First Baptist Church of Asheville Podcast
Sermon: Perfection, Revisited
"The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried." That's a quote from G.K. Chesterton, perhaps after reading Psalm 15. "The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried." Sympathetic head nods. Yeah, it certainly seems that Psalm 15, like many others in the good book, is asking perfection of us, "If you want to abide in the tent, if you want to dwell on the holy hill, walk blamelessly, speak truth. Do not slander. Do not lend money at interest." In this economy, I'm sorry, but I broke most of these rules before coffee this morning. Where do we place a flawless biblical behavior ethic in our daily agendas? Somewhere between kids' soccer practice and home depot. As my wife often says, "I don't know, Will, have you tried trying?" The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and never tried. One of my favorite southern rock songs from the band Drive by Truckers goes like this, if you'll indulge me. I got a brand new truck that drinks a bunch of gas. I got a house in the neighborhood that's fading fast. I got a dog and a cat that don't fight too much. I got a few hundred channels to keep me in touch. I got a beautiful wife and three toe-headed kids. I got a couple of big secrets I'd kill to keep hid. I don't know God, but I fear his wrath, and I'm trying to keep focused on the righteous path. That's some down-home religion right there. But the message is clear, or maybe unclear, where is God in all this? Who is God in all this? Does the perfect God require anything less than the perfect life? What does Jesus say in Matthew? You, therefore, must be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect. It's all order. And what is perfection anyway? theologian Philip Clayton says that the Western Christian tradition has developed two notions of God that contradict each other, perfect and infinite. The God of perfection is distanced from us. God is an impassive absolute because God is perfect. God cannot be evil. God cannot be implicated in the imperfections of creation, of sinful human beings. Does the God of perfection love us? Kind of. Aquinas argues that God loves us and that God gives us good gifts. Charity. Good will. But Aquinas denies that God experiences love as we do, feeling the feelings of others, grieving with the grief, rejoicing with the joy. Loving with passion is a little too hot-blooded, too human for a perfect God. The God of infinity, on the other hand, sees the notion of perfection as simply another category. Why should God not abide beyond perfection? An infinite God has no fear of suffering with us, of loving us with abandon in all the ways we love each other, in inhabiting the ground under our toes. All the way to the moments we regret, to the far side of the known universe, to hear in this room right now. An infinite God is infinitely relational. We've heard about the God of infinity from the voices of mystics in the Christian tradition. Sisters that are often silenced by the powerful institutions of our faith, or by the prejudices of our culture. One of those mystics was Howard Thurman, Baptist. As the grandson of a slave in the Jim Crow South and forerunner of the Civil Rights movement, one sought to de-center the biblical interpretations of the privileged and read scripture through the lens of the disinherited, those with their backs against the wall. Can we re-read the petitions of Psalm 15 from a position of oppression? Being lying, because lying is bad, the privileged interpretation, becomes for the disinherited a fearless truthfulness in the face of real consequences. No, today we will tell the truth, and we shall not be moved. Playing nice with your neighbors, the privileged interpretation, becomes for the disinherited a total commitment to a strained community with whom we shall not be moved. Despising the wicked, a foreign idea in the privileged interpretation, is a completely natural response when you have been spit on and discriminated against. Despite this we feel the presence of the spirit and love the enemy, brothers and sisters of an infinite God, and in this love we shall not be moved. And yes, even money lending at no interest, which sounds like socialism to the privileged, is to the disinherited a prayer for others put into practice. We shall not be moved, has a nice ring to it, powerful, society changing, uniquely Christian. So being perfect for Thurman is not pressure, it isn't neurotic or self-obsessed, it is a revolutionary kind of striving in place towards an infinite God, a good God, a God of utterly abounding love, delighting in every creative act of relationship. Perfection is a contribution to a good and just future, to a kingdom coming. Are we an oppressed people? Certainly we can offer no comparison to Thurman's generation of social justice warriors and freedom fighters. But we can still read Psalm 15 in that way if we can ever remember why. Somewhere in Saskatchewan this summer, as my family were taking the long way home from Montreal, we discovered the chronicles of Narnia audiobooks. We thought Liam would really like him, but he mostly napped while Marion and I became enraptured all over again with this masterpiece of children's literature. In one of C.S. Lewis's books, The Silver Chair, a little girl named Jill, is magically transported from her schoolyard in England to the top of the highest mountain in Narnia, where she immediately meets the great lion and allegory in chief, Aslan, who has very clear instructions for her. "Remember four things," he says. Now recite them back to me, and Jill has no problem remembering these things, and is eventually sent down into Narnia to begin her quest to save the world. But a funny thing happens down there. Maybe it's all the activity, the comings and goings. Maybe it's something in the air, but Jill starts to have a harder and harder time remembering what it was that the talking lion said to her on top of that mountain. In the end, Jill messes it all up. She forgets the four things, everything goes wrong, and she finds herself in the clutches of evil forces deep underground. She forgets just about everything down there, the warmth of the sun, the comfort of home, the embrace of friends. In the climactic scene, "Jill had been feeling that there was something she must remember at all costs," and now she did, but it was dreadfully hard to say it. She felt as if huge weights were laid on her lips, and at last with an effort that seemed to take all the good out of her. She said, "There's Aslan." Sometimes we forget who we are, who we always have been. If we are oppressed, it is by the haze of subtle forces that distract, befuddle, preoccupy, delay. True evil says John Cobb may not be much more than unnecessary triviality. When we are able to remember that we are people of faith, when we remember the resurrection, when we remember the good news for all people, we begin to gather the courage to resist the oppression of triviality. And when we remember each other and miracles of miracles, we remember together as a church. We just can't wait to live in love for ourselves and for each other. What we do together, we do in thankful memory, Eucharistia, as we continue to seek perfection in all the imperfect ways we know how. Last week I was confronted outside the atrium by someone who asked if I was a minister here. I don't know what could have given her that idea. But she asked politely if I could point her in the direction of another church nearby who actually followed the teachings of Jesus. She said that she had spoken to someone here who told her about our churches affirming of the sacred worth of all people, and that was enough to convince her that she needed to go elsewhere. In that moment I wanted to look into her eyes and upload everything. I wanted her to see the children, me one of them, laughing together, running through the halls, completely safe in the loving embrace of this church. I wanted her to see youth retreats at Cazwell Beach discovering true friends, taking communion together and finally understanding what it meant to be brothers and sisters in Christ. I wanted her to see a desperate and stressed out new father, surprised and deeply encouraged by the support and love of every generation present in this church saying, "We love you, we've always loved you, welcome." Ministers turned into mentors. I wish she could have walked the sacred garden on a quiet day. I wish she could have met Tommy or to sit at the table a fellowship, the smell of mashed potatoes and gravy on Wednesdays, mission trips from Kentucky to Cuba and the music. I wish she could see the decades, the centuries of new lives, of passing into death, of radiant joy, deep grief and a million solid Sundays in between as the journey of this good church continues before an infinitely loving God. I wanted to remember all this in that moment in the atrium. I wanted to say it, like for Jill to say, there's Aslan, anything that might impart the kind of gratitude that I felt. But I'm just a student, after all. Perhaps my theological sword was not as sharpened as it could have been. All I could manage in that moment in this opportunity for perfect truth-telling was a stutter. I said, "I'm sorry you feel that way." I hope you'll reconsider, but this is who we are. And she shrugged and walked away. We shall not be moved. [BLANK_AUDIO]