Perfection Is Overrated: Joyous Lives Lead to Generous Service

Sermon preached on Sunday, June 5, 2011 at Trinity Church, Reno, Nevada

“Be one as we are one”. Is the Gospel writer serious? Do these words really mean that we are we to live with one another as God lives with Jesus and the Holy Spirit in their Trinitarian love? Be one as we are one. Augustine of Hippo taught that we are to become what we touch. Are we really to become what we worship as the Body of Christ? Such an interpretation leads to idolatry.

It is thoroughly amazing to me how long this literal interpretation of today’s Gospel has been sustained through the centuries by Christian churches. This interpretation has been sustained by lofty theology. A short sermon is not the time to explore the theological specifics. The words, “Be one, as we are one” sets us up for impossible possibilities and constant disappointment.

Today’s scriptural text introduces an interpretative conflict between perfection that places our primary focus on ourselves versus shifting our focus to the needs of others through service. The conflict emerges from these two different ways of reading today’s Gospel.

Let us not miss the other words of today’s Gospel. The Gospel also says that as Jesus returns to God, we remain. The Gospel just says that we remain, but if we follow the story we are left to be Christ’s witnesses of the glory of resurrection. We are authorized to be ministers of Easter joy in the world.

“Be one as we are one”, this idyllic relationship also surfaces in other unexpected and even unrecognized ways. Too often in spiritual direction or other pastoral counseling meetings I hear good people express their self-doubts about their adequacy. Good people feel so less than perfect that they cannot even possibly think about service or ministry. Good people who are performing wonderful ministries are even caught up in this dilemma of faith, as they doubt themselves.

Several years ago I was having an early morning breakfast with my friend John. John asked if I would help him reflect on the ministry that God might be calling him. John and I had been friends for some time through All Saints Church in Pasadena, but still I did not know much about his personal life. He spent a good bit of time telling me about the routine nature of his work, his self-doubts and struggles living the joy he feels on Sunday.

Much of what he shared with me I had known, but I knew little about his family life. He told me that when he was in Africa many years ago that he adopted two children, each with severe handicaps. He went on to tell me about the cost of medical care, the racism his children experienced in the US and his struggles to provide adequate care.

Our time over breakfast passed and we both had to get to work. Before we said good-bye to each other, I asked my friend, do you not see your passionate vision to adopt and humble commitment to care as ministry. My friend is a well-educated man with a very important job, but somehow he did not see his life as ministry.

Through the messiness of all his struggles John did not see the way God had empowered him with special gifts, graces and blessings to be a father for special needs children. I reframed for John his self-doubts and lack of purpose into a richly, blessed, courageous and generous life. He was doing it, he just did not recognize it nor was he able to name it.

Have you ever felt like John? Do you see the connection between the way you feel fed by this congregation’s weekly worship on Sunday and the way you feed others through your life and work during the week? Theology makes a difference for the answers you have to these questions.

We are not in the world to suffer, but rather to flourish. God wants us to flourish! As Episcopalians we have been freed up from the pursuit of perfection. The Episcopal Church’s roots in its Anglican history through the Church of England are quite different than many other historical Christian churches. The English reformers who established the Church of England sought to change the Roman Catholic understanding of the church as perfect and unstained. Churches distracted by perfection are focused on perfect unity. Individuals are distracted by their desires to be perfect.

John Jewel one of earliest English reformers was so passionate on this point that he wrote a long essay on the broadness of the church not only with space for heretics but also for the papists. In Jewel’s context it was a generous accommodation to include papists. In those days much like today, religious conflicts were over the bounds of God’s love. The English reformers aspired to create a church that was as generously open as God’s heart.

It is our Anglican tradition as Episcopalians to appreciate that as baptized persons and as a church we are not called to perfection. Spiritually mature people resist the anxieties associated with perfection. The pursuit of perfection serves as a scrupulous distraction to our baptismal vocations. The pursuit of perfection isolates us and keeps us self-centered on our own needs rather than on the needs of others.

Rather than perfection, The Episcopal Church is called to humility and passionate service. Humility is simply about listening. When we exercise humility we step back from our exclusively self-centered desires in order to listen. Passionate people are energized by a compelling vision. Passionate people press forward with their vision.

It is very easy for humble and passionate people to be in conflict or worse to ignore each other. In our Anglican traditions these back and forth moves happen simultaneously. As a result our conversations are not always comfortable, but they are rich. There is a necessary tension between humility and passion. We are called to humbly listen and passionately move forward. These actions are not sequential, but rather simultaneous.

What holds humility and passion in creative tension is our commitment to stay in relationship with one another. Staying in relationship with one another is an ancient Anglican practice that goes back to the earliest English reformers. Several years ago after the controversy over Gene Robinson’s election and consecration as a bishop, Archbishop Rowan Williams called for a worldwide listening process.

The purpose of the listening process was for opposing sides and positions around the world to listen to one another. Unfortunately through the listening process and the more recent Anglican covenant being discussed by the churches of the Anglican Communion a notion of consensus has crept in. Consensus and unity as forms of perfection are wonderful aspirations, but they are not necessities of our Anglican tradition.

We have a far greater challenge as Episcopal Anglicans as we are called to stay in relationship and conversation with those with whom we disagree. In this way we have to resist common perfectionist expectations that listening necessarily leads to the achievement of common ground. Listening necessarily leads to reconciliation. Listening necessarily leads to unity.

Anglican relationships honor listening and passionate urgency without false correction that leads to perfect unity. False corrections are anxious efforts to force premature unity that we are not prepared to live into. As Episcopalians in an Anglican tradition we have been freed up from all of this pious individual and corporate baggage associated with the pursuit of all kinds of perfection. We have been given the gift of this freedom so that we may dedicate all of our energies to living lives of generous service. What matters the most is not what happens between these four walls of this church building, but the difference we each make in the world.

I love what we do here at Trinity Church. We are blessed with great liturgy, beautiful music, compassionate pastoral care, people with good humor and so much more; but it all really has one purpose. The purpose is for all of us to be sent forth into generous service. Service goes well beyond church sponsored activities and ministries. The primary thrust of our service is the way we live our lives between Sundays. Service is about the choices and decisions we make every day.

Episcopal laypersons and clergy freed from the worries and anxieties of perfection are empowered to heal the world through their choices, values and commitments. My friend John adopted two handicapped children, but he did not recognize his choice and commitment as his vocation, call and primary service.

Do we connect the good we have do as ministry?

If you see yourself in the story of my friend John or wonder about your value between Sundays, then I have a challenge for you. I invite you to choose a life freed from crippling self-doubts or perfectionist tendencies. Freed of perfectionist self-doubts I assure you that you will be freed up for generous service to live and love as Christ’s witnesses.

The good news of today’s Gospel as we anticipate the gift of the Holy Spirit is that we have been authorized for generous service. The Spirit of Pentecost will equip us for bold and generous service.

Simply remember Jesus’ other words, “My yoke is easy, my burden is light.”