Practicing Perfection

You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.  -- Matthew 5:48

Perfect is a challenge.  The underlying word, though, is one with which Raccoons might be familiar:  τελειο, which comes from τελος – that is, telos, which refers to an end or a goal.  We should not think of degrees of excellence but of fitness.  If you have one lock that you really need to open and you have ten keys on your key ring, the one you want is the perfect one, the τελειο. 

My goal in life is to be the right one when I am needed.  It’s like the familiar parable of the Good Samaritan.  The priest and the Levite who passed by on the other side of the road were concerned with being “perfect” in the sense of being clean and inoffensive – not bad things in themselves.  The Samaritan, on the other hand, was the τελειο for the man who had been beaten and robbed.  We don’t know much about him other than what he did for a stranger.  Jesus did not relate this parable to endorse the Samaritan’s lifestyle or to condemn our efforts to keep ourselves pure and unspotted by worldly thinking and the corruption that accompanies it. 

Perfect may be translated as mature or complete.  Sometimes I think telling someone to be perfect can be a little like telling a small child to “grow up”.  On the other hand, if a man is over twenty-one but still irresponsible, spoiled and self-centered, telling him it is time to grow up is appropriate.  Even a child can act his age.  He can be perfect at that point.  And so may we be perfect. 

Our lock and key analogy, while helpful, is limited.  Our destiny is not static but dynamic and evolving.  Every time our “keyness” fits the situation, the door is opened to a new level of changes and challenges where the old “perfection” is no longer “perfect”.  We are always moving toward the goal of attaining (here’s that verse again)  … to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ (Ephesians 4:13).  

This is the ultimate Telos, the Attractor which draws our history and history in general.  So we are to continue … to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love (Ephesians 4:15-16). 

That will be just perfect.

    

All In God

For by [that is, by means of or in] him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether  thrones or  dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created  through him and for him.  And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. -- Colossians 1:16-17

He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power.  After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high -- Hebrews 1:3 (emphasis added)

I don’t know if we can fully grasp how much different the world is now from how things were before the Cross.  Teachers and preachers and Christianity in general have latched onto some statements in the New Testament that point to degeneration.  People are going to get worse.  The world is going downhill.  Evil is becoming more powerful.  God is going to have to come back and rapture us out before cleansing the earth as He did in the days of Noah. 

That is all true on one side.  I think those who choose to reject God and willingly sell themselves to the spirit of antichrist will get worse.  The division between the righteous and the rebellious will be greater as time goes on.  Evil will become ever more desperate and extreme its manifestations.  That’s because it is cornered and has its back to wall.  Evil is not exalting in triumph but thrashing and flailing in panic.  The battle can go on for a long, long time, yet both sides know, or could know how it is going to end.   

The coin has another side, however.  God is working in His children.  His kingdom is growing and expanding like dough rising as the effects of the leaven permeate it.  The Body is maturing into the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.  It may not be a linear process.  There is growth followed by pruning.  I believe we are entering or have entered the stage where there is going to be some cutting back.  We may not like this phase very well, but as far wiser people than me have said, the Church is strengthened and renewed by persecution. 

God is working in His creation.  Panentheism, the concept that “all is in God”, is reflected in the statements highlighted above.  He is immanent as well as transcendent, His life percolating and permeating through all of the Cosmos and especially through us, seeing through our eyes, hearing through our ears, and, perhaps, at times, whether we know it or not, speaking with our lips.  This is the difference from the old world, the world that existed before the Cross – that which has passed away. 

This is that, Peter said at Pentecost, prophesied by Joel.  The Spirit is poured out upon all flesh, sons and daughters prophesying, seeing visions, dreaming dreams, even among those thought too lowly and too distant, there may be an anointing.  We are fully accessible to God because Christ has made “purification for sins”.  In Christ, we have boldness and access with confidence through our faith in Him (Ephesians 3:12).  Our Father knows and understands our fears, our doubts, our troubled hearts.  We cannot deceive Him, but neither can we be separated from Him.  The cries of our hearts, even those that cannot be formed into words, are heard by Him and answered. 

If you get a chance in the next couple of days, read Ephesians chapter 2, especially beginning in verse 11 through the end of the chapter, with this awareness of the presence of God in your life and in all that is. 

