Seventh Sunday of Ordinary Time (A): Matthew 5:38-48
I’m practically perfect from head to toe
If I had a fault it would never dare to show
I’m so practically perfect
In every way
Both prim and proper and never too stern
Well-educated yet willing to learn
I’m clean and honest, my manner refined
And I wear shoes of the sensible kind
I suffer no nonsense and whilst I remain
There’s nothing else I feel I need explain
I’m practically perfect in every way
Practically perfect, that’s my forte
Uncanny nannies are hard to find
Unique, yet meek, unspeakably kind
I’m practically perfect, not slightly soiled
Running like an engine that’s just been freshly oiled
I’m so practically perfect
In every way
– From the song “Practically Perfect”, Mary Poppins: The Musical
Does this song remind you of anyone you know? I couldn’t help but think of a couple of nuns who taught me in school. Even if this wasn’t their conscious intent, I could easily imagine either of them singing this song with a straight face. They certainly gave me that impression. But not only nuns, of course. I’ve met other people who seemed to give off an aura of “practically perfect”. Might this song apply to you in some way? I confess that I have often felt that I should be something like this – or very close to it – and that I would be a failure as a human being if I wasn’t like this. This image of “practically perfect” has dominated the imaginations of many people, causing them to see themselves as “not good enough”, no matter what they did. People who are literal-minded, or prone to obsessive-compulsive behavior, can be especially vulnerable to seeing this image of perfection as what it means to be a good human being. They suffer greatly from never being able to attain such perfection in their lives, and can see themselves as failures because of it. Sadly, other, ‘healthier’ people sometimes confirm this by their attitudes toward those who have psychological challenges and thus can’t appear to be “practically perfect”.
At first glance, Jesus himself seems to baptize this image. Does he not say, “Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48)? Isn’t he saying that unless we all become like Mary Poppins, we are failures as human beings and as his disciples?
If we look at Jesus’ own life, we see that he doesn’t live by the rules of the “practically perfect”. He begins his public life by being baptized in the muddy waters of the Jordan, thus showing his willingness to be associated with ‘sinners’. He touches lepers, a thing unheard-of in his time. He feels free to skip, at least once in a while, some of the Jewish ritual purification practices before eating. He expresses a variety of emotions, including anger. He allows Peter, James and John to witness his anguish at Gethsemane. But nowhere is Jesus further from this image of “practically perfect” than when he is on the cross. He has been stripped, beaten, whipped, crowned with thorns, mocked, and then had nails driven through parts of his body. He is left hanging on a cross to die. Crucifixion was intended to be as degrading and horrifying a punishment as possible. And yet, we Christians believe that it was there, on the cross, where Jesus showed his divinity, his humanity, and his love to the fullest. He obviously had a different definition of “perfect” in mind when he bade us to be perfect as his Father is perfect.
What does Jesus mean by “perfect”, then?
The Greek word that we translate as “perfect” in Matthew’s Gospel is often used in the Septuagint (that is, the original Greek translation of the Old Testament, a translation that most New Testament writers used) to translate the Hebrew word tamim, which means “wholeness” or “sincerity”. Perfection in the Gospel sense is not primarily about following every rule without fail, or about looking cool at all times. To be perfect is to serve God wholeheartedly. It is to affirm that God alone is God, and to serve God with undivided hearts. It means that we do not hedge our bets and have a Plan B, where we serve something else as well, just in case. It means that we are the pure of heart that Jesus praises in the Beatitudes. We serve God both on the outside and on the inside. We are the same whether alone or with others, whether with friends or enemies, whether with fellow Christians or atheists. We belong to God, and God alone.
This interpretation also harmonizes nicely with one other ancient Greek definition of perfection: perfection isn’t behavioral flawlessness, but it means that something attains the goal for which it was made. An acorn reaches perfection by growing into an oak. Likewise, human beings, made in the image of God, reach true perfection when they give themselves over to God and God alone.
