The Pursuit of Perfection

Our society and culture, soaked as it is in waves of social media posts and celebrity influencers, seems particularly focused on the notion of perfection and its pursuit.  Each of us, I imagine, wrestles with this pursuit in different ways, as there are all sorts of forms of perfection for one to pursue. So maybe it’s the perfect body, or the perfect house, or the perfect kids, or the perfect job, or the perfect career, or the perfect end of that career. We’re all told, in so many different ways, that we need to strive for perfection, and that the pursuit of perfection really is what the meaning of life is all about.

Certainly, you can find that same striving in our faith, too.  If we’re being honest, that was the subtext to a lot of what we grew up listening to in church, this need to be perfect.  Because if you’re good enough, you get to go to heaven, right?  Well, only if you’re perfect … or close enough to fool St. Peter.

So, we already have all of this cultural and social influencing going on in our heads and in our hearts, and today I want to explore that a little bit. I want to explore this pursuit of perfection and take it to Jesus and see what he has to say about it, particularly in his relationship with Peter, the foremost of his apostles.  And then I’m also curious what Paul had to say about it. Paul, as we know, was not a perfect man. So how did he wrestle with this idea of striving for perfection?  And then lastly, we’re going to close with an interesting story about Martin Luther King Jr. and the March on Washington and see what ‘dreaming’ has to do with all this as well. 

So, let me start with the Gospel.  In the Gospel reading, Jesus is traveling with his disciples and, for reasons known to only to himself, he asks the disciples, “Now, who do you say that I am?”  And Peter, (by the way, Peter’s name at this point is not Peter. It’s Simon. That’s his name. His name is Simon).  So Simon says, “You are the Messiah.” And Jesus says, “Ah, you could not have known that on your own. God must have told you that.” And Jesus gives Peter right then and there the nickname for which he will be known for eternity, Petros, which we transliterate into Peter, but means in Greek ‘rock’.

He calls him a rock. Rocky.  That’s how he talks to Peter. And he says, “Yo Rocky, on you my church is now founded,” and in fact, “I am giving you the keys to the Kingdom of God.”  And right then and there we have the line that has set up all of the images we grew up with about the Pearly Gates.  Peter out there with his clipboard, so that when we arrive at the top of the escalator asking to get into heaven, he looks back through the records, and if there are enough gold stars and you went to Sunday school enough—you get to go through the gates. That whole idea comes from this passage.

And one might assume that it is Peter’s faith that has earned him this station in life, and that Jesus somehow judges Peter to be perfect for the founding of the Christian faith.  But spend a minute thinking about all we know of Peter, and we realize this man was not perfect by any stretch.  He was bold… until he wasn’t and he chickened out.  He was courageous… until he denied everything.  He was faithful… until he was so full of doubts that he was paralyzed.

He was in every way a deeply flawed human.

So what was it about Peter that appealed to Jesus?  I suspect it was that Peter never gave up. He continued always in his pursuit of the love and the justice that he found in Jesus.   And yeah, he stumbled and he went in wrong directions, and sometimes he would get it, and then in the next breath, he wouldn’t.  But he kept at it, and Christ noticed and lifted up that pursuit. 

St. Paul, I think, had a similar sense of the important things in life.   He’d be the first to tell you he was not a perfect individual. But as he says in his letter to the Romans, “I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters”—he’s talking to us—”by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.”  St. Paul is telling us to get off the sidelines and get in the game. Get in the game. It doesn’t matter if you’re the best player. It doesn’t matter if you’re a scrub. Get in there. It’s the pursuit that matters. Not necessarily winning, not necessarily being the best. Definitely not being perfect, but just getting in the game and staying there. That is what matters.

I recently heard a very interesting story: This week marks the 63rd anniversary of the famous March on Washington, known as the time Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave one of the most famous speeches in all of American history.

Dr. King was, on that day, the 16th speaker. And just before he spoke, Mahalia Jackson, the famous gospel singer sang a rousing hymn to bring Dr. King up to the dais so that he could give his speech. And after she finished, Mahalia went to sit down in the chairs behind him to hear what he was going to say.  We’re familiar with that speech of course, the majority of which was about a promissory note that the United States had yet to have fully paid to Black men and women with respect to their place U.S. society and culture. 

As he was wrapping up, Mahalia called out from the back.  It seems she had heard a speech Dr. King had given earlier that year in Detroit where he had first used the phrase, “I have a dream.” So she called out to him, “Martin, tell them about the dream!”

Now, as a preacher, I am not used to taking requests from the audience, particularly mid-stride as I’m wrapping up my sermon (heh heh).  But Dr. King was a fairly accomplished orator, as we know. And he integrated, extemporaneously, on the spot, the most famous words of that speech—that he had a dream for all of us.

And he concluded the speech like this: “That when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, Black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, free at last. Free at last. Thank God Almighty, we are free at last.”

The dream.  Staying in the game in pursuit of that dream – that’s what matters. That’s what mattered to Jesus.  That’s why he chose Peter and why he still chooses us.  Our perfection does not matter. 

Life is not about the pursuit of perfection.  It is about the perfection of the pursuit.

That is our calling: to pursue, to get in the game, to stay in it, and to chase that dream.

That is the perfection we find in Christ and that Christ finds in us. 

Amen.