A real. deep. ongoing “heart-challenge” to preach on this text Matthew 5:48.
The sermon text is below the sermon video.
Click Here for Video: https://zionepiscopal.com/Sermon%20Videos/fifth-sunday-after-pentecost-7-2-2023-neale.html
Sermon Preached at Zion Episcopal Church, Washington, NC
Sunday July 2nd 2023
The Reverend Alan Neale
So… perfection! How’s it going for you?
Today’s text is from our Gospel – Matthew 5:48 “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” Or, in the more vigorous Message translation, “In a word, what I am saying is, Grow up. You are kingdom subjects. Now live like it. Live out your God-created identity. Live generously and graciously toward others, the way God lives toward you.”
I know this will come as an utter surprise to you, but I have struggled a lot these past days with this call for perfection!
I ask myself tenderly and carefully, “Perfection, Alan! How’s it going for you?”. As pastorally and sensitively as I can muster, I ask each of you, “Perfection! How’s it going for you?’. I ask it of church (national and local), and I ask it of our nation whose birth we celebrate so very soon! “Perfection! How’s it going for you?”. I am not asking you to measure your neighbor’s, or your partner’s, or you colleagues’ grasp of perfection… only your own with all the kindness and compassion in the heart of our heavenly Father.
What do we make of this clarion, clear-cut, concise call for perfection? Will we dare to write, read or emulate a book like John Wesley’s “A Plain Account of Christian Perfection”? He who, we think, once said, “Do all the good you can, in all the ways you can, in every place you can, with all the zeal you can, as long as ever you can.”
What is, for example, the perfect sermon? Some have suggested the perfect sermon is about two things… it’s about God and it’s about 10/12 minutes.
And you probably remember the story of the great Baptist preacher, Charles H. Spurgeon, being approached by a member of the congregation and told, “Mr. Spurgeon, I am leaving this church?”. “Why?” inquired the great man. “Oh, because I am looking for the perfect church!”. To which the preacher responded, “Oh, don’t join it, you’ll spoil it”.
Perfect can sometimes be an awkward, even threatening, word… but not always. A winter vacation on a tropical beach might be the perfect holiday. The first time you see a newborn baby, you describe the child as “perfect” even though some, for a while, are reminiscent of Winston Churchill.
But when the word perfect is loaded onto our shoulders, it can be an awkward, even heavy burden. When an employer tells us to do a perfect job on an important task, we might well feel anxious. Despite the expectations of our culture, we know that we will not give our children the perfect parent, or our loved one the perfect marriage. Most of us, narcissists excluded, have a very firm grasp of our imperfections.
Today’s readings expect from us a perfect hospitable and just community “for orphans, widows and strangers” (Deuteronomy 10); they expect from us a perfect faith in God that enables us to embrace vulnerability in in our lives (Hebrews 11). And, of course, in our Gospel with unrelenting expectation, Jesus calls us to love our enemies with perfection and love our neighbors (and ourselves) with flawlessness.
Listen, take note please, the word for “perfect” in our text (the Greek word teleios) is better translated as mature, fitting rather than perfect, ideal.
These hands are not perfect, but they fit perfectly; these hands are not perfect, but, given their age, they are adequate, ample, sufficient for the life I lead.
No matter what little flaws a newborn baby carries, her/his parents will hear nothing else than “she/he is perfect” as they treasure and cherish the gift they have received.
And that puppy… the one that has chewed pine knobs off kitchen cupboards, gnawed at electrical leads, decimated a garden… oh, still, that puppy is just so… “perfect”!
I read yesterday (I Samuel 9:21) of Saul’s selection as king by Samuel (on the Lord’s authority). Saul says, “But I am only a Benjaminite (“I’m so not perfect”), my family is the humblest (“we are so not perfect”). Why have you spoken to me in this way?”. Well, we know… because to the Lord, Saul was the perfect choice (despite flaws and all).
Our heavenly Father looks upon us with eyes that are tender, accepting, affirming – right now we are doing the best we can, forgiven by the Lord, empowered by the Spirit. But our heavenly Mother also looks upon us with eyes that are percipient, prophetic, enabling – seeing what we can become.
Bill Wilson writes, “We have to settle… for a very gradual progress, punctuated sometimes by heavy setbacks. Our old-time attitude of “all or nothing” will have to be abandoned. Perfectionists are either full of conceit… or swamped in self-condemnation.
Our Father/Mother God would not have it so.
In one of my most oft-quoted texts (from the film June bug), I hear these words, “Ashley : [to Johnny after he throws a tantrum about not being to work the VCR] God loves you just the way you are, but He loves you too much to let you stay that way”. Maybe Max Lucardo came first, I am not sure, “God loves you just the way you are, but He refuses to leave you that way. He wants you to be just like Jesus.”
You have heard me comment, from time to time (not too often I hope?), about my relationship with bishops; so much, I have thought of writing a book “Bishops I have known”. But this I know, and can share without shame or embarrassment or hesitancy, the bishops most helpful to me, to us, have been those bishops whose lives are flawed and marred. To some extent, they have not been perfect; but for me, in my need, they have indeed been just right, “perfect”.
When will we absorb this truth… the wounded healer is the perfect healer.
We see this in Scripture, Isaiah 53:5 “By his stripes we are healed”, Message “Through his bruises we get healed”.
We see it in the psychologist Carl Jung: “an analyst is compelled to treat patients because the analyst himself is “wounded.”
As we read our text, we need not be overcome by excuses (“well, I am only human’) nor overwhelmed by despair (“this is impossible”.
At the recent Church Pension Conference, I attended, I was given this CREDO stone. I considered it as a reminder to believe and trust in the Lord; but today I see it differently… I see this stone as telling me, my precious Lord Jesus believes in me (in you, in us) as we are today… and as we will be tomorrow and all our tomorrows.
Thanks be to God! Alleluia, Amen