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TO BE PERFECT IS TO LOVE YOURSELF WHOLE

Preached by Seth Robinson at Brighton Allston Congregational Church, UCC
Epiphany 7A ¨ 19 February 2017
Leviticus 19:1-2, 9-18 | 1 Corinthians 3:10-11, 16-23 | Matthew 5:38-48

Hi. My name is Seth, and I’m a recovering perfectionist. I’ve been a perfectionist

ever since I can remember. In grade school I began to obsess over my homework. I went

through so many erasers as a kid that I’m pretty sure I singlehandedly kept Staples and

OfficeMax in business. I was terrified of turning in anything wrong, sloppy, or incomplete.

“Practice makes perfect” was my motto.

By the time I was in high school my life was consumed by my drive to be perfect.

For me it was a way of coping with anxiety. As the oldest child in my family, I came to

believe that it was my job to hold my family together by behaving perfectly and performing

perfectly in school. My head spun with should statements, like, “I should do my best at all

times.” Shoulds dictated my every move with the force of unquestionable law.

I see now that I worshipped at the altar of a god of perfection—god with a lower-

case “g,” mind you—and I made uncompromising sacrifices to this god: I passed up fun,

connection, and intimacy. I flattened myself into a disciple of excellence and banished the

silly and creative parts of myself. Not much room for laughter there. And I resented my

peers and my siblings. I saw them as free to be themselves and to take chances and get

messy, whereas I was duty-bound to toil under the thumb of a god who demanded my all

yet was satisfied with nothing I did. A false god who alienated me from others and from

myself.

Every false god has a sacred text that its devotees pervert in order to justify their
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worship to themselves and others. For many years, today’s passage from Matthew was

that text for me. “Be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect” (Matt 5:48). When I heard

these words I pictured Jesus as a sinless being, perched on a mountaintop, wearing an

unblemished white robe and sporting a shimmering halo. I heard Jesus, son of a perfect

god, as he laid down the law: be flawless, give everything, hold back nothing, go the extra

mile, and then—and only then—will your Father in heaven love you. Only then will you

deserve not to be alone.

We enter communities like this church, in part, to be reminded that we’re not alone.

We come to be reminded that, in fact, we’re never alone, and never deserve to be. We

come for good news: “You have heard it said that we each have our cross to bear. But I

say to you, You are not alone; you don’t have to carry your burdens by yourself.”

And so I bet that if we did a round of introductions many of us in this room would

have something to say about their relationship to the god of perfection. Our worship of

this idol takes many forms: we strive mightily to be successful, to be a good person, to

stay sober, to get more stable, to keep a job, to get a better job, to get more stuff, to get

better stuff. We come by our perfectionism honestly: our culture pressures us to acquire

things endlessly and to reinvent ourselves through constant self-improvement. The way

of perfectionism has us straining continuously to become some idealized version of our-

selves.

And when we fall down, and inevitably we will, we may come to see ourselves as

the enemy and wage a war of self-defense against our own imperfections. We bury them

in shame; our souls are wounded in the crossfire. And we may also take out our fear and

anger about our impossible predicament on other people. They become the symbols of
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the failings we deny in ourselves. We’re right; they’re wrong. We’re on the right track;

they’re hopelessly misguided or fundamentally screwed up. We can take care of our-

selves; they’re the weak ones. And so we live in an endless cycle of violence—of self-

loathing and disdain for others. In all this we deceive ourselves. We act as if experiencing

love, security, and power depended on our denying who we really are.

Paul helps us see our perfectionism for what it is: a stumbling block in our relation-

ship with the true God. “The wisdom of the world is foolishness with God” (1 Cor 3:19).

The wisdom of the world is foolishness with God. And God is with us, close beside us.

God’s love takes on flesh and bone and lives among us. Jesus is that love incarnate. And

he hangs out with everyone: rich and poor, Jew and foreigner, people who are respecta-

ble and people thought to be unclean, wretched, barely human. And he loves them; he

loves them to the death.

We don’t come to know the God whom Jesus embodies by trying to please God

from afar. Unlike the false god of perfection, God doesn’t demand we sacrifice parts of

ourselves or others to be considered “worthy” or “right” or “good.” The mystic and theolo-

gian Richard Rohr goes one step further: “God doesn’t love us because we are good.

God loves us because God is good.”1

When I said that I’m a recovering perfectionist, I meant that it’s an ongoing process

for me to accept and live into the truth of grace: “God doesn’t love you because you are

good. God loves you because God is good.”

