UM AND PERFECTION: Will You Reach It

September 27, 2009

Leviticus 19:1-3, 17-18

The LORD spoke to Moses, saying:

Speak to all the congregation of the people of Israel and say to them: You shall be holy, for I the LORD your God am holy…

You shall not hate in your heart anyone of your kin; you shall reprove your neighbor, or you will incur guilt yourself. You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD.

NRSV

Matthew 5:43-48

"You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

NRSV 

Anybody happen to know who this man is?

You’d better.

They don’t call Stan Musial “the man” for nothing.

Listen to these statistics:

Lifetime batting average of .331

Batted .376 in 1948

3,630 hits

475 home runs

Hit 5 home runs in a double-header

1,951 runs batted in

24 All Star games

No wonder there’s a statue outside of Busch Stadium in his honor:

Anyone know what’s inscribed at the base?

"Here stands baseball's perfect warrior. Here stands baseball's perfect knight."

Wait a minute.

“Perfect”?

If he had an on-base percentage of .418, that also means that over half the time he walked back to the dugout, having made an out. He struck out almost 700 times. He made 142 errors.

“Perfect”?

If what you mean by “perfect” is never having made a mistake, then Stan Musial was NOT the perfect ballplayer. [duck]

It just sounds strange to say he was a “perfect” ballplayer.

It’s just as strange as what United Methodist ministerial candidates are asked before they’re ordained. John Wesley asked people who wanted to be pastors in the Methodist churches, “Are you going on to perfection?” Bishops ask that of candidates today, and more often than not they look at their shoes and mumble, “Uhmm, sure.” They’re then asked the followup question, “Do you expect to be made perfect in love in this life?” “Uhmm, OK.”

“Going on to perfection.” “Expect to be made perfect in love in this life.”

These sound, well, impossible. It’s like saying, “I’m never going to strike out, I’m never going to commit an error.”

We associate being perfect with never making a mistake, and we all will.

But…maybe there’s another meaning for the word, “perfect.”

The Bible gives us a clue.

Let me take you on a little Bible study.

Let’s do a little work on one of the strangest, most incomprehensible verses in the Bible. It’s Matthew 5:48—

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

And we look at that verse and say to ourselves, “Yea, right. Musial struck out 700 times. We strike out in life a lot more than that, no matter how hard we try. Suuurrre, we’ll be perfect—just like God!”

But, let’s look more closely. The Greek word translated “perfect” is this:

teleios = teleios

“complete, made whole”

In this respect, being perfect doesn’t mean not making mistakes. Being perfect, rather, means becoming a total, complete person—not lacking in that which is important.

And what is important? What is it that we as humans naturally lack? What is it that God has an abundance of, that we usually have a scarcity of?

Let’s time-travel back to Leviticus. God is giving the commandments by which His people were to live, and he says this:

You shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD.

God ties God’s self closely to the commandment. Or, as it’s translated in another version of the Bible, the RGV—the Revised Greg Version:

“Hey, LOVE each other—that’s what I’m about, after all!”

If you read the whole chapter, you’ll find God telling the people to express this love in concrete ways. When they harvest, for example, leave some harvest in the field—don’t take it all—so that the poor and needy will have something to eat.

Let’s fast-forward and return to Jesus’ words. Pay special attention to what he said just before his shocking verse you heard earlier:

Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven…Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

Or, in the RGV,

“Love others, so people will see how much you look like your ‘Father’ in heaven.”

Loving fully, radically, is tied in to resembling God, God’s nature. Isn’t that the picture Jesus constantly painted of his Father? A loving parent yearning for a wayward teen to come home. A shepherd leaving a warm home, to look for a lost sheep. A mother hen, wanting to gather her chicks under her wings.

The point is this.

We can never be as holy as God—only God doesn’t make mistakes.

However, we can strive to be more like God, by imitating how God loves. THAT is what going on to perfection means.

So, how do you become “perfect” this way, a more complete person?

