Sermon for the Seventh Sunday after Epiphany: Practice Does NOT Make Perfect

Vicar Josiah R. Armstrong

Zion Lutheran Church and St. John’s Evangelical Lutheran Church

The Seventh Sunday after Epiphany

23 February 2014

 

Practice Does NOT Make Perfect

 

The Gospel of St. Matthew 5.38-48

 

Grace, Mercy, and Peace are yours in the Name of the Triune God. Amen.

 

            When I was nearing the end of my college career, I had to choose between two different Arts courses, and both of them were going to be quite a challenge for me. I had to choose between a Pottery course OR a Masters-level course on Choral Conducting. Since I had extensive experience with vocal training and singing in choirs, I decided to try my hand at Choral Conducting. Dr. Brandon Johnson, our Choral Conductor at Houghton College, had been named the #1 Choral Director on the East Coast at the time. The thought of taking this course with him was both exciting AND terrifying! When I arrived to the first day of Masters-level Choral Conducting with Dr. Johnson, I was surprised to find that there was no one else present in the classroom. Dr. Johnson smiled at me and told me to follow him to his office. It turns out that Dr. Johnson had specially designed this course just for me. He wanted us to meet once a week and have private training sessions.

NO PRESSURE, right?

Dr. Johnson and I met regularly and, lo and behold, I found that I was actually learning a GREAT deal about music. The particularities and little technicalities around choral conducting are incredibly taxing, and I ALSO found that I was getting more and more frustrated when it came to issues surrounding “form.” Should I flap my arms like spaghetti noodles or shoot from the hip like Clint Eastwood? NEITHER, apparently!

            One class session, after a long hour of getting everything I had practiced ABSOLUTELY WRONG in front of the Number One Choral Conductor on the East Coast, I shook my head in despair and walked out of his office, saying “Practice makes perfect, I guess.”

Dr. Johnson stopped me and said, “No, Josiah. You’ve probably heard it before, but I will say it again: Perfect practice makes perfect. Good luck with that!”

            That word, “Perfect,” it makes us uncomfortable, doesn’t it?  I don’t know about you but, frankly, I have NO TIME for it! Perfection is something we can ALL admit we will NEVER reach. You have heard it said before that “if we were perfect, we would cease to be human.” For Christian people to acknowledge that God made us to be HUMAN, and that is a GOOD THING, is VERY important. Jesus is, after all, God on High made human.

God does NOT dismiss our humanity as BAD or WRONG.

God LOVES God’s creation. God calls us GOOD! Lutherans come for a long tradition of talking about humanity as "blessed creaturehood!"

 Yes, that’s right. It is a good thing to be human and embrace that fully! Last week, we talked about how God’s Law DEMANDS that we make this world a better place. But, because we ARE human, we fail at this. This is WHY we have Jesus! In other words, God’s Law DEMANDS perfection, but because of the Cross and Resurrection of Jesus Christ, when we fail at loving our neighbor perfectly, God continues to love us back and pick us up when we fall.

            So, in our Gospel text for today, our Lord and Savior is laying out for his disciples, and for ALL baptized Christians today, that means YOU Zion/St. John’s, our way of being human in this world. Jesus recognizes that this world is full of darkness and sin and the demand of the world is to “go make something of yourself! Live your best life! When your enemy confronts you, walk away from them and make yourself into something unstoppable and CONSTANTLY HAPPY.”

Jesus, however, has something different in mind.

It is easy to read the call of Jesus to “turn the other cheek” and “love your enemy,” and simply smile and nod. “That’s nice! Boy, that Jesus was a great idealist! Would you just look at Jesus? He’s SO CUTE! He thinks we can love our enemy! If only that were true!”  I’ll be perfectly honest with you, I have thought this MANY a time when reading this Gospel text!

Karl Marx once said of Christianity that “The social principles of Christianity preach cowardice, self-contempt, abasement, submissiveness and humbleness.”

Well, right on, Karl! '

It is easy to dismiss Jesus as being a little TOO idealistic here, but, some Christians have this CRAZY idea that Jesus ACTUALLY meant what he said in the Gospels. Jesus is looking for us to take him seriously here. So, let’s take him seriously! Right? RIGHT??

            The most TROUBLING part of this text, for me, is the very last sentence. Jesus lays out his plan for living as peaceful and compassionate Revolutionaries in this fallen world, and then he says those REALLY uncomfortable words that would make ANY Lutheran nervous:

“Be PERFECT, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

WHAT!?

