Perfected, Not Perfect: A Homily for the Twenty-fifth Sunday After Pentecost

 Preached at All Saints, Collingwood, and St Luke’s, Creemore, Anglican Diocese of Toronto.

Readings for the Twenty-fifth Sunday after Pentecost: (Proper 33B):  1 Samuel 1:4-20; 1 Samuel 2:1-10 as canticle; Hebrews 10:11-14 (15-18), 19-25; Mark 13:1-8

“For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are sanctified”.  (Heb 10:14)

We have a complicated relationship with the idea of the perfect.   We can admire perfection in highly technical and measured ways, as in sports; Nadia Comaneci and Mary Lou Retton’s “perfect tens” in Olympic gymnastics come to mind.   Perfection might be worth striving for in school exams or in cake baking competitions, but in most of life, which is messy and chaotic, perfectionism can get in the way of just getting things done on time, hence the expression, “perfect is the enemy of good enough”.   Perfectionists can be wonderful people until you have to work with them!

I’m not sure that we’re very comfortable with the idea of “perfect” in our faith lives.   Because we often understand the word “perfect” as being “faultless”, we doubt that we can ever be good enough or holy enough to please God.   Today in our first lesson we hear that Jesus “has perfected for all time those who are sanctified” and we wonder, does that apply to me?  Am I one of the perfected?  one of the sanctified?  Because I don’t think I’m perfect or especially holy.   We may want these qualities, but we doubt that we possess them, and we tend to distrust those who act as if they are perfect or holy.

And if we are confused about perfection and holiness, then I think we might be excused, because scripture can seem to give us mixed messages.   On the one hand, during the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus tells us to “Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (5.48).   But, on the other hand, we hear in Romans that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom 3.23).  These conflicting messages seems to suggest that, spiritually speaking, we can’t get there from here.

The good news is we don’t have to get there by ourselves.  The big idea in the letter of Hebrews, made repeatedly, is that Jesus is the perfect priest who allows us to come to the Father.   Earlier in Hebrews tells us that “We have  a great high priest who has passed through the heavens” (Heb 4.14).  Later on in the Letter, Jesus is described as  “holy, blameless, undefiled” and “perfect” (Heb 7.26-28).  Jesus is the high priest who brings us out of our sins and who leads us to the Father.

Somewhat startlingly, the author of Hebrews says that all the efforts and all the sacrifices of all the earthly priests could not rescue us from our sin.   Only Jesus can and will do this.   This week we as Anglicans especially needed to hear this message, because our earthly high priest, Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, resigned this week.   

As you may have already learned, the Archbishop took responsibility for failing to investigate a powerful layman, John Smyth, who had abused many minors in the English Church, and who had then allowed to find more victims in churches in Zimbabwe and South Africa.  A document called the Makin Report found that the English Church had known about Smyth’s “prolific, brutal and horrific” crimes since the 1980s, but had covered them up.

The Makin Report was especially damning because, for decades now, the Church of England has said it is committed to prevent abuse and misconduct, but totally failed in this one case.   In his weekly letter to the Diocese, Bishop Andrew wrote that all of us, clergy and lay leaders, have a “duty to serve one another, in particular the most vulnerable. We must always be vigilant and aware of the safety of others in our care.”

I’m grateful to Bishop Andrew for addressing this story, because the danger of this story, and the danger of any story about abuse and sin in the church, is that it might lead us to give up on the church.   If the church is imperfect, if it is contaminated by human sin and frailty, then what good is it?  How will we draw closer to God?

In the Jerusalem Temple, the one that Jesus and the disciples are looking at in today’s gospel, there was a thick curtain that separated the people from the innermost room, the sanctuary or the Holy of Holies, where God was thought to be present.  Only the High Priest could go in, on behalf of the people.   There are other kinds of curtains that keep the people from God.   They are curtains of abuse, curtains of secret and scandal and coverup, and they lead to fear and mistrust, they shake the people’s faith in church and in God.  They are curtains of sin, and Christ will always pull them down to let the light and the truth in.

The author of Hebrews tells us that Jesus opens the curtain of the temple“through his flesh”, a reference to Christ’s sacrifice of himself on the cross.      In Hebrews, Christ becomes both priest and temple, he opens the way to God, so we can enter with “confidence”.    The big idea of Hebrews, indeed of Christianity in general, is that Jesus will allow nothing to separate us from the love of God.  

And the good news is that we don’t have to be perfect to go through the door that Christ opens for us.  We don’t have to be faultless.  We don’t need a 100% score on some spiritual test.  Christ will look after that.  “For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are sanctified”.   

In the original Greek, the word “perfect” doesn’t necessarily mean “flawless”.   It can have the sense of being made whole or being made complete, even of just growing up.    We get into trouble when we confuse perfect with flawlessness, which is why some people avoid church, because they fear they will never measure up.   Instead, think of how God gives us what we are lacking, fills whatever spiritual holes or incompleteness that might trouble us, so that we can be whole, healthy, and happy, the way God always wanted us to be.

How do we get there?  How do we become compete?    The author of Hebrews gives us tons of good advice.   Be confident in God’s love.  Don’t doubt how much God loves you.   Trust that your baptism has made you clean and a loved child of God.   Don’t give up on hope.  Trust in God’s faithfulness.   And meet together.   Be church.   Church at its best is a place where we can encourage one an other to “love and good deeds”.   In other words, be a community that helps one another to show love and hope in its actions.   You’re not in this alone.   We have Christ and one another, even if the approaching days seem dark and uncertain.     Doing all these things, always trusting in the love and work of Jesus is how we become complete.  This is how we become perfect.

In his resignation message to the Anglican Communion, Archbishop Welby confessed his sin and imperfection, but he also lifted up this hope.  He ended his message on a note of hope, saying that “my deepest commitment is to the person of Jesus Christ, my saviour and my God; the bearer of the sins and burdens of the world, and the hope of every person”.   He spoke well, and he spoke for all of us.