Sunday Reflections

Part of our human condition urges us to seek perfection.  For some it may be the perfect body or the perfect face.  For others it may be the perfect career and job.  For some it may be the perfect spouse, and children, and family.   For others it may be the perfect home or the perfect car.  Very soon we come to the realization – sometimes very dramatically – that we are not perfect, and that the perfection we seek MAY remain only a dream.  We are imperfect, flawed, and weak. 

In the context of faith we may also seek the perfect relationship with God, the perfect congregation to worship with, the perfect Church.  Although all of these are good and desirable –  they also MAY remain only a dream.  Although we have been washed clean in baptism, we are still imperfect, flawed and weak.  Despite the grace of God that we have all received, we are imperfect.

Yet, we need our dreams, for ourselves, for those we love, for our world, and for our Church.

I thought of this struggle when I first read the gospel of this weekend (Matthew 13:24-30).  The parable of Jesus speaks to us of a field that is not perfect.  Good seed and bad seed are mingled together, and the weeds are growing at the same time as the wheat.  We may easily think, “That is not the way it should be!”, but that IS the way it is.  There is good and evil in the world, and in our humility we may recognize that there is even evil in each one of us.  As much as we may want to rid the field of the weeds, we may sometimes bow our heads and admit that we have contributed to that evil by our sinfulness.  We can look back at those times of difficulty, confusion and disorder in our own lives and give God thanks that He gave us another chance – that we weren’t uprooted as the servants in the parable suggested, that God was patient and merciful to us although we were sinful and imperfect.

All our readings this weekend speak to us about not only our human condition, but about who our God is in the face of that human condition.   In the First Reading from the Book of Wisdom (23:13, 16-19) God’s justice and mercy is proclaimed.  We are told that He “judges with clemency”.  This does not lessen God’s call to faithfully respond to Him.  Rather, we trust in his abundant graces and blessings to help us to overcome our sinfulness and weakness.  At the end of the reading we hear “you gave your children good ground for hope that you would permit repentance for their sins”.  Such encouraging words that we all long to hear as, with God’s grace, we overcome our sin and weakness.  Only God can help us to reach perfection.

In the Psalm (86) we sang that “Lord, you are good and forgiving”.  “He is abounding in kindness to all who call upon him”.  He is “slow to anger, abounding in kindness”.   In our sinfulness and weakness we turn to God, and God alone, to save us.  We cry out with the psalmist “Turn toward me, and have pity on me; give your strength to your servant”.  At one time or other I am sure that we all made that prayer, and at one time or other we all experienced the marvel of God’s grace leading us out of our sinfulness and weakness into unity and peace with Him.

In our Second Reading from the Letter of St. Paul to the Romans (8:26-27) St. Paul very simply tells us that “The Spirit comes to the aid of our weakness”, and that God, “the one who searches hearts” knows our intentions to move away from sin to grace, away from being weeds to be the fruitful wheat.  What a beautiful image of God who “searches (our) hearts”, who knows our most inmost thoughts and feelings, and even though others may judge us or feel we are lost, or think we are beyond repair, God has not given up on us.  He continues to call us, reach out to us, and heal us, if we turn to Him with sincerity and humility. 

Rev. Henry Beecher, a nineteenth century Congregationalist preacher, wrote, “The Church is not a gallery for the exhibition of eminent Christians, but a school for the education of imperfect ones”.   These words echo the Scripture of this weekend.  We are in this together, we imperfect ones.  As God is kind and merciful, as He is patient and forgiving, so too we must share these qualities.  Sometimes, in our human condition, it is easy for us to judge others, condemn others, and lose heart with others because we feel they do not meet the standards of the gospel, or the Church, or the kingdom.  Yet as we vacillate between being wheat and weeds, we are grateful that our God is as He is, that He gives us another chance and calls us to perfection in Him – perfection in faith, hope, and love. 

On one hand the readings of this week left me with some sadness – because of the reality of our human condition – but at the same time, on the other hand, I felt the power of God being extended to us, and that fills me with hope.  It also becomes aware to me that we do not strive for, or reach, this ‘perfection’ alone, but that we need one another on the journey, and that God depends on us to actively accompany, lead, and guide others to become wheat.  God is not asking the impossible of us.  It is not impossible to be wheat.  It is not impossible to be good, and righteous, and holy.  But, it is impossible to be wheat without the Lord.  It is impossible to be good, and righteous and holy without God.   And so, in sincerity and humility, let us turn to our loving God and commit ourselves to striving for perfection – the perfection of the children of God, living in union with God, and in harmony with one another.