"BE PERFECT!" - Sermon for Epiphany 7 2017

Sermon:

Text: Matthew 5:38-48

Grace and Peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ who makes us complete.

            A friend of mine put up this little exchange between her, her son, and her daughter.

Son: God DOES love him (referring to a person who was feeling sad). 'Cause God loves everybody...except God doesn't love bad guys. And Jesus doesn't either.
My friend: Actually, buddy, you wanna know something crazy?
Daughter (from the next room): Mama, can I tell him?
My friend: Sure
Daughter: Micah, I heard you, but God and Jesus DO love bad guys. Because they're people.
Son: No! They don't, because bad guys are mean! And they hurt people!
Daughter: They do, Micah. God and Jesus love EVERYBODY!

            In some ways, I want to agree with Micah, but they’re bad people!! But, then I read our lesson for today. Love your enemies. But, they’re bad people!! But, we’re supposed to love them, and know that God loves them.

            Does that mean that there are no repercussions for what they’ve done? No, they are still liable for laws they have broken, they still have to answer for the laws of the world, and they may have to answer still for the laws of God. I say may there just because I am not God, so I cannot answer that for certain myself, so I leave it up to God.

            It helps a little to think that loving someone doesn’t mean excusing their behavior, but it doesn’t make it all that much easier. Pretty much the definition of enemy is one that you don’t love, so how do you love them!

            Reading through the rest of our lesson here doesn’t make what Jesus is teaching us any easier. If you love only those who love you, what good is that. If you greet only those in your in group, what more are you doing than others?

            We don’t like it, because well, it’s a lot easier to hate those we hate, and to just hang out with those who are like us vs those others and our enemies.

            Reading through this text I’m already thinking, wow, Jesus, that’s a lot to think about, and very little I’m all that confident about accomplishing. I’ll try my best, but I don’t know! And then, the last verse here. Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

            At first glance, I feel like this makes it even harder. Well, dang, perfect?  I can’t be perfect, no matter how hard I try, I’m going to mess something up.

            But, what does it mean to be perfect? And specifically, what does Jesus mean by being perfect here? Luckily for all of us, this is not a moral perfection as we think about perfect now, of not making any mistakes ever. It’s perfect in the sense of completion and wholeness. The word that Jesus uses is the Greek word, Telos, it means not don’t make mistakes, but more, be the person who God created you to be, be complete, full, and whole.

            And that fills me with hope. For two reasons, one leading to the other. It’s be who God created you to be. God is the one who created you, God is the one who sees your abilities within yourself, who created your abilities within yourself. God knows and is confident that you can do all these things asked of you. God knows you can be perfect, because God makes you perfect.

            I love the way that Pastor David Lose puts this section in an article I read this week, “God sees more in you than you do. God has plans and a purpose for you. God intends to use you to achieve something spectacular. And that something spectacular is precisely to be who you were created to be and, in so doing, to help create a different kind of world. Jesus calls this new world the kingdom of God – where violence doesn’t always breed more violence and hate doesn’t always kindle more hate. Martin Luther King, Jr. captured the logic of Jesus’ kingdom well when he stated, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”

            This last line of be perfect, isn’t just another thing on top of an already long list of things that seem so hard to accomplish, turning the other cheek, walking the next mile, loving your enemy, welcoming those different than yourself. It’s the answer to all those things. In fact it’s the answer to everything throughout the whole sermon on the mount. The meek, the poor, those who mourn, they are a part of the group made perfect by God. They are part of this plan to change the world. They are blessed because God sees big things being accomplished through them. God sees big things being accomplished through us.

            Now, are we then going to be able to do all these things that Jesus asks of us all of the time? Of course not, we are going to mess them up at times, that doesn’t mean that we don’t still try, nor that does that mean that we’re doomed because of it, or that the world is doomed because of it. Our job is to help change the world, not save the world, Jesus has already saved it through the cross, our job is to work and work, bit by bit, to be active participants in God’s plan. We’re called to go out into the world to care for the least, protect the weak, to bring about justice, and then to come back to hear the good news that God makes us whole, God nourishes us through the body and blood of Jesus, which in turn allows us to go out again and again into this world, perfect people created by God to bring about the change that God wants.

            Amen, and let it be so.