| "How Do We Define Perfection?” Sermon Delivered By Reverend Richard E. Stetler – October 2, 2011 Centenary United Exodus
20:1-4, 7-9, 12-20; Philippians 3:4b-14
We all have our pet-peeves.
These are the little events that cause us rather impatiently to
roll our eyes when we experience them.
For example, an English teacher friend of mine once told me how
irritating it is when she hears people say, “each
and every one of you.”
Statements using proper English should either be “each of you” or “every
one of you.” But, the
redundancy of “each and every” is what we hear most of the time.
Another pet-peeve
of a number of us is when we are standing in an express line of the
grocery store where the sign clearly states “10 items or less.”
In front of us is a person that displays no shame even though her
shopping cart has more then ten.
In fact, a number of us find ourselves actually counting the
number of items she has.
She did not have the patience to wait in the longer lines so
God used this person to test
the depth of our patience. We all wish that
people had our values and our same sense of fairness, but our
life-experiences tell us that there are not as many perfect matches to
our value system as we would prefer.
We are faced with a choice either to remain at peace by allowing
people to be exactly who they are, or to decide verbally to correct them
by putting them in touch with our
greater truth replete with a host of adjectives that reflect our
judgments. What is
increasingly becoming more difficult to master is the virtue of
patience. We are so used to
having and getting what we want that many of us have forgotten how to
experience a delay in the immediate gratification of our desires.
Along with that, many of us have forgotten what our parents used
to teach us years ago – a little courtesy toward others goes a long way
in keeping our blood pressure under control. A pet-peeve of mine
is when pastors use Christian code words as though everyone has the same
definition of what they mean.
While there are scores of these words, the one I like the least
is the use of the word perfect. It would be
interesting for me to go around the sanctuary this morning with my
roving microphone and ask each of you how you would define perfection.
What is perfection?
Was Jesus really perfect?
For that matter, is God
perfect? Before
you question my sanity for asking such questions – think about it. What
are we talking about? We may conclude
that perfection is a label we
use to describe something that provides us with a peak experience.
However, what has meaning to us may not evoke the same
response in other people.
Could it be that
perfection is different for
everyone and is a product of our minds?
For example, the
time was early spring and I was standing on the top of my neighbor’s
fence when one of them drove into their driveway.
She said, “Dick, what on earth are you doing?” I explained that I
was pruning their crape myrtle that was vastly overgrown.
She said, “Why don’t you cut it
down for us? I hate
flowers.” I finished
pruning it hoping that the bush’s magnificence would change her mind.
Much later I learned that her aversion to flowers came from the
bees they attract. She has
such a strong allergic reaction that a single bee sting has the power to
kill her.
Perfection can be an opinion
we have or a matter of personal taste. Suppose you were
seated with a small group of people listening to Jesus preach.
You heard him say, “All of you are hypocrites!
You sail the seas and cross entire countries to win one convert;
and when you succeed, you make him twice as deserving of going to hell
as you are.” (Matthew 23:15)
Those would be
challenging words even for the most forgiving person among us.
We might lean over to a friend and whisper, “Isn’t this the guy
who teaches “love your neighbor?”
Isn’t he the one who said, “Judge not, lest you be judged?”
Was Jesus a perfect
communicator? Apparently, there
were a number of very religious people that did not think so. When it comes to God, many of us have listened to people that have held God responsible for the death of loved ones, for not rewarding their years of faithfulness and for abandoning them during one of the most difficult chapters of their life. A number of people have given up on their childhood beliefs. For them, God appears to be far from perfect and no one will ever convince them otherwise. When we listened to
our lesson from Exodus this morning, we learned that it contained the
Ten Commandments. There was
a time when these commandments defined
perfection for human life.
It was this drive toward total obedience to the Law that
motivated the Pharisees to exhibit the quality of life they believed was
pleasing to God. Once Jesus said to
them, “You give one tenth to God for everything, including your
seasoning herbs like mint, dill and cumin, but you do not express the
larger values of justice, mercy and honesty.
You are blind and
should not be trying to guide others.
You spend so much time straining the fly out of your drink while
you swallow a camel.”
