The Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost
+ In the name of the Holy and Undivided Trinity, One God. Amen.
Perfection.
New anti-aging creams to fix those god forsaken wrinkles overnight and get the perfect skin you’ve always wanted. The latest app on your phone to make you the most productive and efficient worker, the perfect employee. The newest ideas to make sure that your thoughts are perfectly aligned with the best ideologies that late stage neoliberal capitalism has to offer. The newest vitamin supplement to biohack your way into living perfectly to old age. The latest parenting method to ensure you are the perfect parent and that your child becomes the perfect child. The newest weight loss plan to make sure you are the perfect weight. The newest education subscription to make sure you become the perfect student, for only a small subscription of $9.99 a month… plus tax.
Buy this thing that you need and you too can be perfect. Perfection is indeed achievable, for the right price.
We exist flooded by a cultural milieu of perfectionism. A vast majority of advertisements and products are marketed to fix a problem, often a problem we didn’t know we had. These products, subtly or not, claim to make us more whole, one more step to that perfect life that we so desire.
The underlying ethos that we are pummeled with daily is that:
If we’re not busy, we’re lazy.
If we’re not consuming, we’re starving.
If we’re not perfect, we are utter and complete failures.
Our culture demands perfection, and I think part of the immense levels of discontent in this country, and perhaps in much of our lives individually, is rooted in our sense of failure to be perfect.
The chronic bombardment of perfectionism from social media and ads and influencers and ideologies leads ultimately to isolation and despair and death.
But the readings from the Holy Scriptures today point us towards an alternative way of being. We see Jacob wrestle with God, and come away with a limp. We see St. Paul exhorts us to be persistent and endure the hardships of life in faith. And we see Jesus emphasize the persistence of a widow seeking justice, and are encouraged to be persistent and to persevere like her.
Today we see from the Scriptures that God calls us towards perseverance not perfection.
Let’s begin with Genesis. We open with Jacob, a name which literally means “heel-catcher, to follow, to be behind, to supplant.” A name which denotes a trickster-like person, one who is crafty and shrewd, after all Jacob indeed supplants his brother Esau’s birthright in Genesis 27:36.
Jacob is persistent.
A man comes and wrestles him, and the mysterious man did not prevail over Jacob, and causes his hip to come out of joint. But Jacob perseveres in the wrestle, and the man says “Let me go, for the day is breaking” but Jacob won’t let up unless he receives a blessing, despite the pain of his hip.
So the man renames him Israel, which means “One who struggles with God,” and blesses him. And after being blessed, Jacob realizes that he has “seen God face to face” yet lived (32:30).
Jacob wrestles with God. Jacob persists in his demand for a blessing. Jacob becomes Israel - one who struggles with God.
And is that not a component of a life of faith? The chronic and persistent struggle with God in our lives? To know God better, to know Christ more fully, to ask the hard and soul-shattering questions of life - the why’s and the how’s and such.
Like Jacob-turned-Israel, we too struggle with God. And Jacob testifies to the importance of perseverance.
And the outcome of his perseverance is encounter. He encounters God. He is changed and blessed, his name - a marker of one’s identity particularly in the ancient world - is changed. And his body is changed, too - for he goes away from the encounter with God “limping because of his hip” (Gen. 32:31).
We persevere. We wrestle with God. We encounter God. We are changed.
Yet we are not made perfect. Sometimes encountering God means we are made more vulnerable than ever, it can mean we are humbled. Jacob does not walk away made perfect - but instead his humanity, his identity as a person, changed.
The limp, I think, reminds us that, as we come to encounter God - we will come to understand how wonderfully and perfectly loved we are by God. How wonderfully and perfectly known by God that we are.
And yet, how imperfect we yet are even in the midst of all of this! When we see the perfection of God, our imperfection is made all the more apparent. And so we persevere!
The spiritual message of persistence is also highlighted by Jesus.
The Holy Gospel recounts that Jesus desires us to “pray always and not to lose heart.”
And how do we pray always and not lose heart?
Perseverance.
An unjust judge with neither fear of God nor respect for people refused justice to a widow. Yet the widow, one of the most vulnerable people in Jewish society at the time, who had very little protection socially, kept demanding justice.
She kept showing up, day after day.
She continues to come forward again and again until at long last the judge says he will grant her justice.
The widow has tenacity and grit in her perseverance.
So the widow becomes a model for us in our faith to persevere and come to God - a God who is nothing like the unjust judge; but rather - the One who brings Justice, and is the great judge of the world.
We often talk about spiritual gifts of love and compassion and faith and hope, but I think perseverance is a spiritual gift and a core component of our faith.
We persevere in seeking God’s grace and praying for the sake of the world, even when we don’t feel like praying.
We persevere in reading the Holy Scriptures, because in it we come to know our God more and more fully, even when we don’t have energy to do so.
We persevere in seeking healing and wholeness and forgiveness from our God, even when time and time again we may find ourselves weaker, and more fractured, and falling right back into sin.
But God is always ready to receive us and our prayers - no matter what - and in that encounter, we are being changed.
And we persevere, too, in the practical things: We persevere in seeking justice for those in need, in feeding the hungry, and supporting the poor. You all do this here, week after week. And we may not fix everything, but we persevere nonetheless.
And in perseverance in our faith, we come to know who we are more fully as made in the image of God.
St. Paul exonerates this kind of persistence, saying today “Be persistent whether the time is favorable or unfavorable” and to “be sober, endure suffering, and do the work of an evangelist” to carry out our ministry fully.
So, my friends, may we remember that the life of faith is not one of perfection - but of perseverance.
Perfectionism is an enemy to our selves, our faith, our hope and our joy. Only God is perfect.
But perseverance is a key virtue of the Christian life.
Perseverance is a virtue which Jesus Christ Himself calls us toward.
By the grace of God, may we persist in our life of faith, in prayer, in thanksgiving, in community with one another, and in seeking justice for those in our communities.
Thanks be to God!
Amen.