IF THE WORLD WERE PERFECT, IT WOULDN’T BE

a sermon preached by the Rev. Dr. Tim W. Jensen
at the First Religious Society in Carlisle MA
Sunday September 12th, 2004


READING: Matthew 5: 43-48


I thought I’d start out this morning by telling you all about the one time in my life I actually met Yogi Berra. I remember it almost perfectly. It was the summer of 1980, and I was taking a break from my job at the Massachusetts Historical Society, sitting out on the front steps drinking a cup of coffee and eating a Bavarian Creme doughnut, when who should come strolling along up Boylston Street toward Fenway Park but the manager of the hated New York Yankees. I recognized him right away, and instantly became star-struck, until finally he was right in front of me, at which point I blurted out “So, are you gonna beat us tonight?” to which he replied, without skipping a beat or breaking his step, “Gonna try,” and continued on his way to the ballpark.

OK, so maybe it’s not that great of a story. There I was, face to face with the legendary, undisputed champion of the unforgettable malaprop, my one big chance to say and perhaps even elicit something immortally clever, and Yogi Berra turns out to be more articulate than I am. Way more articulate. And I suppose the point of this story (if indeed it has one) is that if anyone ever tells you that there’s no such thing as a stupid question, tell them that they’re wrong. Stupid questions are abundant in this world. But it’s the stupid answers we remember, and sometimes have to live with a lot longer than we’d like to.

Just so you all know, today’s sermon topic was purchased by Margaret Darling at last Spring’s service auction. Auctioning off the topic of a sermon is an almost perfect fundraising gimmick. It works like this: the high bidder gets to select an issue or theme of their own choice, maybe even suggest a title, or some readings...we have a little conversation so that I can learn more about their ideas, and then I go right ahead and preach about whatever I want to anyway, just like I do every Sunday.... OK, maybe I feel just a LITTLE more conscientious than I normally do anyway about trying to give those of you who generously support this church (and who show up here faithfully Sunday after Sunday, I hope at least in part, to hear what I have to say) your money’s worth. But the bottom line is that I’m always interested in hearing your ideas about possible sermons, whether you pay extra or not; yet the “Free Pulpit” itslef is never REALLY for sale. Preaching is a sacred duty, which you have generously entrusted to me, and which I humbly attempt to fulfill, to the best of my ability every time I climb these stairs. Am I perfect? No. But I’m gonna try....

In any event, this particular topic is an especially good one (almost perfect, really) for a sermon like this, since it can be taken so effortlessly in so many different directions. What does it mean to be “perfect” anyway, and how do we know it when we see it? What is the relationship between perfection and change -- is perfection something that, by definition, never changes; and can anything incapable of changing ever really be considered “perfect?” And finally, how does our desire for perfection effect the quality of our lives in other ways? Are our lives truly made better by the attempt to do everything “perfectly,” or is perfectionism in fact something that undermines the quality of our lives, making life less satisfactory than is was to begin with?

If we were to start out simply by looking in the dictionary, we would discover that to be Perfect is to be “complete in all respects; without defect or omission; sound; flawless.” And if that were the end of it, we would likewise recognize immediately that the world isn’t perfect, and that it never has been perfect, and that it’s never going to be perfect either. Life is nothing if not dynamic, and the world right along with it, with all its flaws and defects and imperfections. The only thing we can ever really count on is change, and we can’t always even count on that. And yet, if we’re lucky, there are moments in our lives when the world FEELS perfect; when we obtain a fleeting glimpse of that elusive quality we call “perfection,” only to see it slip away again. Perfection’s very elusiveness is what makes it appear so desirable. And so we imagine that at some mythical time in the distant past, some Golden Age, the “good old days,” the world was always that way, always perfect, and perhaps that it will be that way again if only we work hard enough to make it so. Our vision of perfection (imperfect as it may be) thus helps to shape our understanding of the meaning of change; every change, either great or small, becomes either an act of progress or an act of declension, depending upon whether it seems to move us closer to, or further away from, what we imagine to be “perfect.”

This insight is especially important, because yesterday was the third anniversary of “the day the World changed.” And this past week as I’ve been listening to and reading the public reflections on the significance of that day, I’ve found myself wondering “what really changed on September 11th, 2001?” Was it actually the world itself that changed, or was it just our understanding of the world that we imagined ourselves to be living in -- our “normal” world which seemed so comfortable, so “perfect.” And if in fact it was princpally the latter, did our perspective change for the better, or for the worse?

Three years ago on the Sunday immediately following the attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center, I asked the congregation I was serving on Nantucket to reflect upon “the difference between a catastrophe and a tragedy.”