(Matthew 23:23f) The truth is that we do not see things as they are; we see things as we are. Perfection is always defined by the observer. For example, my understanding of a perfect world is different from the way most people imagine and want. Our world is a perfect training ground for what we came here to experience, particularly when our task is to create heaven where chaos rules, to create peace while living in the midst of hatred and fear and to bring clarity to loving attitudes while experiencing countless cross-currents of negative and destructive values that are subscribed to by others. What better place
could we be to find hundreds of opportunities to stretch beyond where we
are in our capacities to express compassion?
What better place could we be to create products, to improve the
way we educate each other and to push beyond the numerous known
boundaries that will broaden our knowledge in every field?
So many people
remain faithful to their religious beliefs because they want to graduate
from this life and enter heaven.
How easy it is to hope
and believe that another environment will provide us with values,
attitudes and loving spirits even though we never took the time to
develop and refine those qualities while we lived in the physical world.
Perfection will
never be found in a fixed place, a fixed personality, a fixed commodity
or a fixed level of consciousness.
Perfection is fluid, constantly changing, and will carry us well
beyond anything we can possibly imagine.
It will drive us whether we have faith in the process or not.
How can this be so?
This is how God wired us at
birth. We are free to say
“No” to our true nature.
Many people do. Such a
decision on our part, however, will not exhaust God’s patience with us. In a letter to the
gathered followers of Jesus living in Paul went on to
write more, “I want to be completely united with the consciousness of
Christ Jesus.
I am no longer seeking
perfection by my own efforts,
the kind that is gained by obeying the Law.
I now continue living the
quality of life that has been given to me by God through my faith and
trust in him.” (Philippians 3:5-9) A more accurate definition of perfection is when people continue to learn how best to respond with love in all the circumstances that come up for them. What a simple and easy way to live and yet how distant such simplicity is for so many people! All we have to do is show up, leave our opinions somewhere else and be of service. Three years ago
when I was participating in a week of Disaster Response training, I met
an older gentleman who had been an ordained pastor.
It was refreshing to listen to some of his life experiences, some
that he labeled as A God Thing.
He told a group of us about an
event that happened when hurricane Katrina struck the coasts of A United Methodist
pastor in northern Someone in his
church learned on his shortwave radio that the National Guard had 28
eighteen-wheeler trucks loaded with critical supplies sitting on side of
the road. The Guard would
not permit them to proceed into the stricken area because there would be
no one at the other end to help unload them, no one to prevent
flash mobs from storming the
trucks and no way to get them refueled so that they could leave. A young man from
the church took numerous pictures of the set-up of his church’s
distribution depot and of the 40 pick-up trucks and vans ready to carry
the supplies into the disaster zone.
He drove to the site where the 28 trucks were parked.
When the unit commander saw how the church had prepared, he
lifted the blockade. The young man led that convoy of trucks to the church where an eager congregation was waiting. They unloaded the trucks by hand in four and a half hours. The distribution began immediately. When a group of people comes together in order to serve those who are helpless – the spirit of love has been put in motion. When love creates an environment that did not exist, that is what perfection looks like. Last week my sister
sent a short video to me that captured another
God Thing.
This footage featured an event that never received any coverage
by the media when the two aircraft brought down the twin towers of the Spontaneously, a
number of captains brought their boats to Tom Hanks concluded
with these words, “The world has just witnessed the greatest sea
evacuation in history.
During World War II, 339,000 British and French soldiers were evacuated
from The world is never
going to be the way we want it.
What hastens the arrival of the
perfection many of us seek is when we decide to display our version
of it everyday. When a
group of us does this, we have the followers of Jesus Christ prepared
for ministry. One of the bittersweet realities about our human
nature is that the potential to put love into motion is within each of
us. However, we also have
the capacity to say, “Let someone else do it.
I’m too busy.” Our version of
perfection cannot be rooted
in a desire that everyone should become like us.
Our role in life is to lead others by example.
Even during his
crucifixion, Jesus was still leading by showing witnesses and later all
humanity that there is no barrier that prevents our love from showing up
when that is our will.
This is how Jesus overcame the world.
He invited us to do the same. |