Altered for a Heavenly Fit

For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. -- Romans 8:29

I am certainly not about to get into a debate with any experts in theology, especially Calvinistic theology, as for such dragons I would likely be considered crunchy and good with ketchup.  But the verse does tell us what we are predestined for, and that is to be conformed to the image of Christ.

That's almost a like-it-or-not proposition, an offer we can't refuse.  My absolute certainty of free will does not preclude me from believing that, once stepping through the strait gate, we will most likely follow all the way to the end.  We will be made into the image of Christ, no matter what it takes or how long it takes.  I am pretty much counting on the fact that God will not give up on me until I am conformed to the image of the Son, until you and I and numberless others are unified in faith, brought to maturity in the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. 

As we talked about yesterday, it is the final cause of this life which gives it meaning.  I often find myself looking around the world and thinking I was born out of time, that I should have been far happier living in my grandfather's time, walking behind a plowhorse, unstressed by the taxations and vexations of modern life.  Nevertheless, while we may not have chosen our times (and I'm not totally convinced of that), we are where we must be.  As we are being transformed, destined to be conformed, we were also destined to bear the burden of this day. 

I do not think it is time to beat our swords into plowshares.  The battle line forms.  Proverbs 24:10 says, If you faint in the day of adversity, your strength is small.  The day is upon us, and it will alter us forever.  This is nothing to fear.     

Vane Repetition

And I tell you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.  For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened.  What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent; or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion?  If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”  -- Luke 11:9-13

It seems like a good day to talk about prayer given the situation among us this week.  Let us begin at the bottom. 

There are many tales and not a few jokes regarding what we might call the “three wishes” problem.  The one that comes to mind, after one about the mermaid best forgotten, finds three men marooned on a desert island.  A bottle washes ashore.  The men open it to release a genie that is, of course, willing to pay for freedom at the usual and customary Djinn Union rate -- three wishes, which, happily, can be divided equally among the desperate sojourners.  The first wisher asks to be whisked off to his home in New York City, and, in a flash, he is gone to reunite with his family and friends and head off for beer and pizza.  The second asks to go to San Francisco with the same result.  The third man looks wistfully about and says, “I wish my two friends were back here.”

Unlike jinn, mermaids, Shakespearean witches, et al, God responds to us as a loving and all-knowing Father.   A more appropriate depiction is the “Old Man”, Darren McGavin’s character, from A Christmas Story, watching in delighted and rapt communion with his son as he receives his sought-after gift, even vicariously mimicking Ralphie’s movements as he loads the Red Ryder.  The Lord is no Coyote trickster.  There is no bait-and-switch, only, perhaps, a delay or a deferment to enhance the longing, to solidify and consolidate our desires, to make our joy and rejoicing sharper and sweeter.  “Delight yourself in the Lord,” the Psalmist reminds us, “and He will give you the desires of your heart.”  We get, as we noted before, not what we say, but who we are.

This leads us to the necessity of importunity.  Prayer changes us.  It strips away our facades, our agendas, and our illusions.  It is the very act of asking and asking and asking, seeking and seeking and seeking, knocking and knocking and knocking that transforms us from selfish to self-less.  Next time you watch The Searchers consider how the characters start out and how they end.  What is it that causes that change except the seeking -- day after day, season after season, and year after year.  Debbie changes, becomes another person, but, in the end, she is that which has been sought all along.  The ends and motivations change, from rescue to revenge to restoration and redemption.  

Like the vanes on an arrow shaft, persistent prayer gives us stability and gets us on target.  Sin, is, after all, missing the mark.  

I have before mentioned answered prayers for temporal, material needs and situations.  The thing I notice, looking back, is that those answers only appeared to be material.  Each one that I can recall – and probably more that I cannot -- was like the creation of another chamber in the outward spiraling shell of the nautilus.   God’s responses to our prayers have eternal consequences, no matter how small or large the issue appears to be because those answers move us toward maturity – sometimes called in the Bible “perfection” -- that last chamber in the shell that is “the measure of the stature of Christ”. 