...A catastrophe is a calamity, a disaster, an event which inflicts widespread destruction and suffering. But tragedy contains an additional element: the fact that the cause of that calamity originates in the arrogant pride or hubris of an otherwise heroic figure, which blinds him or her to a fatal flaw within their character, which in turn becomes the source of their undoing. The same quality which makes the hero great also makes them vulnerable, and their destruction becomes tragic because it might have so easily been avoided, had the hero simply exercised a little more humility.

Think for a moment about the tragedies of Oedipus, or Othello. A calamity becomes tragic because a hero’s greatness, their capacity for bold, courageous, decisive action, unleashes a chain of events beyond their control, which eventually overtakes them and robs them of their own freedom to decide their destiny. Their fate becomes sealed, because their pride has in some way outraged and offended the Gods, who are ultimately responsible for preserving justice, and order, and equity in the Universe.

The events of [September 11th] were without question calamitous. But they will become tragic only if we allow ourselves, in our arrogant pride, to set out blindly upon a course of action that will eventually transform us into something we can not abide. Don’t misunderstand me on this point. It is essential that we commit the resources of this nation to bringing the perpetrators of this crime to justice. But, in doing so, it is equally essential that we do not allow ourselves to become criminals in our own right. I really can’t say it any more plainly than that. There is too much blood on our hands already; we are not always the heroic defenders of freedom and justice that we like to see ourselves as being. So long as we persist in remaining blind to our own faults, we risk unleashing a tragic calamity of truly catastrophic proportion.

Simply because we have been wronged does not make us right. Simply because we are powerful enough to hurt those whom we perceive to be our enemies does not in any sense justify our doing so. If our actions are to be regarded as just and proper, we must seek out the cooperation of the international community, behave consistently with standards of due process, and truly become the champions of freedom, justice, and human rights that we so often claim to be.

And above all...we must [continue to] believe and trust the words of America’s first (and in my mind still the best) Republican President, Abraham Lincoln, and remember that we most truly succeed in destroying our enemies when we are able to make them our friends.

If anything these insights are even more poignent today than they were three years ago. And at the heart of our nation’s tragic inability to see and recognize that we just might possibly be less than perfect is a second erroneous belief: the mistaken assumption that if we could just somehow succeed in exterminating all of the terrorists, and all the potential terrorists, and all their supporters and sympathizers, life would go back to being “normal,” and the world would be perfect again. But a world that is driven by violence and ideological zealotry and the passion for revenge will never be perfect, and should never be considered “normal.” Perfection lies in an altogether different direction.

It’s natural, I think, for people to assume that what seems “normal” to them should be normal for everyone else, and that if everyone would just act “normally” the world would be, if not perfect, at least a better place for everyone to live in. But this “tyranny of the normal” has an ugly side as well, which we often just choose to ignore. “Normal” and “Perfect” are not exactly synonymns. Normal refers to a statistical mean: an average, a “norm.” Perfection on the other hand represents an ideal, which is essentially unattainable for most of us, except perhaps in brief glimpses. And yet so often it seems as if the goal of life is to be “normal” instead of “exceptional,” to be “ordinary” rather than “extraordinary.” And so we struggle to be perfect because we fear that maybe there is something abnormal about us if we are less than perfect, while the reality is that none of us is perfect, and our efforts to become so often times are simply making us (and everyone around us) miserable. And maybe even a little crazy too. We look around, we compare ourselves to others, and even if we do eventually get to the point where we are aware of our own limitations and shortcomings and are able to accept them, God help the person who offers to help point them out for us.

But when Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount “Therefore be perfect, as your heavenly father is perfect” he’s not saying “be normal, so that none might find fault with you.” The actual word in Greek is teleios, and what it means is “complete” or “fulfilled” -- to be “fully realized.” It’s a Commandment to go beyond the ordinary, or what is generally considered normal -- and instead to love our enemies, and to return good for evil....because this is what God would do. And this is what we should be trying to do as well, if we wish to be part of God’s family. It’s not a demand that we become “perfectly” Perfect -- dictionary perfect -- or that we try to impose that vision of perfection on the rest of the world. That would be hypocrisy -- the sin of judging others by a higher standard than we are capable of meeting ourselves. Rather, it asks us to realize who we really are, and then to attempt to make THAT reality “real.” Is this going to be easy? No. Are we ever going to do it “perfectly?” Probably not. But we’re gonna try. Because that’s really the only answer that works “perfectly,” every time, to life’s most challenging questions...