Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

Is it possible?

To be perfect, that is.

Is it possible?

And what does it mean to be perfect? There are times when I would say that being perfect is Mother Theresa giving her life for the lives of others. At other times, and especially at this time of the year, it is my memory of Willie Mays racing around the bases or gliding through centerfield. And, when I am lost in my weekly battle with finding the right words, perfection is the sound of Winston Churchill carrying a nation through hell with no weapons or shields but the power of his words.

Must I do those things to be perfect? I’m in trouble.

Now Jesus isn’t talking here, as I did last week, about pursuing perfection.

That we can do.

It’s not easy, but it is possible, and desirable and admirable, to take pursue perfection, to take all of the hits that life delivers, and continue to pick ourselves up, and point ourselves in the proper direction. And the reason we can do that is because we know, with a certainty, that we will be ultimately evaluated, not on the basis of our own successes and failures, but solely on the basis of our faith in Christ.

Because he lives, we shall live.

Because he is perfect, our imperfections are eradicated.

His victory is our victory.

That clear and absolute truth is what enables us to go to jobs that are dehumanizing; it enables us to stay true to our marriage vows in the “for worse and for poorer” seasons as well as the “for better and for richer” times; it enables us to cling to the promises that God and her Church made to us at our baptisms and our children’s baptisms, and to persevere and fulfill the baptismal promises that we made to others.

Faith makes it possible for us to live with joy and optimism and a peace that exceeds anything we can explain, faith makes it possible for us to pursue perfection in our jobs, our relationships and our words and actions, day after day, year after year, decade after decade.

We can do that and we should do that.

But that’s not what Christ asks of us here, is it?

Christ keeps it uncomfortably simple: Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

What Christ asks here is hard.

Perfection is hard.

I know me too well, you know me too well, it’s hard for me to be perfect . . . and it’s not too easy for you either, is it?

We all know that there is no chance that anyone will confuse me, or any of us, for that matter, with Mother Theresa. And, no matter how hard I tried, no one ever said “hey, that kid reminds me Willie”. And I’ve heard recordings of Churchill’s speeches and he could clear his throat more eloquently than I can ever speak.

But what if there is another type of perfection in Jesus mind when he said Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect. The word he uses here is the Greek word Telos, a word that means the goal, the end, the completeness or the purpose of something or someone.

I have come to believe that this must be what Christ means, that just as God continually and consistently exhibits God’s nature, so you and I must continually and consistently exhibit the central, pure essence of who we are in the mind of the God who created us and who loves us.

I am not created to be Mother Theresa, or Willie or Winston and neither are you.

Nor am I created to be God, neither are you.

Nor am I created to be you or who you would have me be, nor are you created to be my vision of who you are.

But I am created to be me, and you, you. And together we are the us, the Church that God has created and called as we complete ourselves and find our perfection.

For deep in the heart of God there is a complete and perfect me, and a complete and perfect you.

It’s not a question of doing good things to discover that completeness, it is a question of entering into the relationships that provide us with completeness.

Jerry Maguire had it right when he defined his perfect relationship by saying “you complete me”, there are people who complete us, perfect us, and we are completers and perfecters for others.

That’s what Paul was saying to the Corinthians, stop limiting yourselves to a particular sect or version of the gospel, all of them can feed you and complete you and all of them lead you to Christ.

Only in our relationships can we find our completeness.

Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

Hard to do, impossible except for the fact that it is Jesus who tells us to do it!

The same Jesus who lived it out, talked the talk and walked the walk, in his life. The same Jesus who is with us, always.

The same Jesus, who sought out relationships with a bunch of people who were as flawed and holy as we are, so that he could be complete. Jesus doesn’t ride solo through the gospels or through the centuries, he is always traveling with his entourage because that is what we are created for, that’s what he is demonstrating to us, we are built to have relationships that stretch us and challenge us and nurture us and expand our horizons.

You see Jesus gets it. He understands how hard it is for us to love rather than hate, to forgive rather than begrudge, to embrace rather than attack, to share rather than hoard, to heal rather than wound. And he understands and wants us to understand, how necessary it is to do those hard things, for in these things we find our completeness, our perfection.

So this is our challenge, to live into our perfect, God-created identity as the blessed and beloved children of God. I won’t pretend that it is easy.

I know, in my own life how hard it is to get over stuff.

We’ve been hurt, we’ve been disappointed, we’ve been betrayed and dismayed.

We carry, in dark and unspoken places, old wounds, old grudges, painful memories and we don’t heal fast and we don’t let go easily and we remember.

But those wounds and grudges and memories aren’t who we are, they don’t define our identity.

The person we were created to be is woundless and forgiven and pure.

I don’t need the compassion of Mother Theresa or the grace of Willie Mays or the eloquence of Winston Churchill, I just need to be the me that God created.

Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

And that brings us back around to what it means to be perfect.

Let me end with a story, one that has made the rounds on the internet since about the time that Al Gore invented the thing. It is the story of a boy named Shaya who attended a school of learning disabled children in Brooklyn.

At a school fund-raising dinner, Shaya’s father stood to speak. After praising the school and its dedicated staff, he cried out, "Where is the perfection in my son Shaya? Everything God does is done with perfection. But my child cannot understand things as other children do. My child cannot remember facts and figures as other children do. Where is God's perfection?"

The audience was shocked by the question, pained by the father's anguish, stilled by the piercing query.

He then told the following story:

One afternoon Shaya and his father walked past a park where some boys they knew were playing baseball. 

Shaya asked, "Do you think they will let me play?"

Shaya's father approached one of the boys in the field and asked if his son could play. The boy said "We are losing by six runs and the game is in the eighth inning. I guess he can be on our team and we'll try to put him up to bat in the ninth inning." Shaya smiled broadly and was told to put on a glove and go out to play short center field.

In the bottom of the eighth inning, Shaya's team scored a few runs but was still behind by three. In the bottom of the ninth inning, Shaya's team scored again and now with two outs and the bases loaded with the potential winning run on base, Shaya was scheduled to be up. Would they actually let Shaya bat at this juncture and give away their chance to win the game? They did. Shaya didn't even know how to hold the bat, let alone hit with it. However as Shaya stepped up to the plate, the pitcher moved a few steps to lob the ball in softly so Shaya should at least be able to make contact.

The first pitch came in and Shaya swung and missed. One of Shaya's teammates came up to him and together they held the bat and faced the pitcher waiting for the next pitch. The pitcher again took a few steps forward to toss the ball softly. As the pitch came in, Shaya and his teammate swung at the bat and together they hit a slow ground ball to the pitcher.

The pitcher picked up the soft grounder and could easily have thrown the ball to the first baseman and that would have ended the game. Instead, the pitcher took the ball and threw it up the right field line, far beyond reach of the first baseman.

Everyone started yelling, "Shaya, run to first." By the time he reached first base, the right fielder had the ball. He could have thrown the ball to second, but the right fielder understood what the pitcher's intentions were, so he threw the ball high and far over the third baseman's head. Everyone yelled, "Run to second, run to second." Shaya ran towards second base and as he got there the opposing shortstop ran, turned him in the direction of third base, and shouted, "Run to third." As he rounded third, the boys from both teams ran behind him screaming, "Shaya run home."

Shaya ran home, stepped on home plate and all 18 boys lifted him on their shoulders and made him the hero, he had just hit a "grand slam" and won the game for his team.

"That day," said the father softly with tears rolling down his face, "those 18 boys reached their level of God's perfection." Is it possible to be perfect?

Those boys did it.

They were perfect in all of the ways that God is perfect, they were perfect in all of the things that they were created for. And we – you and me and us together – we can be perfect in all of those things as well.