Sometimes, as we pray, we will get an answer.  I cannot describe that experience.  It may be an overwhelming sense of peace, a vision, a phrase, the proverbial still, small voice, a dream, a fragment out of a conversation, a verse in the Bible lighting up like a neon sign, or any number of other possibilities – I don’t know.  You will know it when it happens.  The old-timers called this “praying through”.  They would simply not stop until it happened, until they heard “yes” or “no” or, maybe, “no, not now.”  More than forty years ago, I knew a boy who was bleeding to death in the aftermath of a violent incident.  An old preacher was on his knees some fifty miles from the hospital praying, over and over, a verse from Ezekiel.  Sometime in the darkness after midnight, the old man stopped.  No phone calls were made back in those days, but he knew the bleeding had ceased, noted the hour in the margin of his Bible and went to sleep. 

Other times, we have no choice other than to get up and keeping going, not knowing for certain, but believing and constantly praying.  The answer is such that it may come only by degrees, little by little, strangely shrouded in mist and fog.  We may be set free from a bad habit or a besetting sin in a moment.  Often, though, it is like bush-hogging sprouts.  We just keep knocking them down until the buried root has exhausted its vitality and can no longer generate above-ground growth.  Even then, it is a good idea to have that ground sown thickly with good seed to smother and break down what lies beneath. 

Prayers to surrender our lives to Christ, to be filled with the Spirit, to walk in obedience and humility are always – at least, in my experience – of the “ask and keep on asking” variation.  It may become almost an unconscious thing for the more saintly among us, but I cannot see that it stops this side of the grave.  Since I am still dragging this shell around, I must assume that there is yet another chamber to enter, one more rung on that ever-upward, ever-larger spiraling stairway.  There will be another work for us to do, that we could only do from that place and that position. 

And we will find that to do it, we must pray. 

Happy Return

You ascended to the heights, taking away captives; You received gifts among people, even from the rebellious, so that the LORD God might live there. – Psalm 68:18

Here is how Paul quotes that verse in Ephesians 4:8, “When He ascended on high, He took prisoners into captivity; He gave gifts to people”.

I did not read Gagdad Bob’s incredibly powerful post on Holy Saturday until this morning, but it coincides with the fact that I started reading Charles Williams’ Descent Into Hell last night.

I think I miss the evident for the obvious. Which is the forest – evident or obvious? How many trees does it take to make a forest? If a tree is a fact, is the forest an interpretation or an extrapolation? While talking to my wife yesterday, it occurred to me that a phrase in the Epistle to the Ephesians was of far greater significance than I could understand. He says, “Till we come … to a perfect man, to the measure of stature of the fullness of Christ” – that is to say until we reach maturity as measured by comparison to Christ. The Body of Christ, the Bride of Christ must come of age. He calls us to take His yoke upon us, but we cannot be unequally yoked.

Most of my relatives are not tall people. We range from short to average. Dad was about 5’7” and his nephew Clifford was about the same, maybe 5’6”. They had a neighbor named Tom who was well over six feet tall but slightly blunt on top. The three of them were cutting some logs together. When they carried the logs out on their shoulders, Dad took one end, Clifford took the other, and they suggested Tom get in the middle. Tom thought those logs were a little heavy. If you’ve ever seen a “Ma and Pa Kettle” movie with Marjorie Main, you might recall Pa’s rather mismatched team hitched to his wagon. In that case, it’s the little horse that has to work much harder to do what the big horse does.

The gospel is the “death, burial, and resurrection” of Christ. As we just celebrated, He liberated and despoiled hell – or as one local preacher puts it: Jesus razed hell. After descending to liberate and deliver, the Lord ascended to pour out the Holy Spirit with His myriad of gifts upon us. These gifts are not baubles for our adornment or playthings for our amusement; they are the means of our growth in wisdom, maturity and beauty.

The Lord has “ascended”. In this case, the obvious is that Jesus is no longer in this world, in the stream of time. He is, as it were, hidden from the Bride. He has given us the Comforter, the “earnest of our inheritance”, but He has left us in time while He waits in eternity – already perfect and unchanging, “the same yesterday, today, and forever”.

And then there is the evident. For what is He waiting?

For us, the Bride, to grow up.