You invest the time…

You can’t expect to “go on to perfection” if the only time you work on your soul is an hour or two on Sunday morning. Where’d we ever get the mindset that that’s all it takes? There are 168 hours in a week. Spending only 1 or 2 hours a week in church does not a Christian make—but sometimes that’s the way we live things out. You can’t live as you want for 166 hours or so a week, and think that coming into church for an hour or two will bless that. As someone once said, Americans tend to use Sunday morning as a nice overlay, trying to make pretty a lifestyle that has nothing to do with the call or cost of discipleship.

John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, would have none of this. He made sure that in each Methodist church there were small groups, called “societies,” that met during the week. In these small groups, members worked with each other, helping each other “go on to perfection.” Being Methodist meant that you joined a society, where you were expected to daily

…to do loving things…

In Wesley-speak, he said, “Do good.” Visit the sick. Visit the prisoners. Help the poor. If you can’t look at your daily and weekly living and see where you’re loving, then something’s wrong. If all the time you spend is on yourself and your family, and not taking time to make a difference in the life of another person outside your home, something’s wrong.

The way to make it right is to put the time in for love.

Musial was once asked the secret of his hitting greatness. He replied,

"I consciously memorized the speed at which every pitcher in the league threw his fastball, curve, and slider; then, I'd pick up the speed of the ball in the first thirty feet of its flight and knew how it would move once it had crossed the plate."  [Baseball’s Perfect Warrior,” on internet]

Noting this, Warren Spahn said that “Once Musial timed your fastball, your infielders were in jeopardy.”

Musial put the time in practicing the art of hitting—he put it in every day.

We have to put the time in practicing the art of loving as God loves—and we have to do it every day.

To go on to perfection means that you invest the time to do loving things,

…while you work on your character.

Wesley said that in your small group you help each other “do no harm.” You have to look “inside” your soul, and confront whatever it is that could hurt another person, whatever it is that prevents you from loving as God loves: vanity, jealousy, prejudice, whatever. You work on your “character,” and that takes time as well.

One of the things that made Musial truly special was that he didn’t just work on his game; he worked on his character as he worked on his game.

In his whole career, he was never thrown out of a ballgame. He had ample opportunity. In one game he hit a grand slam in the bottom of the 9^th inning that would have won the game. However, it was called back because before the pitch, the 3^rd base umpire had called time. Well, the Cardinal dugout exploded. They raged at the homeplate ump. The manager, a coach, and four players were thrown out of the game. Stan wasn’t one of them. When he got back in the box, he told the ump—who felt awful—“Well, there’s nothing you [could] do about it.” He promptly hit a triple, that won the game any way.

I love this quote from Bob Costas:

"Musial didn't hit a homer in his last at-bat; he hit a single. He didn't hit in 56 straight games. He married his high school sweetheart and stayed married to her, never married a Marilyn Monroe. He didn't play with the sheer joy and style that goes alongside Willie Mays' name. None of those easy things are there to associate with Stan Musial. All Musial represents is more than two decades of sustained excellence and complete decency as a human being." - Sportscaster Bob Costas in ESPN SportsCentury (ESPN

It would be nice for someone to write that about you and me. ““X” lived seven decades of excellent loving and complete decency as a Christian.”

Wesley’s “societies” enabled those early Methodists to strive for such a legacy.

For the next 28 days, we’re going to be imitating those early Methodist societies. You’ll have four weekly calendars, with each week focusing on a theme. This week you’ll work on being radically hospitable. Next week, you’ll work on deepening your spiritual life. The following week, it’s engaging in risk-taking mission. And finally, you’ll work on developing a spirit of “extravagant generosity.”

Each day you’ll find a Scripture passage, reflection, prayer, and action you can take. It will take time. Good. Because only by investing time to being loving and working on your character do you approach being a complete human being.

Take the time. Do it. Get into the batter’s box. Work on your swing. Work on your heart at the same time.

And at the end of your career, when you put the bat up for the last time, there will not be any statues built in your honor. That’s OK, because it’s not about you, and your fame.

It’s about the One who’s given you the privilege of playing.

All you hope for is that, when you hang it up, someone will see you and say, “Hey, you look familiar. You look a lot like someone I know.”

“Love others, so people will see how much you look like your Father in heaven.”