PERFECT!?

NOW he is being idealistic.

            As I was studying different commentaries and Greek texts to prepare for today’s sermon, I stumbled across the Greek word that Jesus uses here. The English translation reads “Perfect” but the Greek word is, actually, telos. Telos CAN mean perfection, but it actually means, more literally, “the goal or desired outcome of a thing.”

David Lose, the Director of the Center of Biblical Preaching, says on www.workingpreacher.org , “A fruit tree’s telos, we might say, is to grow mature and tall so it can bear fruit.”

I, personally, think it is a HUGE shame that the word the translators of today’s English text chose was Perfect.

Jesus is NOT calling us into PERFECTION.

No.

Jesus is calling us into maturity. Jesus is calling us to GROW, just like fruit trees. We contemporary Christians can look at it like this: In our baptism we have been rooted and planted in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and we are regularly “watered” by the Holy Spirit, every day. Jesus uses the word telos here, because He knows that we are ALL on a journey.

We are ALL “in process,” so to speak.

We are growing.

We have NOT YET fully arrived.

Martin Luther reminds us in a sermon on justification that, “We have not yet arrived, but we are getting there.”

            So, no, Jesus is NOT being a cute idealist here. He is calling us to help fix up the world as Revolutionaries of Peace, Compassion, and Justice, to respond differently to our enemies than the rest of the world. He is VERY serious about this. YOU, the people of Zion Lutheran Church/St. John’s, are God’s called and baptized children. YOU are called, in fact, and GIVEN the abilities to spread the peace and compassion that Jesus is VERY SERIOUS about us spreading.

But, it’s all TELOS, right?

Jesus KNOWS we are sinners. Jesus KNOWS we are going to screw it up. So, trust that Jesus has called us to GROW and MATURE. And, you know what?

GROWTH and MATURITY take time.

Practice DOES NOT make perfect.

No, no.

Practice makes MORE practice.

But, more practice means more grace.

Thanks be to God for that! Amen?

            One day when I was 15 years old, I was having a particularly rough day. I cannot remember what was getting me down, but I was TERRIBLY moody and I just didn’t want to be around anyone. It was on this MOST AUSPICIOUS day, that my Dad decided to let me drive the van for the first time. As my Mom would say after the fact, “Not smart, Rich.”

            I was SO TENSE as I sat behind the driver’s wheel. The first task was backing that sucker out of our LONG stone driveway without going into either ditch and without drifting out into the road in front of a moving vehicle. So, as I am slowly and VERY tensely maneuvering the van out of the driveway, my little brother decided it would be a good idea to stand in the lawn and watch us. BOY, did THAT make me mad! Well, lo and behold, I SUCCESSFULLY backed that mammoth van out of the driveway. But…now what? I had to straighten her out and start driving the thing.

            Now, the neighbor’s old, rickety barn was right across the street from our driveway and my brother watched with a stupid grin on his face as I stomped on what I thought was the brake pedal, but what was ACTUALLY the gas AND the brake at the SAME TIME. I couldn’t, for the life of me, figure out why the van wasn’t stopping! My foot was on the brake, for Pete’s sake! I looked up to see my brother waving his arms in a panicked state! Well, that just annoyed me and my Dad kept saying, “Stop. Stop the van. Joey, it’s time to stop. Joey, stop. Please stop.” And then I pushed down REALLY hard and backed the van right into the side of the neighbor’s barn! (Pause) The cuss words began to fly out of my mouth and my Dad stopped me, got out of the van and checked for damage. There was no damage, thank God. And then he said to me, “Joey, you need to brake when I tell you to and you need to not swear so much!”

            You would think that my Dad would have told me to stop for the day and go inside, but he let me drive! Needless to say, the trip was a DISASTER! I will spare you the gory details, but, when we got home, I crashed on the couch and fell apart. I was a nervous WRECK! I overheard Mom “talking” to Dad in the kitchen, and she said, “We need to wait till he’s ready, Rich.” And Dad said, “It’s a process. There will be bumps and bruises along the way, but he’ll get there.”

            People of Zion/St. John’s, you have been called to journey with Jesus into a Revolution of Peace and Compassion in this messy, selfish world. But, remember, it’s a process. There will be bumps and bruises along the way, but one day, we will get there. By the grace of God, we will get there. It may not be today, tomorrow, or the rest of your lifetime, but God is holding you in the palm of His Hand. When you begin to fall apart, remember, you have not arrived, but you are getting there.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son (+), and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.