Holy Perfection – sermon on February 19, 2017
Matthew 5: 38-48 Jesus taught them: “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also; and if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well; and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile. Give to everyone who begs from you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you. You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 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. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
1 Corinthians 3 Because of God’s grace to me, I have laid the foundation like an expert builder. Now others are building on it. But whoever is building on this foundation must be very careful. For no one can lay any foundation other than the one we already have -Jesus Christ. Don’t you realize that all of you together are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God lives in you? God will destroy anyone who destroys this temple. For God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple. Stop deceiving yourselves. If you think you are wise by this world’s standards, you need to become a fool to be truly wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness to God. As the Scriptures say, “God traps the wise in the snare of their own cleverness.” And again, “God knows the thoughts of the wise; God knows they are worthless.” So don’t boast about following a particular human leader. For everything belongs to you – whether Paul or Apollos or Peter, or the world, or life and death, or the present and the future. Everything belongs to you, and you belong to Christ, and Christ belongs to God.
Sermon: Holy Perfection by Rev. Doreen Oughton
Wow. This is a hard one. I find passages like this morning’s Gospel lesson to be the best and the worst of scripture. They are the worst because of the way they challenge me, professionally and personally. One of my mentors once told me that my job on Sunday morning is to help people see and come to know Jesus through scripture, but I find these teachings beyond me. I am not sure about the good news in this passage. I have trouble proclaiming it boldly and urging you to follow this Savior who asks for the impossible. Personally, I feel so convicted. I feel it in my heart and in my gut. Don’t resist assault? Even when I feel verbally attacked I want to lash back. When my children were little and tried to hit me I grabbed their hands and stopped them before hauling them into time out. Willingly surrender even more than someone is trying to take? I remember when my daughter got sick in a friend’s car, and his mother asked me to pay to have an interior cleaning. Money was tight for me, and there were circum-stances that made the request seem excessive, so I thought I was showing maturity by just paying the bill without further discussion. But here it sounds like Jesus would recommend that I also pay for a paint job, or reupholstering.
Give to everyone who begs from you. Now I think I give a lot, but how many appeals do I get in the mail that I just toss out? How many pan-handlers do I pass by, steeling myself to gaze straight ahead, don’t make eye contact? Could Jesus have understood all the ways to ask for money that would come about? Appeals for help on TV, internet, crowd-sourcing, and through snail mail! Lend to everyone who asks? I feel very badly about this one. A dear friend mustered up such courage to ask me to help her, and I may have been able to. I gave it serious consideration and prayer, and in the end I said no. Convicted.
Love my enemies? Even though I don’t think of people as “enemies,” there are enough people that I dislike, distrust, and judge. And for Jesus, it is not good enough to just keep my distance and keep my opinions to myself. No, he wants me to greet them, which to me means showing warmth and respect.
And I think such texts are the best because I know, I just know, they reveal something profound about God; because the truth about God is so much bigger than I can wrap my head around. God is in this teaching, and I can’t find my way to it. I can only sit back and feel not just guilt, but awe and wonder.
This passage from Matthew continues with Jesus’ sermon on the mount, which we have been discussing for a few weeks. So much of this sermon is about rejecting the wisdom of the world and living into divine wisdom. He is claiming a new understanding of the Hebrew scripture. He cites the established teaching, and counters it with his own divine wisdom. Hebrew scripture sets limits on retribution. It says you cannot do worse to someone than what they did to you. There is wisdom in this teaching. If followed, it might prevent wars. Then again, does anyone remember the movie Fail Safe, and the principle mutually assured destruction?
But Jesus isn’t having it. He wants the violence and suffering to end as soon as possible, even if it means you are the only one with one eye. He doesn’t think it is better to have two people missing an eye. The beloved community isn’t served by fewer eyes, even if it feels “just.” But he also doesn’t not want the “victim” to stay a victim. He offers a different understanding of power – and that is in choice. If someone tries to take something from you, you have the choice to give it to them instead. Not a victim. If someone tries to force you to do something, volunteer to do it. Not a victim.
In my human limitations, I see such danger in these teachings. I cannot stomach the thought of Jesus advising people who are abused to offer themselves up for more abuse. I get it when it comes to political movements – the civil rights activists in this country who offered themselves up for arrest and harassment and yes, beatings; Gandhi and his followers marching forward to the salt marshes, right into the brigades of British soldiers there to stop the with violent beatings and arrest. I get that kind of power, at least intellectually. But these are acts of resistance to evil, non-violent resistance. But Jesus says not to resist an evil-doer. His teaching sounds to me as if he wants me to take the power of evil away. I can keep a potential thief from being a thief by voluntarily giving them what they want. I can keep a potential murderer from being a murderer by voluntarily giving up my life. But I can only give what is mine to give. I can’t give up another’s belonging’s or another’s life, right? I don’t know. This is a really hard teaching. I don’t feel right standing up here telling you not to resist evil. The best I can do is to suggest that maybe we can work on seeing past the evil to the humanity of even those who would hurt us or those we love. The best I can do is say that even evil-doers are children of God, beloved by God, and our own brothers and sisters. Perhaps that is the purpose of praying for our enemies. It is not so that God will change them and make them more what we want them to be, but that prayer changes – opens – our hearts to see them as God sees them. Such prayer ought to be for God to bless them and change me. And I can remember that Jesus did indeed surrender to abuse and humiliation. He gave his life when they tried to take in from him. In doing so, he opened wide the gates of life.
All the readings from this morning – Leviticus and Matthew and 1st Corinthians tell us how and why there is hope that we can live into this divine wisdom. We are called to be holy because God is holy. We can be perfect because God is perfect. We, together, can become a Temple of God because the foundation that has been laid is Christ Jesus himself. The meaning of “perfect” here is not what we usually understand it to be – without flaw. It refers to becoming completely what we are meant to be. The Greek word translated as “perfect” is telos. The telos of an arrow shot from a bow is to reach its target. The telos of a peach tree is to bear ripe, juicy, yummy peaches. It is perfect if it is doing so, even if the bark of the tree is messed up, or some of the peaches don’t ripen.
God is completely what God is meant to be – perfect love, life abundant, truth, and beauty. God lacks nothing, and so doesn’t have to ration out the blessings, doesn’t have to hold back, doesn’t have to spend time sorting out who is “deserving.” God just sends the rain and sun for all. We are invited to draw from this fountain ever springing. We too, can come to understand that we lack nothing and don’t have to hold back or ration when it comes to living out what we are meant to be. This applies to us as individual members of the one Body of Christ, and also to us as a church. Can we trust that the foundation laid here is indeed Christ himself – the foundation, the cornerstone, the head of this church? Can we build on that as we ask ourselves, “What is our telos, our perfection?”
But I don’t know. Maybe such questions are beyond us. As I worked on this sermon I kept thinking of another epistle, Letter to Hebrews, in which the writer talks about the readers’ need for spiritual milk instead of solid food. He says that “solid food is for the mature, who because of practice, have their senses trained to discern good and evil.” You can’t blame a baby for not being able to take solid food. We are where we are. Maturation is a process that both happens naturally and is influenced by our efforts or lack thereof. Even if we don’t understand these teachings, we can strive, we can persist in studying, in pondering, in questioning and discussing. We can let ourselves be awed and moved. We can look around for the examples of self-giving, self-sacrificial love. Such a way of living didn’t start and end with Jesus. We can look at Desmond Doss and the Ten Boom family, Martin Luther King Jr., and Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandella. We can bring what we are able to the building of the Temple, the Temple of God that finds its telos – it’s perfection – in all of us, everyone, together, held as One in the firmament of Christ Jesus. May it be so.
