Monday, February 21, 2011

Be Perfect, Everybody...

Brad Sullivan

7th Sunday after the Epiphany
Sunday, February 20, 2011
Emmanuel, Houston
Leviticus 19:1-2,9-18
Psalm 119:33-40
1 Corinthians 3:10-11,16-23
Matthew 5:38-48

Be perfect, everybody, you got that. Anything short of perfection, and you’re out. Perfection is a pretty tall order although as Garrison Keeler pointed out, Jesus was preaching this sermon on a mount, and here in Houston things are pretty flat, so it might not be quite as applicable to us here. Looking more seriously at the scripture, I don’t know that Jesus was saying, “be forever without fault or defect of any kind,” when he said to be perfect.

He didn’t actually even give the absolute command, “be perfect.” He rather said, “you will be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly father is perfect.” Further, the word translated as perfect can also mean “whole” and “complete”. Be whole people. Be complete people, and in that way, perfect, as your heavenly father is whole, complete, perfect.

We tend to love trying to measure up to the sinless life of Jesus and then castigating ourselves for not measuring up. That’s not the point of this passage, to set some incredibly high bar of perfection in our lives which we can never attain so that we can then spend the rest of our lives feeling badly about ourselves.

Notice that everything leading up to this statement about perfection or wholeness was a teaching about how to love others. "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…” (Matthew 5:38-39) That’s a difficult saying, to be sure, I don’t know that Jesus is telling us to sit idly by while someone beats us to a bloody pulp. I don’t believe Jesus is telling people in abusive relationships to keep taking the abuse. Jesus isn’t telling us to sit idly by while people abuse others or to ignore injustice or violence. Jesus wants us to stand up for the victims of fear, injustice, and oppression.

He’s simply commanding us to do so in love. In the example he gives, Jesus is telling us to end a cycle of violence before it really gets going. Rather than fighting back when someone strikes you on the cheek (which will lead to both people being hurt and one person likely being substantially more hurt than the other), take a bruised cheek, and offer another one. See if that will end it. We’re not talking about letting someone keep knocking our teeth out. The image Jesus gives is one of a person full of peace and love such that being struck on the cheek doesn’t incite a violent response. Such a heart doesn’t seek vengeance. Such a heart doesn’t return evil for evil. Such a heart sees with compassion, even towards one’s enemies. A heart full of peace and love is a heart that is whole, a heart that is deeply rooted in God.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu who faced terrible violence in South Africa said of his ministry, “I wouldn’t have survived without fairly substantial chunks of quiet and meditation. The demands that are made on one almost always seem to be beyond one’s natural capacities. There would be many times when the problems, the crises we were facing seemed about to overwhelm us. There’s no way in which you could have confronted these in your own strength.”

In her book The Soul of a Leader, Margaret Benefiel writes about Archbishop Tutu and gives an example of Archbishop Tutu interrupting a cycle of violence. There was a terrible occasion, when security forces killed 38 people in Sebokeng, a black township of South Africa, in 1990. When word of the massacre reached Archbishop Tutu, he was meeting with his synod of bishops. “He left the meeting to cry and pray in the chapel, and then, feeling directed by God, returned to the bishops,” and urged them to “suspend our meeting, which had never happened before, and go [to Sebokeng].” All of the bishops unanimously agreed, and the next morning they left for Sebokeng.

When they arrived, they celebrated the Eucharist in a local church and visited the injured and the bereaved. Soon thereafter, a convoy of armored police vehicles with tear gas and machine guns appeared. John Cleary of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported what he observed:

I heard the archbishop say, “Let us pray.” Then the noise of the vehicles stopped. The crowd went quiet. There was no sound from the Casspirs, no sound of tear gas canisters. So I looked around and there, behind me, were the Anglican bishops of Southern Africa—black, white, coloured, old, young—standing between the crowd and the Casspirs, with their arms outstretched. In that moment, I understood a little about what the Christian vision for a new South Africa cost people. I’d never witnessed that sort of courage before.

http://www.americamagazine.org/content/article.cfm?article_id=11625
Archbishop Tutu and his fellow bishops, their hearts full of peace and love, deeply rooted in God, met violence with prayer, and ended the cycle of violence. Look again at what Jesus preached to his disciples, "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.” I doubt Archbishop Tutu had the most warm and fuzzy feelings for the men who had killed the people of Sebokeng, but he had enough love for them to give them prayer rather than violence in response to their violence.

There is no way he could have done that if his heart was full of hatred. He had every right to be hateful toward those men, his enemies, but having that hatred for them would not have brought about a peaceful resolution. Rather than be full of hate, Archbishop Tutu and his fellow bishops were made whole, complete, perfect.

Jesus was right in telling us not to hate our enemies because we can’t deal with hate. Nowhere does scripture tell us to hate our enemies. Plenty says God will hate or does hate the enemies of Israel of the enemies of justice and mercy. So perhaps people extrapolated from those verses of scripture that since God hates our enemies, we should hate them too. "You have heard that it was said, `You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.'” The problem we find is that when we hate, love is driven from us. When we hate, even justifiably, we are diminished. We become less of who we are, hatred takes over and fills in the places that once contained us.

How can God then hate evil and those who do evil and still be whole, complete, perfect, holy? Presumably, God can do whatever God does. Even saying God hates these things, however, may be to ascribe too human a character to God. God is. In the way of life given to us by God, we find something of what God is.

The Israelites were told in Leviticus to “be holy, for [God is] holy.” Then a way of life was described in order for the people to be holy. This way of life included things like: honoring ones parents, keeping God’s Sabbaths, leaving some of one’s crop for the poor, being honest in words and actions, not stealing, making sure workers had enough wages for their daily living, looking out for the disabled, seeking justice, not hating one’s family, not taking vengeance, loving one’s neighbor.

We see in commanding this way of life not only a beautiful way for us to live, but we are also given a glimpse into the nature of God. God desires for us love, peace, honor, care for others, justice, reconciliation. Evil, injustice, malice, heartlessness, ruthlessness…these things, therefore, seem anathema to God. So, we say God hates these things. God can. God can hate those things that are anathema to God. God can do so without being destroyed. God remains whole, complete, perfect in love. We cannot. We do not. When we hate, our love is destroyed.

How then can we remain perfect, whole and complete in peace and love, without hate? Jesus tells to do so by praying. One of my seminary professors, Bishop Mark Dyer told us of a practice of prayer which he does every day. He takes out his calendar in the morning and prays for ever meeting he is going to have, ever person he knows he’s going to encounter throughout the day. He prays for those whom he is looking forward to seeing and those who, as he puts it, “get [his] Irish up.”

We’ve all got the folks who drive us a little nuts. Pray for them too. Pray for friends and family. Pray for the annoying ones. Pray for the ones we hold as enemies. Pray for a heart full of peace and love, deeply rooted in God. Such prayers and such hearts will make us whole, complete, perfect, even as God is perfect. Amen.