Perfect!

Preached February 20, 2011 at Church of the Apostles, Seattle

Leviticus 19:1-2,9-18
1 Corinthians 3:10-11,16-23
Matthew 5:38-48
Psalm 119:33-40

Jesus, heal our hearts and our eyes so that we can see the world as you do, as perfect.
Amen

"You have heard that 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, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.
For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect."

So, let me get this straight- even if we somehow figure out how to get perfect the same rain will fall on us that falls on all those miserable sinners we are working so hard to love and the same sun will shine on us as those we killing ourselves to be polite to? That hardly seems fair-

What is the reward then?

Don’t we get something exciting in exchange for perfection?
We are asked to be perfect and promised no special treatment in return.

But what if perfection and forgiveness and love are the rewards?
What if perfection is not the command, but the gift?
What reward is it to love only our family and greet only our friends? We will have no more than the rest of the walking wounded we are surrounded by.

We don’t get rewarded for being given gifts.

What if we aren’t being called to add things to our to-do list as much as we are being given kingdom markers. We are so ready to add to our checklists. Figure out what all we are supposed to be doing:
• Clean the fridge
• Go grocery shopping
• Pay the water bill
• Love my enemies
• Be perfect.
What if this is not a list of rules but a picture a snapshot of where we are headed? This is what we will loose, the privilege of living like tax collectors and gentiles. This is like a diagnoses of a progressive ordering of our hearts. If we continue on this path we will slowly loose our ability to distinguish between our friends and our enemies.
It is a diagnoses of increasing health.
Jesus is saying: This is what justice is going to look like, this is how much deeper and broader the ocean of love is that you are being invited to dive into. These are the road signs on the highway we are being invited to step foot on. This is our compass.

You will know you are on track when you look at some one who has hurt you deeply and feel only compassion. When the person who by all the logic of the world should be your enemy is only another limping pilgrim on the journey.
This is what the kingdom is going to look like.
Watch out it could happen to you.

We may follow the law, but if we don’t let the law cut us deep enough to love our enemies, then it still isn’t the perfection we are headed towards.

we heard the law in Leviticus this morning:
“You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD.”

But some of us stopped there. we didn’t let it break our hearts. And who “our people” got too narrowly defined.
So Jesus comes and says
hey good news!
you will love even your enemies-

This following deep into the heart of God will cost us everything.
Even the ability to choose who we love.
Loving our neighbor as ourselves was hard enough, but now we need to shine our sun and send whatever life-giving rain we have on everyone we meet, without checking to see if they are righteous or unrighteous, good or evil.

It seems that God believe it or not, isn’t asking us who we like. God doesn’t need our judgments about who is deserving of Grace and love and forgiveness.
We aren’t being invited to give God our opinion of her children. God doesn’t need us to tell her who is good and who is evil, God sees our stories from the perspective of the sun and the rain. God sees us all from within the human heart.
And the light of God is so bright, that if we are foolish enough to make the mad choice to step into it, it will burn away all our self-righteous prejudice and we will see all people as our brothers and sisters, and maybe with those kingdom eyes so blinded by the love of God we wont be able to tell the difference, between our friends and our enemies. Or the difference between those we love and those who love us back
We are being offered those eyes- this is the gift.

Maybe God can’t tell the difference between us, maybe to God we are all so precious and so beautiful that watching us hold grudges against each other and treat each other with contempt must look so awful.

Don’t you see-
my sun shines on all of you, my rain falls on all of you,
don’t you see?

Everyone will become so beautiful to us that soon we will no longer be able to lift a hand against anyone because they will all be God. This non-violence isn’t an intellectual proposition; it is a new way of seeing. When we see with Jesus eyes, we understand why he went to the cross without fighting. He saw even the soldiers and the betrayers as brothers and sisters. We are all so precious and fragile when seen with Jesus eyes.

It would be so hard for the sun to choose who to shine on, or for the rain to aim its drops. We aren’t so different really,
the unjust and us,
the just and us.

There is no reward for living a life like this, this life is the reward. The sun will still beat down on our heads, the rain will still soak us through to the skin.
This is an invitation to a perfection we can fall back into at the end of the day, when we are wounded and tired, when we are drenched with cold rain and our faces and shoulders are sunburned.
When we have nothing left to give and even the thought of forgiveness makes us want to weep in frustration. We are invited to quit worrying about who hurt us more that day our enemies or our friends. We are invited to wrap ourselves in the love of God who sees us all from a different perspective.

This is the only promise,
this is perfect.