Be perfect, therefore as your heavenly Father is perfect? Is this really a reasonable request? Perhaps this is one of those obvious Semitic hyperboles scripture teachers used to speak of? Maybe Jesus has a perverse sense of humor and the joke is on us. This next installment of the Sermon on the Mount sounds like just more bad news about standards we can never meet. I do believe, however that there is good news to be found here. The demand that we be perfect as God is perfect follows a description of what God’s perfection is like. God’s perfection consists in perfect love showed equally to all. God’s love falls like rain, equally on the just and unjust. God’s love embraces both the sinner and the saint. (Luther says that each of us is both.) God’s unconditional, unearned, and often unrequited love for humanity is that perfection of which Jesus speaks. Sharing in this universal love frees the follower of Jesus from the need to tally points or judge motives. It opens our hearts to acts of mutual forgiveness and genuine acceptance of the other. God’s perfection is ultimately displayed on the cross. In joining Jesus at the cross, we too stretch out our arms in a perfect sacrifice of love and thanksgiving, embracing the entire world.
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