February 23, 2014

Jim White

Epiphany 7       Matthew 5:38-48

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It is always a privilege to stand in this pulpit. It is hard not to be mindful of luminaries who stood before and bore witness to the hope that lies within. Of course, I can’t help be mindful of Bishop John’s eloquence last week. It is a rare thing for me to be in the same community on consecutive weeks.

“Lorde, Lorde …”[1]

One of the little jobs I did when I served here was to strip down the rather wonderful brass mechanism that works the lectern in here. Like Ezekiel’s dream, there are wheels within wheels to make things go up and down for perfect adjustment.

Betty Jorgenson and I laid out all the parts and sat on the nave carpet and polished it all within an inch of its life.

As I reflect on it now it may well have just an attempt for me to make myself feel worthy to stand here. Who knows about true purpose?

Working out my own elevation with polish and elbow grease – of course, a poor substitute for prayer and Elihom’s grace. 

Be perfect, therefore, as your Father is perfect.

Today we come to a high point in the Sermon in the Mount with this admonition to be perfect like God is perfect.

It is hard to know how to take this injunction it seems like it is given to be unattainable because none of us is perfect all of us is finite and all too frail.

Even Ella, aka, Lorde, may be a ‘Pure Heroine,’ but even she ain’t perfect. She may have won another award, a Brit award even, but nobody is perfect and you might hope that she wouldn’t even try.

I have been thinking about this being perfect all week. Indeed, another Brit Award single has been running through my head: From 1989, Fairground Attraction’s “It’s got to be perfect.” It is one of those earworm things, once it is in it is hard to get out.

________________

Let me change tack for a moment.

Give to everyone who begs from you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you.

I was just a day or so into working here. John Mullane had died and Don Cowan and I were doing the interim priest thing. Don had worked as City Missioner for many years and he knew this part of town and many of the locals – although it has to be said that now St Matthew’s is the most densely populated part of New Zealand, when I was here there was a resident population density closer to rural proportions.

Anyway, a guy came in looking for Don. Don wasn’t here I talked with him instead. Listened to his story. He needed money. I gave him some - $10 I recall. I told Don about the encounter and the man who had been looking for him. Don told me I shouldn’t have given him money. We talked about that and he finished by saying, “wait and see.” Inside the fortnight there was a stream of folk coming in asking for Jim. Pat Blood was working here at that time trying to straighten out the accounts and I recall he came looking for me to tell me that there was a chap wanting to speak with me and said he knew me. Of course, I had never met this guy before.

I was so naïve.

Eventually I learnt: It is about what is actually achieved and what one wants to achieve. Purpose. Very little of good purpose was achieved by me giving money.

I learnt: do not give money to everyone who begs or who wants to borrow. I learnt about listening, making cups of tea and wandering up with folk to the Mission.

It is the same purpose thing that is at stake when the Gospel speaks of perfection here.

All of the threads from the Sermon so far are drawn together – by all the threads I mean all the injunctions and admonitions – they are drawn together in the sentence “Be perfect, therefore, as your Father is perfect.”

The Greek word for perfection here has telos at its base. Telos is purpose or goal.

When Jesus tells us that we are to be perfect like God we are to have the same purpose in mind, the same goal.

While it looks like nonsense to command humans to be perfect, this is not the case.

The kind of perfection here in not one of sharing in the nature of God because, of course, we cannot share in the infinite nature. Rather we are being invited, indeed commanded, to share in the infinite life in as much as we can share in the same purpose.

We can have the same purpose as God has in God’s self in ourselves.

Some might ask, what is that purpose? and we know it is surely love.

Of course, our God loves with an infinite capacity thus God’s perfect love is absolute and of infinite proportions. But we are bid to love God and neighbour with all of our capacity, with all our heart, all of mind, all of our soul, and all of our strength. Like God we are love with our whole being. We may be small and finite creatures but we can love perfectly just like God loves perfectly, with all of our capacity.

So, in us and in God there can be nothing lacking in our completeness of purpose.

The perfecting of love is found first in loving God.

God, speaking to Abraham, says, "I am God Almighty; walk before me, and be perfect" (Gen 17:1). Aquinas would have it that “We walk before God not by bodily steps, but by spiritual affections.”

As I reflected on Aquinas’ words I can’t help but note that it seems that this is becoming the year of pilgrimages. A surprising number of groups and individuals are making pilgrimages up north. The Bishop of Dunedin is about to begin a pilgrimage form one end of his Diocese to the other. The new Bishop of Waikato has just completed a five-day pilgrimage across her Diocese. Physical bodily steps are spiritual affections one after another, a way of meditation and a kind of prayer.

I think that many in our world, in our wider community beyond the church are looking, seeking, aching even to find some clues to spiritual affection.

They want to know and even love God.

They want to know how to pray. It would be great thing if Christians were known as pray-ers as genuine and deep lovers of God. We might ask ourselves about how we are going in our perfect love of God.

Of course, the second dimension of our perfection comes in loving our neighbor hence, love your enemies, turn the other cheek, give to those who ask.

This is obviously costly love. This is love that risks not being returned even spurned.

It was the poet W H Auden’s birthday this week and amongst his great lines is the couplet:

 “If equal affection cannot be, / Let the more loving one be me.”

This neighbor love looks like absolute folly and, … it is …. and would always be but it is Jesus who calls it forth from us, he who emptied himself, who gave up all, even his life.

Enough.

Our Epistle might well have come from Colossians today

Colossians 3:12-14

12 As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. 13 Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the God has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. 14 Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.

In the name of God, ….

+Jim White

[1] Echoing +John’s sermon the week prior.