Sermon for Feb. 19, 2017

Epiphany 7A- Feb. 19

Matt. 5:38-48; Lev. 19:1-2, 9-18

            Seven months ago I had knee replacement surgery. As most of you have noticed, it has been a long, sometimes uneven, journey since then toward full recovery. Even now, I still experience swelling & a little weakness & soreness; but it is so much better today than before the surgery. I would have liked to have had the knee instantly transformed to perfect health the moment I woke up for the surgery; but we all know that is not the way things work.

            I say this to preface a look at the final verse of our Gospel reading today: “Be perfect,” Jesus says, “even as your heavenly Father is perfect.” Wow! If this is what God expects of us, then we’re all pretty much toast! I don’t know about you, but I’m nowhere near a 10 on the holiness perfection scale. And in all honesty, I don’t know that I can make it there in this lifetime. So, what am I to do?

            Well, as with the knee surgery recovery, the starting point is to not despair, but to get to work, & realize that I’ll never get there all by myself. You see, living in Christ is something of an ongoing process—a process that never ends this side of eternity.

            In the portions of the Sermon on the Mount that we’ve read the past few weeks, Jesus has steadily ramped up the goodness requirements for his followers. All this “you have heard it said…but I say to you” stuff has put being good almost out of reach. And then he ends it all with “Be perfect!”

            But if we look a little more closely, there may be some good news & hope hidden in these words. You see, the Greek word that is translated here as “perfect” has a much richer & deeper meaning. It’s the word telios; & it refers to a “coming of age; of goals & targets toward which one is growing.” It is maturing & becoming, as I said last week, the person God dreamed & created you to be.

            In other words, I think Jesus is calling us to move toward the perfection that God alone manifests. It is a process that God begins in baptism, continues as we work toward obedience, & only culminates with the grace of God that makes us fully clean. As Paul wrote to the church in Corinth, “I planted; Apollos watered; but God have the growth.” And also in Philippians, “work out your own salvation with fear & trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will & to work for His good pleasure.”

            God has made you holy; God has set us aside to be His holy people, we’re told in Leviticus. And this is a promise, not a threat! God has done it; & that is grace, not a demand! The result of this is our movement toward perfection & the kind of gracious treatment of others that Jesus describes in the Sermon on the Mount—loving your enemies, giving selflessly to those in need, turning the other cheek—becoming perfect, growing toward maturity in your faith.

            Are you a 10? Are you perfect? Probably not. But all of us are 10’s in God’s eyes & in God’s heart. Thanks be to God. Amen.