“Good Enough or, Gulp, Perfection?”
Matthew 5:43-48
So we continue our summer preaching series with topics chosen by the congregation. This week’s topic, “Good Enough, or Gulp…Perfection,” comes from the book study done during Lent by our seminary intern, Willa. Kate Bowler and co-author Jessica Ritchie wrote the book Good Enough in response to our culture’s apparent obsession with self-help, self-improvement, and living your best, perfect life right now.
This book is a companion for when you want to stop feeling guilty that you’re not living your best life now. Their premise is that we don’t have to be perfect, especially as we work through pandemics and division. In times like these, sometimes it is enough to be able to say, “I got up, took a shower, and came to work today!”
They even wrote their version of a Beatitude. “Blessed are we who remember that we will fall short. We will fail, but that doesn’t mean we are ruined. We simply pick up and begin again. Blessed are we, willing to be beginners all over again.”
In stark contrast to the book, we have this glaring passage from Jesus’ first sermon, which seems to stand in stark contrast to being “good enough.” “Be perfect, therefore as your God in heaven is perfect.” (Matthew 5:48) So the question raised was, “Well, which is it? Are we to be perfect in our faith and life or good enough?” Let’s work through this passage to see if we can come to a conclusion. I’ll begin with an illustration.
During my first year of high school, I tried out for and made the track team. I wasn’t particularly fast, so I ran distance events- one and two miles. But I was most interested in two field events- pole vault and high jump. We didn’t have much in terms of a coach or equipment for field events, but I began learning how to get myself up over the high jump bar and tried desperately to figure out the pole vault. Our poles were made of solid metal because we didn’t have funds to purchase the newer fiberglass ones, which bent like rubber bands that every other team had. I never cleared a vault above 8 feet and blamed it on my old equipment. High jump, however, was a lot of fun, and I really enjoyed learning the technique of launching myself over the bar and into the pit. Initially, we started at a very low height, around 3 feet, to get used to high jumping. But, as we improved, the coach kept raising the bar, and it became harder and harder to jump over it without knocking it down. On one particularly good day for me, The coach raised it to 5’3”, and I made one perfect jump attempt. I was the only one to clear that height that day and the only one who cleared it the whole season on our team. But, as the coach kept raising the bar, I couldn’t clear anything above that 5’3” mark. The bar was just too high. After the track season, I moved on to tennis. I just gave up on clearing any higher jumps and set my sights on becoming the next Bjorn Borg.
In today’s passage, you could also say that Jesus raises the bar. In reality, I think you could say that about all of his “Sermon on the Mount” covered in chapters 5-7 in the gospel of Matthew. This entire sermon raises the bar of expectation for the Christian, and I think it is more daunting than trying to jump higher than 5’3” by far. That being said, if you want to know, REALLY know, what Jesus’ teachings were all about, spend time reading and re-reading these three chapters. The first 42 verses of chapter five begin at an already high height. Yet Jesus seemingly keeps raising the bar.
Jesus’s subsequent raising of the bar is articulated in the language of love of enemies, beginning in verse 43. “You have heard 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.” G. K. Chesterton said, “The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because they are the same people...”
The first half of this cited oral tradition about the love of neighbor is a partial quotation of Leviticus 19:18. Yet the second half about the hatred of enemies is not to be found in the Torah or any part of the Hebrew Bible. I believe Jesus speaks of society in general, in which hatred of the other and hostility toward the enemy are common and expected. He turns things upside down and calls for us to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us (v.44).
That is a tall order for the days in which we live in the United States of America. I have never seen us so divided over issues of race, religion, human freedom, guns, and politics. People are angry. Enemies abound. Somehow, amid this challenge comes a teaching from Jesus to love them.
Just what kind of love is Jesus talking about here? Verse 45 provides the answer. God’s love does not discriminate. God’s blessings are lavished both to the evil and the good, both to the righteous and the unrighteous. We are called to do the same. By emulating God’s indiscriminating love for all, one lives fully as a child of God.
