The Good News for Perfectionists

Matthew 5:38-48

“Be perfect therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

I don’t know about anyone else here, but I have to confess that I really have a problem with certain parts of our gospel this morning. For instance, just look at those sending words from Jesus for us today. “Be perfect.” I’m sure there are more than a few therapists who have gone on lovely vacations with the money they have earned counseling wounded people who have spent their entire lives striving – and failing – to “be perfect.”

Perfectionism is defined as “a disposition to regard anything short of perfection as unacceptable, and to regard failure to achieve even impossibly difficult goals as unacceptable and a sign of personal worthlessness. Perfectionism has often been applied to various doctrines holding that religious, moral, social, or political perfection is attainable and anything less should be rejected. It is said that aside from genetics, perfectionism is the strongest predictor of clinical depression in people. And the sometimes insistent demand for perfection has turned many imperfect and wounded people away from the church.

Yet in our gospel today it seems Jesus is telling us we need to be perfect – we need to be like God. Now, aside from all those other problems with perfectionism, isn’t that heretical? After all the Bible also tells us that no one can be perfect as God is perfect. And really, if we were truly capable of being perfect or acting perfectly, there would have been no need for Jesus to come to save us, right? So that cannot be correct. What is Jesus is saying really here?

Let’s remember that the text this morning, once again, comes from the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus has been using verbal building blocks in this sermon, to create a picture of what the community of his disciples should look like – how they should behave – how they should engage with one another, live together and of course, how they should work together. Jesus, the consummate teacher, has developed a solid lesson plans designed to teach his followers how to exhibit behavior that is just, yet goes beyond simple justice, in keeping with God’s merciful kingdom; teachings that will stick; teachings that make this community relevant and consistent with the characteristics that mark the Kingdom of God.

So, Jesus begins with the basics – describing what it means to be blessed in terms that no one had ever considered before. Then, Jesus said that by God’s grace we are salt of the earth and light for the world. God made us salt and light so that we can make a difference, transforming the world around us by reflecting the goodness of God, and revealing the ongoing presence of God everywhere.  

Finally, Jesus began urging his disciples to look more deeply and broadly than they ever had before at how the commandments and the laws of old help shape community so that we more faithfully reflect the justice and mercy of God.

In last week’s Gospel, for instance, Jesus urged us, don’t lash out in anger, but be reconciled with your brothers and sisters. Don’t swear by God’s name but be honest in your dealings, then you’ll have no need to invoke the name of the Lord.

And, in today’s Gospel Jesus says, “you have heard it said an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, but I say to you, if someone strikes you on the right cheek, let them have your left, also. If they take your coat, give them your cloak too. Love your enemy, and pray for those who hate you.”

            Jesus takes age-old law that was given to limit vengeance and acts of retribution, and says that now there is an even better way – the non-violent, non-retaliatory way to deal with insult. The old law, good as it was in keeping people from going off the deep end of vengeance – think of road rage as a contemporary example of over-zealous retribution - is no longer necessary.

For in Christ there is a new freedom, and it is freedom from the kind of desire for self-interest and self-preservation that drives such acts of pay-back; instead we are freed and commended to act lovingly. Even in the face of insult and injury; even when you have suffered great humiliation. That is when as a disciple of Christ, we fulfill God’s desire for us.

            Jesus urges us to not be tossed to and fro by the actions of others, but to respond with our best selves, not falling prey to the little and low ways people try to pick at us, but showing them that there is an alternative way, a Kingdom way of engaging with each other even in the midst of conflict. Even those who hurt you.

Eugene Peterson’s paraphrase of the Bible, The Message, puts it this way:

“You’re familiar with the old written law, ‘Love your friend,’ and its unwritten companion, ‘Hate your enemy.’

I’m challenging that.

I’m telling you to love your enemies.

Let them bring out the best in you, not the worst.

When someone gives you a hard time,

respond with the energies of prayer,

for then you are working out of your true selves,

 your God-created selves.

This is what God does.

God gives God’s best—the sun to warm and the rain to nourish—to

everyone, regardless: the good and bad, the nice and nasty. If all you do is love the lovable, do you expect a bonus? Anybody can do that. If you simply say hello to those who greet you, do you expect a medal? Any run-of-the-mill sinner does that.”

            Peterson highlights the active nature of Jesus’ commands: Living the Kingdom Way does NOT mean acting as a door mat and letting people walk all over you. Living the Kingdom Way means actively taking control of a situation and taking initiative to respond affirmatively with love.

            Responding rationally and calmly might not make the problem go away—refusing to fight might very well lead to frustration, but it will ultimately get us further down the path of understanding and, perhaps, reconciliation. 

            Patterns of violence and retaliation get us nowhere. We see in our world today that such reactions to injustice only perpetuate the problem. Jesus was all about peaceful protest. There are times when protest is a good, healthy response to injustice. But it must remain peaceful and non-retaliatory to be in accordance with Jesus teaching of the Kingdom Way.

As Gandhi said, in the Spirit of Jesus,

“An eye for an eye makes the world blind”

It is love that transforms,

            Redeems,

                        And creates new life.

“Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”
            The Greek word translated here as “perfect” is “telos”, which denotes not moral perfection, but the idea that something has grown up, matured, and now reached its perfect end – the intended product. Telos is the goal or intended outcome of something—for instance, a fruit tree’s telos, we might say, is to grow mature and tall so that it can bear fruit. In this way, Jesus is not simply commanding something of us…Jesus is also commending something in us.
            It might be easier to understand this instruction from Jesus within its context as meaning, “Be the person and the community God created you to be.”
My brothers and sisters, we are created children of God, empowered and equipped by the Holy Spirit, and Jesus knows we have more to give when it comes to our relationships with one another—even those people with whom we disagree, than to be bound up in “an eye for an eye” kind of living. Jesus knows that we can be and do more than we often settle for.

We can absolutely make a difference in the world when we trust that we are created in the image and likeness of the almighty,

ever-loving, abundantly gracious God who gives us the power,

will, and courage to live the Kingdom way.

Jesus knows this is possible because God sees more in you than you see in yourself.  Jesus well knows that it may be challenging to love, especially those people who just seem to pick and pick and pick and pick at us. But God has plans and a purpose for us. God intends to use us to achieve something spectacular. That something comes as a product of precisely who God were created each of us to be.

God created us to advance a different world, what Jesus calls the Kingdom of God – where violence doesn’t always breed more violence, and hate doesn’t kindle more hate.

Martin Luther King, Jr understood and reflected this truth when he said:

 “Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that.

Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”

By his teaching and healing, and by his death and resurrection, we know that Jesus is absolutely serious about this manner of being in the world, he showed us that through him, the Kingdom of Heaven is already here among us and within us, and living in the Kingdom entails a different way of life.

            With these lessons taught on the mount, Jesus invites us to be the people God created us to be so that we might not just persevere through this sometimes challenging life, but will flourish, nourishing Christ’s love and light in the world through pathways of peace and love, understanding and acceptance, mercy and forgiveness.
            Through the Holy Spirit God enables us to both hear Jesus’ message and to follow his teaching. And through the Grace of God we are forgiven for those times when we fail to live into the path that Jesus has set before us. Through the blood of Christ we are forgiven for the times we backslide. That is good news for all of us perfectionists, who see our failures to always live up to these teachings as convicting and shameful. The overarching message of our salvation is that we are forgiven and strengthened to try again, to live the Kingdom way. And so, we are bold to embrace the words of Jesus today:
 “Be perfect, Kingdom people, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” Amen.