Sermon on Matthew 5.38-48

        Most of you know that I don't have cable - so aside from DVDs and my Winnipeg Jets hockey games, I tend to be out of the loop with regards to television. (It's even worse with movies - trust me, I am NOT the height of pop culture knowledge.)

        That being said, a few years ago a friend turned me on to the BBC's modernisation of Arthur Conan Doyle's famous detective: it's called “Sherlock” - I became a fast fan. Re-watching the DVDs, there’s one scene that made me giggle. Sherlock and Watson have just had – well, not their finest moment together. Sherlock’s been an insensitive twerp, Watson’s (rightly) angry, and they end up fighting it out – literally. Sherlock has instigated a fight, thinking he just needs a black eye to complete his costume, but John Watson gets right into it. So as they're rolling in the street and Watson is strangling Sherlock, the conversation goes something like this:

   Sherlock: I think we're done now, John!

   Watson: You don't remember, Sherlock, I was a soldier! I killed people!

   Sherlock: You were a doctor!

   Watson: I had bad days!

It’s amusing. Without ruining the plot, Watson does NOT kill Sherlock, they solve the crime, and on they go to the next mystery.

        My point is this: we’ve all been there. Not literally, I hope, with our hands wrapped around our best friends’ throat. But at the point where we’re ready to cry out “I had bad days!” Where the frustration level is so high that our emotions get the better of us. Where we start acting a bit out of character because – well – it’s a bad day.

        We’ve all been there, because we’re all human. We all have emotions, we all have pressure points, we all have triggers. There’s only so much we’re willing and able to tolerate at any given time – and those factors can change. We're less patient when we're overtired, or feeling ill, or when something else is going on in our lives. On good days we can ignore bad behaviours or cruel comments; on bad days - well, that's when we don't cope so well.

        And bad days happen. We’ve all had bad days. We do have bad days. We will have bad days. How, then, are we to hear the closing sentence from this morning’s Gospel, with any integrity? “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”? 

        This is NOT easy. It can make the Gospel - God's Good News - feel almost DIScouraging, rather than ENcouraging. That's not really helpful when we're in the midst of one of those bad days – we’re already feeling blah and ick and grrr, and now have been told we’re not measuring up.

        Yet, when we delve deeper into the scriptures, we discover that the message is a bit different. The Greek word that gets translated as 'perfect' is TELEIOS. This doesn’t fully capture it… especially in our modern understanding of perfect.

        Perfect is today defined as: without blemish, without mistake, as good as it gets.

        Teleios, however, had a more nuanced meaning: it meant mature, fully grown, having arrived at an objective.

        Not so much as “faultless” but rather as “absolute” or “complete”. So, re-hearing the scriptures: “Be spiritually mature, therefore, as your heavenly Father is mature.”

        Well now – that sounds an awful lot more do-able, doesn’t it? It sounds possible and inspiring, not harshly judgemental. It’s become inclusive, not exclusive. It sounds more like the Gospels SHOULD sound.

        Maturity suggests a journey, an on-going work. It’s not something that happens immediately, but something that has been given care and effort in an attempt to reach its absolute state.

        Like us. Like us on our good days, like us on our bad days.

        Being mature invites us to consider where we are on our journey: are we there yet? No, not yet.  And that's not a BAD thing, it just means that there’s still some work to be done.

        And THAT is the message Jesus leaves us with. He's saying: ‘You are a work in progress, but I don’t want you to give up. I want to see you persevering, every day, knowing that it’s not over. Be patient with yourself, put the past behind you, learn to move beyond your comfort zone, to do better than you’ve done before.’

        Now THAT is quite the message, quite the challenge, quite the learning opportunity.  Jesus knows that bad days happen – and that’s okay – so long as we do our best to respond in mature, caring ways, instead of lashing out... So long as we acknowledge the possibilities in front of us with love and compassion instead of criticism and negativity... So long as we live each day as a today instead of as an extension of the past.

        Earlier in this passage, Jesus has been saying to us “you have heard it said” with some harsh statements from the Old Testament – an eye for an eye; forced to go a mile; hate your enemy: and he challenges us to see these from a different perspective. He invites us into non-violent response in ways that show the high road, the loving nature, the Christian way.

        The old ways are just that – old, incomplete, immature ways. Those are the yesterdays. The responses are NOT going to be easy – turn the other cheek so I can be hit again? Give my cloak after my coat has been taken? Walk even further away from home and security than I’ve been forced to go? Eek. Sounds indeed like a bad day to me.  But that’s where we’ve been called to.

        It is there that we will grow, mature, move towards completeness.

        Maybe in turning the other cheek rather than hitting back, we will learn to overcome a fear and stand up for what is right. And we'll be reminded that turning the other cheek simply allowed the other person the chance to disgrace themselves.

        Maybe in giving cloak and coat, we will see that there is desperation and need fuelling the actions of those who are taking something from us, unjustly. And acknowledging another's need allows us to show compassion and justice to someone who needs it most.

        Maybe by going the second mile, we will meet a new friend on the road and enjoy a conversation that you might otherwise have missed. And, we'll also be further away from the problems of the past.

        Maybe in loving our enemies – not just our friends – we will recognize that at some point, someone loved us first, whether we deserved it or not. It will remind us that our enemies must feel love-less sometimes, and that everyone needs to be loved, and prayed for, no matter what their actions.

        Maybe these prayers will remind us that everyone has a bad day – and that some people deal with it better than others. Maybe these prayers will remind us that loving our families and friends is easy, but loving our enemies and praying for our persecutors is part of the journey towards that spiritual maturity that we're craving.

        Loving one another - especially when it seems that some 'others' don't want to love us - takes effort, and practice, and perseverance. But it is worth it, so long as we do it for the love of God. Because that love IS perfect - and teleios - and ought to be celebrated. So let us too aim towards that love, that maturity, that perfection – just as our heavenly Father is perfect.