Perfection
Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
Matthew 5:48, NRSV
My Aunt Jean made the perfect pecan pie. Hands down. No debate. Nobody needed to bring any other desserts to our holiday gatherings. Now that she has gone on to her heavenly reward, Thanksgiving and Christmas celebrations have been somewhat diminished by lesser caliber reproductions of her pecan pie. I have the recipe, sure, but I have never mastered the art of making a decent piecrust. And all of you bakers and gourmands out there know you can’t have a good pie if you don’t have a good crust.
Too often, the scripture quote above has been taken out of context and placed on us as a burden. There’s no way we can be perfect. There’s no way we can even love perfectly. It’s like comparing my Aunt Jean’s pecan pie with those new-fangled pecan pies that include chocolate. These are two different kinds of pies, in my opinion, and I say that statement as a confirmed chocoholic!
When Jesus says these words above, He has been giving the crowd teachings on appropriate behaviors for those who follow Him, behaviors that are beyond the Jewish law. Six times in Matthew 5 Jesus says, “You have heard it said” before expanding the meaning behind a particular command by saying, “But I say…”
The last of those instructions is, “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.” (Matthew 5:43-44) As Jesus continues His mini-discourse on love of enemies and how the Father loves both the good and the bad, Jesus goes for the jugular: if you just love those who love you, your brothers and your sisters, well heck, even those known heretics, the tax collectors and the Gentiles, do that! Then–whammy–“Be perfect as your Father is perfect.”
This is when context, as in the chocolate pecan pie, becomes important. Jesus wasn’t giving this teaching to 1st Century Gentiles or even 21st Century people. Jesus was preaching to the choir of 1st Century followers who understood these legal requirements through the lens of their Jewish piety. To be “perfect” as a 1st Century Jew meant to be pious and obedient, to be faithful.[1]
Friends, God doesn’t expect perfection from us as we think of it, just faithfulness. Learning to follow Him and returning back to God when we fall short time and again, that is what is expected of us.
[1] Ulrich Luz, Matthew 1-7: A Commentary, tr. James E. Crouch, ed. Helmut Koester (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2007), 289.
