You Want Me to Be Perfect?!

 “You Want Me to be PERFECT?!”

 Message @ Jericho Ridge Community Church – Sunday, Oct 4, 2020

Text: Matthew 5:43-47 // Series: Say What?! The Hard Sayings of Jesus    

Hello.  Welcome, friends into this online space to our in-person watch party at Jericho Centre.  My name is Brad and I’m part of the teaching and leadership team here at Jericho and I’m so glad you’re participating in our community in this way.

I want to speak to our students for a moment.  I know most of you are back into a learning environment in one way or another.  How’s school going for you so far?  It is interesting to me to observe how different people respond differently when the challenge level gets adjusted.  Because different personalities respond differently to new challenges.

Take, for example, the different responses my wife, Meg and I both had when in middle school, were told to memorize our multiplication tables.   My grade 6 teacher, Mrs Stanley, told us that if we memorized our times tables, she would quiz us and would give us prizes if we could reduce our time – and she would give us extra points for memorizing the hard ones.  This brought out my competitive streak and I went home and tried to commit them to memory so I could get more prizes than the other kids.

My wife’s grade 5 teacher also wanted her to memorize her times tables so told her “you need to do this.  You will never graduate from high school without memorizing your multiplication tables”.  And Meg purposed that day right there in her heart “I will not memorize these tables AND I will graduate from high school!” 

An undergraduate and graduate degree later, I’m still not sure she knows 4 times 7 or 9 x 7 off by heart but she is an amazing human being whom I love dearly and whose permission I did in fact ask to share this story with you. 

The point is that different people respond differently when presented with the same challenge.  

This fall, we are in a teaching series here at Jericho entitled “Say What?!’ where we are exploring the hard or difficult sayings of Jesus.  We are learning that some of the things that Jesus said are “hard” because they are difficult to understand. Others are “hard” because the demands they make on our lives are only too clear but we may or may not be in a space to listen and obey.  We see all through the life and teaching of Jesus that people respond differently when they are presented with a challenge. 

So last week Pastor Wally explained that when Jesus said “hate your parents” Jesus was using hyperbole to compare and contrast the love we have for God with other close relationships in our lives.  The week before we looked at John 6 where Jesus said “you must eat my flesh” and we learned that Jesus was not speaking literally but rather He was speaking about the communion meal and His invitation for us to draw nourishment and strength from Him spiritually. 

Today we turn our attention to Matthew 5, which is sometimes called the Sermon on the Mount.  This is the centre point of Jesus’ ethical teaching.  This is where Jesus says radical and challenging things like ‘you are blessed if you are poor or in mourning…. Or the meek shall inherit the earth. And you a blessed if you are persecuted.  Jesus lays down RADICAL expectations of what it means to follow Him and participate in the upside down nature of Kingdom of Heaven. 

If this wasn’t enough, He goes on to teach about keeping your anger under control, and in Matthew 5:38 he talks about how we are not to take revenge on those who wrong us.  And as he rounds toward the end of what was given as a sermon, Jesus comes to what I think is one of the most radical statements anywhere in the Gospel accounts of His life. 

These 5 verses are so radical that some ethicists and Christian traditions throughout history have simply given up and said “you know what, that is simply unattainable… there is no way women or men can do that sort of thing!”  They might well be right.  But what if Jesus actually meant what He said?  Let’s look together at Matthew 5 starting in verse 43:

“You have heard the law that says, ‘Love your neighbor’^[q] and hate your enemy. But I say, love your enemies!^[r] Pray for those who persecute you! In that way, you will be acting as true children of your Father in heaven. For he gives his sunlight to both the evil and the good, and he sends rain on the just and the unjust alike. 46

 If you love only those who love you, what reward is there for that? Even corrupt tax collectors do that much. 47 If you are kind only to your friends,[s] how are you different from anyone else? Even pagans do that. 48 But you are to be perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect.

OK – so let’s just have our “Say what?!” moment… Jesus, you want me to be perfect?!  I can’t even get there on my best days, and with all that is going on in the world right now, I am not having my best days!”  We would do well to pause and ponder what is the world might Jesus saying to His listeners and also to you and I in this passage? 

