We’re heading towards Christmas when we celebrate the arrival into the world of the only perfect human that has ever existed, and in today’s reading, Jesus tells us to be perfect, as our heavenly Father is perfect.
And I’m sure when we hear this we think… Wow! That’s a big ask. How can we ever achieve this? How can we ever approach anything even close to perfection? Some of us strive very hard and the word perfectionist comes to mind… but is this a healthy thing? I have a science background and I remember tutoring in biochemistry, and part of my job was to mark the student practicals; they would spend about three hours in the laboratory doing experiments, then they’d write up their report and hand them in and I’d read them and mark them. One of my students came to my office after she’d gotten her results. I’d given her an A minus, I can’t quite remember why her report wasn’t perfect but it was very close. She was almost frantic, so stressed out. She confronted me about her grade, why did she only get an A minus ? Now I have to admit that I’m a bit of an overachiever from way back so I had a bit of an idea of what she was going through. But, personally, I would have been really happy with an A minus . This girl was on a whole other level. And I thought at the time that it wasn’t a good thing for her to be that demanding on herself.
We’re all imperfect, even though some of us try very hard not to be, but imperfection is part of our nature, it’s part of being a human being, it’s inescapable. No body’s perfect. We hear this so often. We have flawed thinking, we have flawed feelings, we have flawed bodies, cells mutate and become cancerous, genes don’t do what they’re supposed to. Sometimes people are born with diseases. As we age our bodies wear out.
So why did Jesus tell us to be perfect? Because there’s a part of us that is perfect, untouchable, right and pure, imperishable, and we hear about it in 1 Corinthians 15: “So will it be with the resurrection of the dead. The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable; it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.”
If we try to be perfect in the things of this world we will always fall short. Nadia Comaneci got a perfect score of 10 in gymnastics at the 1976 Montreal Olympics. But this is just a number that people have made up, there is always room for improvement. My husband is a motorcycle racer, and the two questions a racer asks when he or she gets to a track for the first time is which way does the track go and what’s the lap record. The aim is to break that record. A so-called perfect ride will break the record, but sooner or later, it will be broken by someone else’s “more perfect” ride. We cannot be perfect in worldly things, but we have the capacity to be perfect in one area and that is love, but not just any love, it’s love with a capital L, because God created us to be perfect in love. It’s the kind of love that God is. We have been created in God’s image, not in a physical imperfect way, but in a perfect spiritual way.
Our souls are the image of their maker, and that’s God’s image in us, not this external body. Jesus tells us that the greatest commandment is to love, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” Love perfectly, just as God loves us perfectly, and just how Jesus showed us how to love when he walked among us. This is the perfect love Jesus talks about in this reading from Matthew, love that goes above and beyond. The love of the father is this kind of love. God makes the sun to shine on the good and the evil. Being nice to people you like is not perfect love, it’s not love with a capital L. It’s easy to love someone who you like, it’s a different thing, a different love, that extends this kind of courtesy and respect to someone you don’t like. But this is the sort of behaviour that Jesus wants to see in us, this is how he wants us to be perfect, like our father in heaven, and as a child of God. Like the saying goes, “a chip off the old block.”
Okay, this sounds hard to do, but it isn’t, this is achievable perfection. Jesus never, never, asked the impossible; in this reading he is urging us to realise that our souls are perfect and God given, so we are capable of loving in this way, loving with our souls. We can act in accordance with our souls, in harmony, in synch. Jesus, the perfect human, taught us and showed us what God is like, and how God loves. He said, if you have seen me, you have seen the Father. The perfect example is the parable of the prodigal son. God the Father forgives, and welcomes back the sinful child, unconditionally.
And if we are acting in harmony with our soul’s image of God, then we can go that extra mile, we’re able to do good to all people, even our enemies, and not just our friends.
When we read scripture, when we pray, when we do things for others, when we think kind thoughts instead of critical ones, when we look at other people’s needs and take care of them, we are acting in harmony with God’s perfect love inside us. There’s nothing challenging about this, you don’t have to train or struggle to achieve this type of perfection. This is our soul perfection working in our lives without us having to strive or try hard. The father didn’t force himself to take the prodigal son back, he ran out eager to get him back home, it was easy and natural.
