, at the high point of the Sermon on the Mount, so to speak, listening as Jesus tell his disciples what real love is: turning the other cheek, not retaliating, loving your enemies, praying for those who attack you. I know this is what we're supposed to do. I also know that it's really, really hard for most of us to imagine, let alone carry out in any kind of consistent way.

 And then there's that last verse, the kicker: "Be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect." 

As if it weren’t hard enough to do the other things that Jesus is talking about, now we have this. “Be perfect”. As hard as some of the other teachings in the sermon on the Mount are, this is perhaps the one that hits right between the eyes: "Be perfect." No where else in the gospel accounts of the Sermon on the Mount does this commandment appear. The closest thing to it is found  in Luke where Jesus says for us to be merciful. But no, Matthew heard Jesus saying to him “Be perfect”. 

There is perhaps nothing more heart sinking that hearing the one single flawless human who ever lived, command us that we must be perfect.  To hear this is to be set up to fail and fail constantly, in other words to be a absolute failure. 

 I know some people whose  high standards of perfection is soul-breaking, and even life threatening because anything less than achieving their goal means that they are utterly useless. I’m not talking about high achievers, I’m talking about perfectionists. The difference is that high achievers understand that the journey to excellence is littered with failed attempts whereas perfectionists see each setback as a failure and proof that they are irreparably flawed. 

You can find these people in all walks of life, but especially in the church. We vie with each other to be better and purer and higher, and end up judging and feeling judged according to impossible standards. Somehow we think that if Jesus can walk on water--and briefly, Peter, at least the most spiritually advanced among us should be able to too. The problem is that the quest to be perfect breeds anxiety. And deep down, pastors, and session clerks and officers are really stressed about this ‘be  perfect” injunction. Over and over congregations are scandalized because an elder or a deacon or a pastor isn’t living up to their idea of perfection. Over and over again at ordinations and installations, the  church is admonished, “Remember that you are NOT getting the perfect pastor or elder... and elders, remember that you are NOT getting the perfect church...because if you think you are, there is going to be trouble very soon”. It’s very useful advice, but unfortunately not very well heeded.

But what are we all to do? It’s there in black and white on page 5 in  our pew bibles. Jesus doesn’t say “TRY to be perfect” or “Getting as close as you can is ok”. There seems to be no mediating circumstance there. How does this square with our understanding of mercy, forgiveness and love? Thankfully, this is one place where the English language turns out to be very rigid, while the original language, Greek is more flexible. When we hear that command in English, we hear it as a clarion call to moral perfectionism. But that's not actually what the original language implies. "Be Perfect"--“ ;Esesqe te,lio,j” in this case, stems from telos, which is the Greek word for "goal," "end," or "purpose." The sense of the word “perfect” in Greek is more about becoming what was intended, reaching your end, accomplishing your God-given purpose in the same way that God constantly reflects God's own nature and purpose. It’s not the same thing at all. God intends for us to be the best we can be. It is God’s nature and purpose to be absolute perfection, ours is to be what we can be--good humans made of clay and quickened by the breath of God.  Eugene Peterson's recent translation of the bible called “The Message” gets closest to the mark, I think, in this passage of Matthew when he translates that last verse: "You are citizens of the kingdom of Heaven. Now live like it. Live out your God-created identity."

 As I leave you today this is the kind of perfection that I hope for both you and myself. The work of becoming what God has intended; the living out of our God-given identity that is born in our baptism, finds roots in the gospel stories and in our personal mission. The best of who we are is fed at the table of the Lord’s Supper and is inspired by the Holy Spirit to be constantly renewed. These things give us a distinctively Christian understanding of perfection. Christian perfection is about maturity, wholeness and obedience in a life consecrated to the law of love revealed by Christ.

Does that let you and me off the hook with all the other things that Jesus spoke about in the Sermon on the Mount? Certainly not. But it does help us get to the root of the issue. We can only fulfill the other commandments of Jesus – to the degree that we can live into our identity as blessed and beloved children of God. You can't give what you don't have, and so only those who have experienced love can in turn share it with others.

 What kind of perfection is Jesus calling for? A perfect kind of love - a love that isn't stingy, but IS indiscriminate - a love that loves enemies as well as friends.  Just so we get what Jesus means, he piles on example after example:

First, if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also (v.39) - for a poke in the eye, turn the other cheek. That applies to us here at Uriel. Second, if someone wants to sue you for the shirt off your back , give your coat as well (v.40). Third, if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile (v.41)..AND with a smile!  Fourth, give to everyone who begs from you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you (v.42).

In other words, Christians are to be people who overcome evil with good; who retaliate injury with healing; or who, “foil their foes with joy” 1.

 Archbishop Oscar  Romero of El Salvador who struggled mightily with evil and corruption in Central America, and who was shot to death by assassins while celebrating communion in 1980 had this to say about perfection. 

He said:

“It helps, now and then, to step back and take a long view.

The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts, it is even beyond our vision.

We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of the magnificent enterprise that is God’s work.

Nothing we do is complete, which is a way of saying that the kingdom always lies beyond us.

No statement says all that could be said.

No prayer fully expresses our faith.

No confession brings perfection.

No pastoral visit brings wholeness.

No program accomplishes the church’s mission.

No set of goals and objectives includes everything.

This is what we are about....

We plant the seeds that one day will grow.

We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise.

We lay foundations that will need further development.

We provide yeast that produces far beyond our capabilities.

We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that.

This enables us to do something, and to do it very well.

It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for the Lord’s grace to enter and do the rest.

We may never see the end results, but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker.

We are workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiahs.

We are prophets of a future not our own.”

Alleluia, Amen.

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1 Benjamin Britton in his "Ceremony of Carols"