Let’s look at it verse by verse.  Jesus starts off in verse 43 with the ancient command to love your neighbor which was given in the Levitical law.  Jesus’ original Jewish listeners would have been totally in agreement with this.  But the problem was, as we read about in other parables that Jesus tells, like the story of the Good Samaritan, or His scandalous interactions with those considered “outsiders”, such as the Woman at the Well in John 4, that the definition of neighbor can become hyper narrow. 

Notice where the quote from Leviticus 19:18 ends and where the additional commentary ‘hate your enemy’ begins.  Don’t hear what the Bible is not saying.  The Hebrew scriptures do NOT give a license to hate our enemies.  And Jesus then adds in this high challenge expectation: that those who follow Him will bless those who curse you and will do good to those who hate you!

This is a hard teaching, especially in the polarized world in which we live today which is marked by fear and hatred of all types.  Think of how divided our world is today.  Along the lines of socio-economics. Politics. Parenting styles. Generational lines. Racial lines. Country of origin or passport.  There is fear and misunderstanding all over the place. 

Church planter and author Dan White Jr. was so struck by how deep this was running in his own heart and in the church that he wrote a book entitled “Love Over Fear”. He is seeking, like many others in the Anabaptist movement, a pathway that seeks to put down the mantle of “othering” and pick up the mantle of loving our enemies.  He’s a good follow on Twitter and his website loveoverfearproject.com is worth a visit.  In one of his recent Tweets he said this “Our daily news feeds tell us who our enemies are and how we should loathe them. Our daily invitation from God's spirit is to love our enemies and find creative ways to bless them.” 

I don’t know about you but I find this a very real challenge.  What would it look like if we actually took time to listen to and genuinely learn from and pray with and for those who are different than me?  To befriend those who are in different places with respect to their political persuasions, not with a vision to covert them to our way of thinking? Or what about those with different sexual identities? Or different driving habits?  Or Pinot Grigio drinkers (just kidding, Pastor Wally)! J   

It’s not hard to love those who love us. Who look like us.  Who act and vote like us. Who smell and eat like us.  Who read the Bible llke us. But Jesus suggests in verse 46-47 that there is no reward for that kind of easy behavior and thinking.  We might agree with Jesus that we should resist paying back evil for evil when harmed, but loving those people?!  That’s taking it to the next level! 

And on top of that, can we really be commanded to love someone?  That may seem to remove the place of volition from the equation – something that we as automatous, individualist North Americans are loathe to do. 

Part of our problem may well lie in the sentimental association that the world “love” has for us.  We associate it with feelings.  But the Scriptures say things in I John 3:18 “let’s not merely say that we love each other; let us show the truth by our actions”.  Loving our enemies, in other words, shows up not in how we think about our enemies, but how we act toward our enemies.  How we love them with our time, talents, and treasures. 

This incredibly challenging posture is one that God knows about because God is in the business of loving enemies so that they can become family members.  Take, for example, Colossians 1:21 which reminds us that “You…were once far away from God. You were his enemies, separated from him by your evil thoughts and actions. 22 Yet now he has reconciled you to himself through the death of Christ in his physical body. As a result, he has brought you into his own presence, and you are holy and blameless as you stand before him without a single fault.”

By His work on the cross, Jesus broke down the walls of hostility between cultures, oppositional factions, gendered hierarchies, power inequalities.  All of the barriers that divide.  God made it not only possible for us to live peaceably, but for us to also extend the ministry of reconciliation and peacemaking to others.  This is the heart of the gospel and because of that, it is the heart of our work. 

So it is in this context that Jesus makes the statement about being perfect. Let’s explore Matthew 5;48 together now in it’s context: “You are to be perfect even as you father in heaven is perfect.”

This sounds like an imperative command – be perfect!  What if I can’t? What if I already messed my life up really badly?  I’m hooped before I even start on this journey, Jesus! 

As Pastor Wally pointed out last weekend, it can be helpful for us to look into the parallel account, if it exists, in another Gospel.  In Luke 6 we see that another disciple recorded the words of Jesus’ sermon on the mount and the text there reads “you must be compassionate just as your Father is compassionate”.  Here again we find the notion of love being not a noun, but a VERB.  It is an action word.   