Who are our enemies today? Who are those individuals or perhaps neighbors you can name in your head right now? What about those groups you dislike? They all have their monikers, their labels. Fill in the blank with whatever title you want- Jesus says, love them all. Pray for them all. Unconditionally. 19th century English Cardinal John Henry Newman said, “We should conduct ourselves toward our enemy as if he were one day to be our friend. I confess to you I have no answers on how to do that, especially right now, as bad as things are in our country. Christian Discipleship isn’t easy, nor has it ever really been so.
What then does it mean to pray for our enemies? It means much more than just praying for God to alter their attitudes and behavior. It also means that in praying for them, we try to see them from God’s point of view. They, too, have been created in God’s image, and no behavior can erase that image. Theologian Douglas Hare says, “We cannot pray for our enemies without reminding ourselves that the God who is able to love us despite our disobedience is able to love also those who hate us.”
The result of this action, in praying for and ultimately caring for those we deem as the enemy, according to verse 45- we are sons and daughters of God. When we reflect God’s unconditional love for all people and see them as made in God’s image, we show ourselves as offspring of God. In a world where it is customary to return hate for hate, evil for evil, we are called to a radically different way, the way of unconditional love.
Finally, Jesus seems to raise the bar so high on the standards of the Christian life that none of us ever can or ever will get over the bar- We must Be perfect, therefore, as our heavenly God is perfect! The emphasis in Greek is that the “you,” in this case, is emphatic. Imagine a finger pointing at you- YOU must be perfect! How can we possibly live entirely without fault or defect? We cannot be perfect. Why demand the impossible? One key to understanding comes from the original Greek- The phrase should be translated as “You shall (future tense )one day be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly God is perfect.” First, this is a future promise! We are not yet all we will one day be.
Furthermore, the word translated as perfect, “teleioi,” does not mean “perfect,” which is “faultless or impeccable.” It means complete. We move toward completeness when we reflect the image of God in our thinking, our speaking, and our very way of being. It is, therefore, both a future promise and a current goal toward which we aim. “You shall one day be complete- when all is said and done upon the earth, and you take your journey home to heaven.” That does not mean we can rest and relax when it comes to living faithful lives. We look toward perfection, and completeness, trying our best to clear the bar Jesus sets before us and live in such high and lofty ways. The more we strive towards this completeness, the further along we are- the closer to God, the higher we can jump, and the better this world becomes.
So, perfection or good enough? I think the answer is looking to the teachings of Jesus, striving to follow them in our lives, and knowing that one day, we will be complete. For now, we know we cannot be perfect, which is why we have grace, thank God! Bowler and Ritchie write, “Perfection is impossible, but transformation isn’t. We can change a bit, if we really want to. This is the choice embedded in every day from the moment we wake up. We will have to find enough momentum to reach for a faith that is never perfect, but good enough.”
Transformation is possible. Jesus can give us enough momentum to get over that bar, even in this nation’s mess. It begins with you and with me. It starts when we individually take these words to heart and act upon them. Perhaps it starts in a small way with someone you need to forgive or reconcile, such as a discussion and handshake after worship today. Or when you go to the store after church, and someone cuts in front of you to take that primo parking space, rather than lay on the horn, you look for another space. Or when you see that neighbor who has always gotten under your skin blasting loud music or whose dog uses your front yard for its bathroom, rather than giving them that icy stare, you smile. Or perhaps when the political pundit begins to rant and rave about something you care about passionately, rather than listen and let your blood boil, you turn off the television. Our God is a God of unconditional, never-ending love. We are called to be a people of unconditional, never-ending love. May we go from this place today, not just hearing Jesus’ call to a higher standard but actually living it out in thought, word and deed. If we make this our aim every day, we all may find it surprising just how high we can jump and maybe, just maybe, see some transformation in this bitterly divided nation.
In such difficult times, I think a prayer to God, asking for help is a good place to start. The words of Christian author Anne Lamott come to mind in her book on prayer, Help, Thanks, Wow. “Praying ‘Help’ means that we ask that Something give us the courage to stop in our tracks, right where we are, and turn our fixation away from the Gordian knot of our problems. We stop the toxic peering and instead turn our eyes to something else; to our feet on the sidewalk, to the middle distance, to the hills, whence our help comes-someplace else, anything else.” So, God, help! Alleluia! Amen.
