Perfection [Epiphany 7A - Matthew 5:38-48]
The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson
Matthew 5:38-48
Perfection
Jesus comes up with some doozies –
and this is a pretty good one: Be perfect; Be perfect as your Heavenly Father
is perfect. Now what do we do with that?
Perfection is perhaps my biggest stumbling block. I would love to be great at everything: the
perfect father, perfect husband, perfect priest, perfect person. But I'm not.
And the older I get, the more I realize that.
Of course, what I mean by perfect
is almost never what Jesus means. I
guess when I think about perfection it means: no mistakes, no embarrassing
moments. It means always having the best
ideas and making the correct decisions.
It means coasting through life while everyone else is busy muddling
through. It means admiration, praise,
and maybe even a little justifiable envy in the eyes of all who encounter
me. I think I might just like
perfection; it seems like it would be good for me. So, what will it take? What will it take to be perfect?
The folks who heard Jesus' great Sermon
on the Mount, from which we heard an excerpt today, were average people –
peasants, laborers. They were not
powerful or great. They were certainly
not perfect. But they saw something in
Jesus. They saw potential, maybe
greatness. And so they followed. And listened for clues.
They heard Jesus talk about his
kingdom. That's Messianic talk. And they were ready, ready to rise up, ready
to put the Romans in their place. They
were ready to follow the one, the one who would lead the revolution. And Jesus talked about a new kingdom – and
they saw the signs and the healings.
And so they followed and they
listened. In this sermon, to crowds of
eager, curious, desperate people, Jesus laid out the blueprint for the
revolution, the way of his kingdom, but it was nothing the crowd expected. Probably it was just about the opposite of
what many had hoped to hear.
The people were ready to overthrow
the government. They were ready to start
the war. And eventually they would. The Jewish revolt against the Empire some
decades later would result in hundreds of thousands of deaths, a Jewish defeat,
and the destruction of the Temple. But
it was not Jesus' revolution. And as
those in Jesus' audience, those with him on the mount, would discover, it was
not Jesus' way.
This revolution, Jesus' revolution,
would come without violence. And in many
ways, from many perspectives, it would be humiliating. And worst of all those horrible Roman
soldiers, the enemy, would experience only the fury of undeserved love.
Jesus' sermon is given in the
context of Empire – from one occupied person to a crowd of occupied
people. And the sermon only makes sense
from that perspective. Because in its
context Jesus' expectations are as shocking as they are challenging.
Let's take for example Jesus'
command: if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile. This has become something of a generic motivational
catchphrase - “go the extra mile.” But
there is, of course, much more to it. In
the Empire, a Roman soldier was permitted to force an occupied person, in this
case a Jew, to carry his pack for one mile.
The soldier was permitted to do this because, well, the Jews were less
important than Roman soldiers and important people tell less important people
what to do. That is how the world often
works.
To the Roman soldier, and to the
Empire, that Jew might as well have been an animal, a donkey, a beast of burden
– not a really person. This was a way to
publicly humiliate and intentionally dehumanize. It was like a white person sending a black
person to the back of the bus. Or like a
business owner refusing to serve gays and lesbians in the name of religious
freedom. It was a way that the one with
power could use that privilege to make another person feel less human – to
embarrass and belittle them. It was one
of those small ways that the one with power keeps that power.
So of course, the Jews listening to
Jesus would hate the practice and despise the soldiers who exploited them. And yet Jesus tells his followers to keep
carrying the pack – to continue to voluntarily do something humiliating, something
dehumanizing. Why would Jesus do this? Well, there was a limitation to what the
soldier could require. A soldier could
only require one mile; to do otherwise might earn the soldier a punishment. And so carrying the extra mile was a form of
non-violent resistance. It was clever
and subversive in a way that did not require one to take up arms.
But in the context of Jesus'
sermon, I think there is more to it.
Because Jesus doesn't command his followers to shame their enemies. Jesus requires his followers to love their
enemies.
By choosing to carry the pack an
extra mile, the one being humiliated asserts his or her humanity – denies the
oppressor's attempt to dehumanize. Walter Wink says, “[Jesus] is formulating a
worldly spirituality in which the people at the bottom of society or
under the thumb of imperial power learn to recover their humanity.”[1] It is a powerful action; the enemy's
salvation depends on his ability to recognize their common humanity. That can only happen in the second mile –
when the walk becomes a choice – an act of defiant and unexpected
kindness. In that extra mile, both the
oppressor and the oppressed become more human by the power of love – love
showed to an enemy. Only by the power of
perfect love can one look into the face of the “enemy” and see a human being –
equally in need of, and worthy of, God's grace.
The values of the kingdom of God
are so contrary to our own human tendencies, that they are offensive. The Jews listening to Jesus speak had enemies
– enemies they wanted to destroy, enemies who had mistreated, exploited, and
embarrassed them. And so they are no
different from us. All of us have our
line that we just cannot cross – the person or people in whom we are unwilling
to see the image of God
But Jesus has this dream – a dream
of God's kingdom – a kingdom in which the revolutionaries will be armed only
with love – the kind of love that has no line, the kind of love that knows no
enemy. Because only that kind of love
has the power to transform hearts.
I am amazed at the capacity of love
to change a human being. Guns can't do
that. Bombs can't do that. Force can't do that. It is an amazing miracle – a miracle we so
often take for granted. And it changes
both the giver and the receiver. In an
encounter with love nothing stays the same.
When I love another human being – when I see in that other the face of
God – that other person becomes more human – more human because they are
loved. When I love another human being –
when I risk my heart for another person – I am transformed as well. I become more like my Heavenly Parent – a
little closer to perfection.
Which is what Jesus wants; he wants
us to be perfect. But perfection for
Jesus is about one thing, the one thing he truly values: love. Love that risks humiliation; love that draws
no lines. Love that sees in the face of
friend, stranger, and enemy the image of God.
This is what the revolution looks
like. It looks very human in a world
that is inhumane. We are called to the
most revolutionary task of all – to respect the dignity of every human
being. It is the most human thing we can
do. And, it turns out, it is also the
most divine.
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