1 Richard Rohr, “Big Love,” Spirituality of Imperfection—Week 1, Center for Action and Contem-
plation, July 22, 2016, https://cac.org/big-love-2016-07-22/. Emphasis mine.
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When I trust God’s goodness I can hear Jesus with new ears. I can hear that when

Jesus says in Matthew, “Be perfect” (Matt 5:48), he means, “Child of God, be the whole

person God intends you to be.” He means, “Fellow builder of God’s kingdom, fulfill the

purpose for which God made you.”

When I trust that God is a God of Wholeness I can hear that God is still speaking.

I can hear God continuing to expand on the law of love Jesus came to fulfill: “You have

heard that it was said, ‘Practice makes you perfect.’ But I say to you, beloved of God, start

with who you are: ‘Your wholeness empowers you to persist.’ ”

We come to know our wholeness when we allow others to see us for who we really

are, with all our failures and mistakes and weaknesses. To know ourselves whole we

must let others see even the lies we tell to cover up our imperfection; we need to show

people the smudges of our erasers. Only when we let ourselves be fully known—only

then can we really trust that love is our birthright. That God loves us just the way we are.

I’m grateful that during my recovery I’ve stumbled into communities where my com-

panions have reflected God’s grace back to me. In these communities I have allowed

friends to see my real, unproduced, unpolished, before-coffee-in-the-morning self. It

hasn’t been easy; sometimes it’s been downright painful. Yet, to my surprise, friends have

loved me all the more for being myself. They have cherished the unique, always-imperfect

ways that I embody the goodness of God. And, stumbling here and there, I have been

learning to cherish myself in return.

Being loved in our wholeness and for our wholeness empowers us to persist in

love. Our wholeness empowers us to persist toward the goal that Jesus envisions for us:
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building the kingdom of God together.2 And here, I think, Jesus embodies an idea so

radical it’s easy to miss: we persist in building the kingdom anytime we resist the powers

that turn us against ourselves and each other.

That means that when we love ourselves and take care of ourselves and allow

others to take care of us, we are building God’s kingdom. In a world where powers alien-

ate us and threaten our very survival, everyday acts of self-love become a form of re-

sistance.3 You resist when you persist in getting your GED or your bachelor’s degree,

when you persist in your sobriety, when you persist in caregiving for a loved one. You

resist when you persist in resting when you need to, when you persist in your daily routine

even though you can’t move like you used to. By your persistence, you claim your right

to exist just the way you are in a world that tells you otherwise.

Loving yourself—claiming that you have the right to exist—is the cornerstone of

Jesus’ seemingly impossible teaching to “Love your enemies.” Yet, tragically, this teach-

ing, like “Be perfect,” has been used to stifle self-love. “Turn the other cheek” has been

used to encourage Christians to become doormats, walked all over without protest. “Give

your cloak as well” has been used to encourage people already crushed by poverty to

surrender what little they have. “Go the extra mile,” has been used to encourage us to

overextend ourselves at best and to submit to abuse cheerfully at worst.4

2 For this interpretation of teleios in Matt 5:48, see Karoline Lewis, “Be Perfect,” Craft of Preach-

ing, Working Preacher, February 12, 2017, http://bit.ly/2lY9fnJ.

3 An insight for which I am indebted to Audre Lorde.
4This paragraph and the six that follow contain material paraphrased extensively from Walter
Wink, “Jesus’ Third Way,” in The Powers That Be: Theology for a New Millennium (New York: Doubleday,
1998), 98-111; and “Neither Passivity nor Violence: Jesus’ Third Way (Matt. 5:38-42 par.),” in The Love of
Enemy and Nonretaliation in the New Testament, ed. Willard M. Swartley (Louisville: Westminster/John
Knox Press, 1992), 102-25.
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All these misinterpretations do violence to the wholeness and worthiness of who

we are in God’s eyes. If we love ourselves whole, we will reject these falsehoods, and we

will hear that Jesus calls us to follow a new way. He’s not saying, “Roll over and take it.”

He’s not saying, “Strike back, eye for an eye.” Jesus is telling his listeners, “Persist

through active nonviolent resistance.”

What does active nonviolent resistance look like? Jesus gives three examples. In

each example, Jesus is saying to the abused, exploited, humiliated peasants in his audi-

ence, “Claim your wholeness. Assert your dignity. Love yourself enough to take power

back. Rob your oppressor of the power to dehumanize you.”

If someone backhands you across your right cheek, as they would an inferior, turn

your left cheek toward them so they’d have to hit you like an equal. By your creative

protest, you will be saying, “Try again, but if you do I deny your power to shame me: I am

giving you notice that I am a human being, just like you. Your status and the inequality

that your status is based on—neither can take my humanity away from me.”

