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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
This kind of hand-woven oriental rug is said very often to have intentional flaws in order to acknowledge that God alone is perfect. (Image found on this website.)
The story is told that those who weave oriental rugs by hand very often intentionally add a flaw to their work. The weaver may make the flaw very tiny and place it someplace only the weaver knows, but story goes that the flaw is nevertheless the weaver’s way of saying that only God is perfect. In today’s Gospel Reading, we hear Jesus not surprisingly say that God the Heavenly Father is perfect, but Jesus also commands all those hearing Him also to be perfect. So, we consider today’s Gospel Reading under the theme “Be Perfect”.
As for the last two Sundays, today’s Gospel Reading again gives us a consecutive part of Jesus’s so‑called “Sermon on the Mount”. Jesus has spoken about the disciples as “salt of the earth” and “light of the world”, of Himself as not abolishing but fulfilling the Law and the Prophets, thereby providing righteousness that exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, who “relax” or “ease” Scripture’s commandments and teach others to do the same (Matthew 5:13-20). Jesus illustrates the Jewish leaders’ easing Scripture’s commandments both by His speaking of murderers, adulterers, and false-swearers, as we heard in last week’s Gospel Reading (Matthew 5:21-37), and by His speaking of retaliators and enemy-haters, as we heard in today’s Gospel Reading. As last week, so also today, Jesus corrects the Jewish leaders’ false teaching, sharpening the law as He elaborates and supports His illustrations for those listening, ending (and maybe also summarizing) with the command to “be perfect”, as the Heavenly Father is perfect.
Up until the middle of the last century, Bible scholars sometimes wondered about Jesus’s saying that people were told to hate their enemy. The Bible does not say to hate one’s enemy, of course; it says to love one’s neighbor as oneself, as we heard in today’s Old Testament Reading (Leviticus 19:1-2, 9-18). However, the Dead Sea Scrolls, discovered in the mid‑1900s, provided evidence that, in fact, some had commanded hatred of enemies (1QS 1:10; 2:4-9; 1QM 4:1). Yet, neither the Jews of Jesus’s day nor people in our time hardly need anyone to command them to hate their enemies. We hate our enemies even without a command in keeping with our fallen, sinful nature. Likewise, we are more than happy to retaliate as did the some of the Jews, who mistook as a basis for such personal retaliation the Old Testament’s directives for legal penalties—life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, fracture for fracture, burn for burn, wound for wound, and stripe for stripe (Exodus 21:23‑25; Leviticus 24:20; Deuteronomy 19:21).
Even if we might think that we are not such a retaliator or enemy-hater, we must admit that we are far from being perfect, as Jesus commands us to be. Even if the “perfection” Jesus commands in the Gospel Reading means only being “completely devoted” to loving one’s enemies, at a minimum His statement’s form resembles that of God’s command in today’s Old Testament Reading to “be holy, for [He is] holy”, a command repeated elsewhere in the Old Testament (Leviticus 11:44-45; 20:7, 26) and echoed by at least one New Testament writer (1 Peter 1:16). When we are honest with ourselves, we know we are far from holy. We do not fear, love, and trust in God above all things, and we do not love all our neighbors as ourselves. Far from exceeding the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, our righteousness does not even exceed that of the despised tax collectors or the heathen Gentiles. Our sin makes us God’s enemies. Yet, as God makes His sunlight rise on the evil and His rain fall on the unjust, so He lovingly and patiently waits for us to repent—to turn in sorrow from our sin, to trust Him to forgive our sin, and to want to do better than to keep on sinning. When we so repent, then He forgives our sin. He forgives all our sin for Jesus’s sake.
Like the Jews who eased the Old Testament Scriptures, medieval Roman Catholics eased the New Testament Scriptures. The medieval Roman Catholics said that Jesus’s commands such as that “to turn the other cheek” were not commands but “evangelical counsels”, and, in part, they falsely supported that position by claiming that Jesus Himself did not turn the other cheek when struck by an officer of the high priest (John 18:19-23). In fact, Jesus did far more than turn the other cheek: as Isaiah prophesied, Jesus gave His cheeks to those who pulled out the beard and His back to those who struck; He did not hide His face from disgrace and spitting (Isaiah 50:6). He did not revile or threaten but trusted Himself to the Just Judge (1 Peter 2:23). Jesus let those who crucified Him divide His cloaks and cast lots for His tunic (John 19:23-24). Jesus in some sense was “forced” or “pressed into service” in order to save the Jews, but He went further saving the Gentiles, too. Out of love for us, Jesus gave all He had, not expecting any repayment. More than love that sends sunlight or rain, Jesus’s death on the cross for you and for me shows how much He loved us, His enemies, even as from the cross He prayed for those who persecuted Him (Luke 23:34). The God-man Jesus Christ is a unique Son of the Father in Heaven, but His death on the cross for us makes possible our also being the Father’s children. On the cross Jesus declared, “It is finished”, or, we might say, “Perfected” (John 19:30), even as Jesus is the “founder” or “author” and “finisher” or “perfecter” of our faith (Hebrews 12:2). By grace through faith in Jesus, God the Father declares us to be “good”, “just” or “righteous”, “holy”, and, even, “perfect”.
God’s Word declaring us “perfect” also makes us “perfect”, especially His Word in its Sacramental forms. Especially God’s Word with water in Holy Baptism makes us children of the Father in Heaven. Especially God’s Word in individual Holy Absolution forgives the sins known and felt in the hearts of those who come for private confession. And, especially God’s Word with bread and wine in Holy Communion give us Jesus’s true body and blood, life from God and the most‑intimate relationship with Him and with one another. These holy things are for the holy ones. In some sense, our bodies are His holy temple, as we heard in today’s Epistle Reading (1 Corinthians 3:10-23). Through God’s Word, especially in its Sacramental forms, He builds His Church and brings forth from those in it the fruits of faith.
Our expression “go the extra mile” apparently comes from today’s Gospel Reading, which refers to the Roman soldiers’ practice of conscripting people to carry their packs, with a word that reportedly goes back to Persian postal practices. However, our expression “extra” mile misses the doubling that Jesus mentions: turning right cheek and left cheek, letting one have the next‑to‑the‑skin tunic and the more-valuable outer cloak. Such are the fruits of faith! The New Testament Epistles are replete with descriptions that echo our Lord’s (for example, Romans 12:17-21). We do not resist the one who is evil, and we love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us. As God loved us completely in Christ while we were still His enemies, so we love our enemies: like the sunlight on the evil and the good and like the rain on the just and the unjust. We are that “total” or “perfect” in our unlimited love, because He first loved us (1 John 4:19).
The flawed oriental rugs were mentioned to me this past week, as I discovered typos in my doctoral dissertation which I submitted nearly seven years ago. The person who mentioned the intentionally‑imperfect rugs is a dear friend who also helped proof-read the dissertation, but neither of us intentionally left those “flaws” in the completed document. We all know too well how we fail to “be perfect” as our Heavenly Father is perfect, and so we who believe live each and every day in the forgiveness of sins. In Christ, we are perfect now, and, on the last day, we will be perfect in our own resurrected, imperishable, and glorified bodies.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +