Today we hear the final section of Jesus’ reformulation of the Law (Mt 5:38-48). He moves on from how we should handle situations where relationships have been damaged (as we saw last week) to the demands of love in any relationship. Even relationships in which we are taken advantage of, even with people who hate us, even then we are to look for the opportunity to love. And at the point when all this seems to be impossible Jesus confirms that it indeed is. His final flourish: be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.
That’s all he’s asking for – perfection, Godlike perfection.
In case we think this is Jesus at his more extravagant, exaggerating to make a point, this reading is coupled with one from Leviticus (Lv 19:1-2, 17-18), of all the books of the Torah, the Law, the one that is most like a legal code. Here God instructs Moses to tell the Israelites, and not just a few special ones, but all of them: Be holy, for I, the LORD, your God, am holy. This is not a God hidden at some immeasurable distance, holy and incomprehensibly different, but a God who calls his people to emulate his holiness.
So right from the time of Moses to the the time of Jesus we hear a consistent message. Despite our best attempts to put distance between ourselves and God, maybe as a way to defend ourselves from his impossible demands, God is having none of it. He demands that we be like him in our love – perfect, holy.
But that’s impossible, right?
As Jesus said in another context – yes for you it is impossible, but for God nothing is impossible (Mark 10:27). Which is all very well as a matter of principle, but still leaves us with the question of how? And this isn’t just an abstract or philosophical question, it’s a very practical one. What am I supposed to do about this? How is this, apparently impossible, possible outcome going to come about.
Paul in our second reading (1 Cor 3:16-23) gives us a clue: you are the temple of God.
God doesn’t live in a building in Jerusalem, however glorious, He lives in each of his people. Or as Paul puts in in another letter: I have been crucified with Christ; yet I live, no longer I, but Christ lives in me (Gal 2:19-20)
The only way in which we can be perfect as Our Father is perfect, be holy as God is holy, is by being Him. If we let ourselves be fully taken over by God then we are indeed loving with his love. If we can get out of our own way so completely, push away our own limitations, our needs, our fears, that we are fully filled with God, then we can let Him act in us. When we die to self we are born to eternal life (as the Prayer of St Francis puts it), then we have the life of God, then we are holy, then we are perfect.