And if a wealthy person whom you owe a lot of money comes to take the coat you

just slept on, give them your undergarment as well. Stand before them in court stark na-

ked; shame them—shame them for being the one to expose your nudity. Grab a few

friends and go streaking out of the courthouse and parading around the streets of town.

In this way you will expose the injustice of a system of debt that squeezes from the poor

every last thing they own.

And if a Roman soldier forces you to carry his 80-pound pack for one mile, as

Roman law allows, take the weight and start walking. When you come to the next mile

marker and the soldier reaches for his pack, say, “Oh, no, I’ll carry it another mile.” He’ll
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have no idea what to do. It’ll leave him stunned. Then he’ll start panicking and running

after you. He’ll wonder whether you’re insulting his strength, or maybe whether you’ll file

a complaint or someone will see and he’ll get punished for breaking the law. You’ve taken

the initiative; you’ve shown him that whatever Caesar’s law may be, how you respond to

the law is a choice that belongs to you.

If you’re picturing the scenes that Jesus paints with these instructions and you start

laughing a little, you’re in good company. The peasants and outcasts listening to Jesus

were probably in stitches imagining their oppressors subject to confusion, discomfort, and

ridicule. They would have delighted in the way Jesus’ teachings promised to unmask the

violence of this system. A system that made them into victims so that other people could

reckon themselves powerful and secure.

Persist, yes, I hear Jesus saying. But don’t for a minute stand down from your God-

given identity. Do not tolerate anything less than being treated like you matter: like you

are blessed and beloved. Make it so your enemies can’t ignore the effects of their own

violence—and so they’ll think twice before striking again. With your creative self-love you

will be laying the foundation for God’s kingdom—a world in which no one is powerful and

the expense of another but all share power as whole and beloved children of God.

And do you not see, children of God, that we are building on this foundation still?

The God of Wholeness is still speaking in our time; our risen savior is still empowering us

to persist in loving our neighbor—and even our enemy—as ourselves.

Often, resistance heralds the kingdom in rumblings of joyous laughter. Here’s a

story I heard from Alexia Salvatierra, a Lutheran pastor and organizer:

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In the late 80’s “Bishop Desmond Tutu was told by the government to stop speak-

ing out against apartheid,” the system of institutionalized racism in South Africa. “One

Easter morning soldiers were sent to his church. They lined the walls of the sanctuary

holding loaded rifles. The congregation was frightened that Bishop Tutu would speak

against apartheid and that the soldiers would start shooting. They were also frightened

that he would not speak–for then the regime would have effectively won.

“Bishop Tutu began bouncing on his heels and laughing, laughing uproariously,

laughing like a child. The laughter was contagious. Soon everyone was laughing, even

some of the soldiers. In the midst of the laughter, Bishop Tutu cried out to the soldiers,

‘Little Brothers, you know that God is a God of justice, the God of the Exodus. You know

that we are going to win. We don’t want you to miss out on one moment of the celebration.

Join us now! The party wouldn’t be complete without you.’ Bishop Tutu went on to preach

against apartheid” and no one was shot that day.5

This is what’s possible when our wholeness empowers us to persist in love. We

can let go of fear and “see past the guns, see the boys holding guns, and love them.”6 By

our refusal to replicate violence, we can convert our enemies to God’s kingdom of love.

We cannot persist alone. We need each other. We need each other to break the

hold of false gods by offering our imperfections to God.7 We need to celebrate each

5 I heard this story during a workshop with Rev. Alexia Salvatierra. The text here is taken from her

book, Alexia Salvatierra and Peter Heltzel, Faith-Rooted Organizing: Mobilizing the Church in Service to
the World (Downer’s Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2014), 75.
6 Ibid.
7For this idea I’m grateful to Br. John Braught. See “Wise as Serpents,” Sermons, Society of St.
John the Evangelist, July 12, 2013, http://ssje.org/ssje/2013/07/12/wise-as-serpents-to-preach-br-john-
braught.
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other’s right to exist and to resist any power that threatens that right. We need to cherish

one another when our self-love stumbles. We’ll practice this in a moment during our con-

fession.

Just imagine if we no longer needed to work out our own painstaking salvation,

and instead trusted God’s goodness. Imagine if we no longer needed to disown parts of

ourselves, and instead welcomed the enemies inside us and outside us to the party. Trust

me: you won’t want to miss out on one moment of this celebration. And the party most

definitely won’t be complete without you. Amen.