Perfectibility doesn’t come from pushing ourselves harder and harder, to try to be better people like it’s a competition or an event that we have to excel at. In life there will be A minuses, sometimes, heaven forbid, we get F’s, no matter how hard we try. And in the end a person’s preoccupation with being “good” in a technical sense becomes a selfish egocentric behaviour, like the Pharisees who Jesus admonished. He said that on the outside they were clean like whitewashed tombs but inside they were full of corruption. This tells us that this drive to perfection for its own sake, dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s like the Pharisees did, is not what Jesus wanted; he criticised this kind of striving as hypocrisy. Trying to be perfect by following the rules, and dressing the right way and acting the right way, is not being perfect, it’s just acting perfect. In a way, being perfect is not about what you do, it’s about what you are. Jesus said be perfect, not act perfect.
The more we connect with the source of all love, then the closer we demonstrate our inner incorruptible perfection; in actual fact, we’re already perfect, because at our core, is God’s image and that’s perfection. What Jesus is instructing us to do is to match our humanity to our perfect soul, to marry the two together. God himself put our souls inside of us, he didn’t put tarnished souls in there. What we are to do is to live up to that part of our being that is imperishable and God given.
Our job is to be who we were created to be, while we are still in our human form. We have a pure and perfect soul inside us, a God like, God given breath and foundation. Without it, we would be incapable of reaching the heights of goodness and love that Jesus demonstrated when he was on earth. Because He was the only one who displayed a perfect humanity, then he is the model that we follow. The saints, amazing as they were, still made mistakes, but they lived their lives showing and living out this beautiful relationship and harmony of body, mind and soul. They were perfect in their love.
There is imperfection all around us, everything appears to be wanting, and this can make us feel that we are wanting too, that we can never measure up. But Jesus tells us that this is not so. To me, sin is when a person’s heart and mind are separated from their soul and they lose touch with the perfect treasure that is God’s love within. When that soul connection is weak or flimsy, people can lose touch with the source of all goodness which is always there. There is a saying that goes, if you want to be happy just be. Likewise, if you want to be perfect, just be. Be the God created perfected being that you already are and how God made you to be.
The soul is a mysterious thing, it’s hard to pin down. Psalm 131 has a description: Lord, I do not puff myself up or stare about, or walk among the great or seek wonders beyond me. Truly calm and quiet I have made my spirit, quiet as a weaned child in its mother’s arms, like an infant is my soul. This is one of the most beautiful passages in scripture. You can feel the peace as you imagine the scene. A baby just having had a feed, totally quiet, not a worry in the world, sleeping peacefully, content, secure. That is what the soul is like, the perfection of a sleeping baby, unspoilt, innocent and pure. And there is great peace.
I remember our summer vacations; when I was a kid my parents had a shack at Milang on lake Alexandrina, every summer we were there. There were a bunch of shacks and there were lots of other families; it was a great place to be a kid. I loved it there. We skied and swam, and there were frequent barbecues. All the kids hung around together in a kind of gang, without much supervision, but we never got into trouble. If you don’t know Lake Alexandrina, it’s not like a European lake all blue and pretty, if you’ve not seen it, it’s vast, you can’t see the other side, and it’s brown. Most of the time the water is choppy and disturbed, often there are white caps like the ocean. It’s unpredictable, and I remember one summer the conditions were so bad that one day a couple of men took their boat out into the middle of the lake to fish, and sadly their boat overturned and they were drowned. I remember it being such a sad and sombre day.
But I remember so clearly a couple of times a year, usually early in the morning, that the weather would be just so, and the surface of the lake would be calm and the air would be still, the water was like glass, like a mirror, reflecting the sky. It was so strange and beautiful. And it was so quiet, even the birds were quiet. It was really other worldly, and this memory has stayed with me ever since. Thinking back, it was like the presence of God was hovering over that still lake, making it calm, and smoothing it over. This is what I imagine that God’s perfection is like, and how the still surface of the lake is the soul, like a mirror reflecting this perfect image of God.
Jesus said to us, Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. The peace Jesus promises is perfect peace, unassailable, not the temporary contentment that we find as humans in the things of this world. God’s perfect love is within us, down in our souls, and we know this is true because we can feel his peace in our hearts and minds. And that is what we pray for in the second week of Advent, for all God’s children all over the world, the deep stillness of the soul.
Amen
Tell Out My Soul 
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