Be Perfect – Yikes!
Okay, let me admit it from the outset. I have a love-hate relationship with this Gospel passage. It is the finale of the Sermon on the Mount. Its last line is, “Be perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect.” (MT 5: 43-48)
I hate this passage because I am an overachiever, and it is a mountain I just can’t climb. Be perfect is more than I can imagine me accomplishing. Perfection has simply never been my strong suit. And, Jesus does not just want perfection. Jesus wants us to be perfect “As His Heavenly Father is perfect.” That is a further raising of a bar that already seems out of reach.
I imagine most of us feel like that. In our society, we even have a negative stigma that we attach to people we consider to be perfectionists. We have made it a character flaw. Some of the words we use to describe perfectionists include fussbudget, obsessive, quibbler, nitpicker, and hair-splitter. It doesn’t sound like we think much of being perfect. Perhaps, more rightly, our inability to reach perfection’s heights leads to our dismissal of being perfect and criticizing those we see as striving for perfection.
Yet, Jesus, without question, calls us to perfection. In the fullness of his humanity, he knew from the start, what he was asking was impossible. But He asks it anyway.
This is what I have learned. In every English translation of the scripture, the word ‘perfect’ is used in this passage. The Greek word that is used is telieos, and it can mean ‘perfect’ but is more commonly used to refer to maturity or wholeness. The problem may have occurred when the Vulgate was translated into Latin, and the word perfectus was used. But even that word while meaning perfect holds nuances that lean toward maturity and wholeness rather than the English definition of perfect, entirely without fault.
I imagine you are about to say, “who cares?” so l will jump to the good news of why I love this passage. I love this passage because when I allow myself to see it through the eyes of the Greek word telieos, it fills me with hope and makes me smile. This is a bar I can meet.
Perfect in the Greek sense of the word means be whole as God is whole. Be as sincere as God is sincere. Be as loving as God is loving. God does not say one thing and thinks another neither does he pretend compassion while not caring.
God is sincere, whole, and wholehearted, and we should be too. We are called to work toward a God-like attitude in our dealings with one another. We are to grow toward wholeness. We are called to grow toward oneness with God, and that is being perfect. And I can do that.
Now the very best part. Part of maturity and wholeness is knowing our weaknesses and limitations. When I am perfectly whole, I allow God’s love and power to fill what is lacking in me. I humbly own what is incomplete or broken in me. I come before God, saying, “I am bringing you me, and this is the best I have. You have to do the rest.”
Being humble enough to let God complete me is being perfect. An attitude of complete surrender to the Father of who we are – the good and the bad, the beautiful and the ugly, chips and cracks is perfection at its finest. It makes us one with God.
Be perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect. I can continue to grow in my knowledge of myself. I can humbly ask God to fill the lack in me. I can allow His glory to shine through me. Maybe this bar isn’t impossible to reach at all.
I only need to abandon my desire to appear perfect, long enough to toss myself into God’s arms. Then I can relax in perfect union with Him. I do love this Gospel!
In God’s unending love,
Gwen