This doesn’t mean that law and morality do not matter. Far from it. Jesus’ teachings in the Sermon on the Mount (and elsewhere) should effectively settle that point. What it does mean is that Gospel perfection doesn’t begin with getting everything “perfect” on the outside. It begins with a gift of ourselves in faith, hope and love to the Lord, a gift made possible by the Lord’s own gift of grace to us. Once we believe that God has so graced us, we respond in gratitude to this grace, empowered by the Spirit, and enabled to live as Jesus himself lived. It’s the gift of God that makes us moral. We want to live moral lives, precisely because we have encountered the love of the Lord in our lives and have responded to him with all the love at our disposal. Morality becomes an expression of the joy of the Gospel. In fact, it is just such people, those who seek to follow the Lord with undivided hearts, who notice when they have sinned and seek reconciliation with God and anyone else they have sinned against. To know that one is a sinner, then, is a sign that one is on the road to Gospel perfection.
This is very good news for us all. We don’t have to look flawless or never utter a gaffe or never have some bodily function embarrass us at the wrong time. We don’t have to be totally in control all the time. We can have mental illnesses of some kind. We can fall into any or all of these categories, and still be perfect, as Jesus defines perfection. Anyone can, by God’s grace, choose to follow God wholeheartedly.
One of the last stories which Flannery O’Connor wrote is called “Revelation”. The story opens in a crowded waiting room, where people have come to see the local doctor. One of the people is a Mrs. Turpin. She is clean, well-dressed, and cool on the outside. Not far from “practically perfect”. Yet, in her thoughts, she is passing judgment on all the imperfections she sees in everyone else in that room. Later, near the end of the story, she is back home. She looks up to the evening sky and notices a purple streak. Then, she saw “the streak as a vast swinging bridge extending upward from the earth… Upon it a vast horde of souls were rumbling toward heaven. There were whole companies of white-trash, and bands of black niggers in white robes, and battalions of freaks and lunatics shouting and clapping and leaping like frogs”. (Remember that these are Mrs. Turpin’s words in a story from over sixty years ago.) In the rear of the procession were people like she and her husband – proper, dignified, and oh-so-sure of themselves – but she saw “by their shocked and altered faces that even their virtues were being burned away”. All those Mrs. Turpin had seen as ‘inferior’ were leading the parade; her own people were there, but in the rear, feeling naked and exposed, the masks of their virtues and their natural “coolness” gone. As Bishop Barron has said, “Saints are not those who are free from sin; they are those who have the humility and grace to join the parade of redeemed sinners”.
Humility and grace. Did not Jesus live these attitudes from the time he chose to associate himself with all the sinners being baptized by John the Baptist? And yet, because Jesus is true God as well as true man, he shows us what it means to be human. If this is so, then this is also what it means to serve God wholeheartedly. This is the essence of Gospel perfection. We know we belong to God alone. We live for God alone. We live as Jesus lived and taught us.
After the rich young man had turned away from Jesus’ invitation to give up his possessions and become a disciple, Jesus remarked, “How hard it is for the rich to enter the Kingdom of God”. We often understand this saying solely in terms of material wealth. But think of someone like Mrs. Turpin. Or Mary Poppins. People who are naturally virtuous, neat, graceful, seemingly flawless. How much harder it is for them to see their need for the grace of God! How hard it is for them to acknowledge their own, carefully-hidden flaws. Yet the Lord said to Paul, “My grace is enough for you, for in weakness my power reaches perfection”. There’s that word again. Perfection. Not the perfection of the “cool” person. The perfection, rather, of those who have bet everything, so to speak, on Christ. The perfection of those who do not fear their flaws but realize that their imperfections are a way the Lord uses to draw them to true, Gospel perfection. A perfection that does not seek to rely on anything one can control; that would be a divided heart. Rather, a wholehearted commitment to the Lord. As we sing at the Easter Vigil, O felix culpa! O happy fault, that brought us such a Savior! In the end, being “practically perfect” is a burden, a mask, and an obstacle to true perfection. Being weak – and knowing it – opens the doors of our hearts to Christ. And this is being truly ‘perfect’!