When we find the same saying of Jesus preserved in different forms by two first century gospel writers as we do here, the reason often is that Jesus’ Aramaic words (which was the language he spoke in) have been translated into Greek (which is the language the New Testament is written in) in two slightly different ways.

We do not know the precise Aramaic words that Jesus used on this occasion, but they probably meant something like, “You must be perfect (that is, all-embracing, without any restriction) in your acts of mercy or kindness, for that is what God is like.”

New Testament scholar Peter H. David notes that “When the books of the law were read in synagogue from the original Hebrew, the reading was accompanied by an oral paraphrase (called a targum) in Aramaic, the popular vernacular. There is a passage in the law (Lev 22:26–28) which prescribes kindness to animals. In one of the Aramaic paraphrases, this passage ended with the words “As our Father is merciful in heaven, so you must be merciful on earth.” Do you hear the echo of that here? 

In other words, we are invited into the very real place of acting like our Father in Heaven, who is compassionate not only toward the just and good people, but who also radically and lavishly loves those who are currently not in that category.  Who are enemies. 

You might be listening to this and think “Brad, that all sounds fine but you don’t know my neighbor.  You don’t know the person who wronged me.  They are insidious and unrepentant and and…’  I hear what you are saying.  Recently I had a run in with a neighbour over something.  And I though to myself “after all the good things I’ve done for you, THIS is how you repay me?  I’m not going to cut your lawn any more!”  But this week as I began to dig into this text more, I became convicted that my actions were driven by a sense of wanting to be right, wanting to feel superior, wanting my compassion not to be taken advantage of. 

And a lawncare issue is certainly a minor one.  Many of you have been wronged in significant ways – taken to court. Stripped perhaps unjustly of parental rights.  Sued by business partners who called themselves Christians.  Insulted by a classmate.  Betrayed by people who called themselves friends.   And in this moment, as you call to mind that action perpetuated against you, you and I are being invited to respond in the oppose spirit.  Where hatred has been sown, we are called to love. 

This is a process that starts when we come to faith and continues until such time as we see Jesus face to face.  A process known as sanctification or, using another word “perfection” – We are, in some sense, called to be perfect as our heavenly father is perfect.  Because God is making us into people who in the language of Hebrew 10:14, are forgiven, and fulfilled or completed.  We just will not completely be free from sin on this side of eternity but we are in the process of being made truly holy, not just forgiven for our failure to be holy. 

So our practice for this week is the invitation to compassionate enemy love.  I want you to pause for a moment and close your eyes.  Think of one person who annoys you.  With whom your disagree.  I want you to think about what it might look like to love them well this week.  Find a way to bless them. Mow their lawn for them, take a meal to them. In the quiet of this moment, take a minute and Pray for them. 

You won’t be able to do this in your own strength and power.  That is why we need grace.  That is why when we have experience the mercy offered to us at the cross, when we meet Jesus there, we can offer that perfect compassion and perfect love to other people.  Because you and I are called to a different ethic, the ethic modeled for us by Jesus who loved us and gave Himself up for us.  Let’s pray together as we respond in worship.

Benediction – in the 11^th Century, Benedictine Monk,

Anselm of Canterbury wrote this beautiful prayer for Enemies.

Prayer for Enemies

Almighty and tender Lord Jesus Christ,

Just as I have asked you to love my friends,

so I ask the same for my enemies.

You alone, Lord, are mighty.  

You alone are merciful.

Whatever you make me desire for my enemies,

give it to them and give the same back to me.

If I ever ask for them anything which is outside your perfect rule of love,

whether through ignorance, weakness or malice,

good Lord, do not give it to them

and do not give it back to me.

You who are the true light, lighten their darkness.  

You who are the whole truth, correct their errors.  

You who are the incarnate word, give life to their souls.

Tender Lord Jesus,

let me not be a stumbling block to them,

nor a rock of offense.

My sin is sufficient to me, without harming others.  

I, a slave to sin, beg your mercy on my fellow slaves.

Let them be reconciled with you,

and through you reconciled to me.