Sermon: Nobody’s Perfect–not even God

PENTECOST 3 | MARK 4:35-41



Elie Weisel in his book THE TRIAL OF GOD, tells about an actual trial he witnessed as a young man in the Auschwitz death camp. The adults around him were frantic as they watched their fellow Jews being marched out to the gas chambers, and they wondered aloud how God could possibly have betrayed them so utterly. For the Jews, the terms of their covenant were very simple. We will worship only you as our God, and God, in turn promises to protect them. 



What happened? They wondered. Why had God forsaken their covenant? Why did he not protect them now? The prisoners decided to have a formal trial, to try God for his indifference–apparently in absentia. 



A judge was selected, as well as other roles, and the trial began. Numerous possible defenses for God’s abandonment were put forth–was it a punishment for straying from the Law? Was it a purification, as in the flood of Noah? Was it a sacrifice, as in the sacrifice of Isaac by Abraham? Or, like the same story of Abraham, was it all just a test of their faith? Perhaps, they reasoned, it was simply a consequence of free will. 

The debate raged for hours–it may have gone on for days. Eventually, however, the arguments were exhausted, and the judge announced his verdict. Guilty. God was guilty of breaking the covenant. One rabbi complained that he was not surprised. God had never been GOOD. He had simply been on our side. And now he had, apparently, made a deal with another people, the Germans, whose banners proclaimed, “God is with us.”



The Trial finished, the prisoners. dissembled–and what do you think they did next? They went to pray.



Even in the midst of war, in the face of death, in the event of God’s apparent abandonment, these Jews did not abandon THEIR side of the covenant–they prayed. What they did, in fact, was take God AS HE WAS. A turncoat, maybe. Indifferent, apparently. A traitor, decidedly, but they still accepted him, AS HE WAS.



Lisa and I were discussing this story this week because I had been struck in our Gospel reading by a curious line I had never noticed before. It’s near the beginning of the passage, where the evangelist says, “They took him, just as he was, in the boat.”



What can this mean? In context, Jesus has been teaching people all day. He was exhausted, he was probably more than a little bit cranky. And yet, even though it was early in their association with him, they didn’t say, “Well, aren’t you full of yourself? Enough of this!” and walk away. Instead, they took him, AS HE WAS, in the boat with them. 



I find it fascinating that, as I go about my daily business, when people I meet discover I am a priest, they instantly start confessing. Not formally, of course, but ACTUALLY. Within moments of discovering my vocation, many people just launch into these baroque justifications that I didn’t ask for and the situation doesn’t require. It’s the oddest thing. 



But they do it nevertheless, and frequently the content is the same–either God has disappointed them somehow, or the church has–or they believe that they have somehow disappointed God, and turned away from him in shame. 



What is clear in these situations is that these people feel hurt–by God, by God’s people, by circumstances, by their own choices, and by the estrangement from God and from sacred community that results.



I always feel profoundly sad when this happens, because it is clear that someone has indeed failed–but I usually pin the blame on my fellow clergy for not adequately, clearly, and forcefully proclaiming the Good News that Jesus came to offer us in the first place.



I understand the ministry of Jesus as one of deep and profound reconciliation between people and God. And the way Jesus did that was usually by modeling that reconciliation in his own relationships. He took people AS THEY WERE. He loved them AS THEY WERE. And he assured them that God loved them the very same way.



When Jesus called his disciples, he called them as they were–smelly fishing clothes and all, with all of their personality quirks, all of their failings, all of their failures, all of their problems, even all of their sins. He loved them just as he found them.



Little wonder, then, that as Jesus stumbled aboard their boat, tired and grumpy, scripture says that they took him exactly the same way. 



Look, I’m not perfect, you’re not perfect, and I’m going to go out on a limb and say that, if scripture and human experiences are any indicators, God’s not perfect, either, and neither is Jesus. 



Thank God. Nobody likes the perfect guy, and frankly, I have little use for a perfect deity, either. The Jews are certainly convinced that their God has his bad days, and yet they still cling to him. And the very mystery of the incarnation is that Christ left by his glory and joined our lot, wholly and completely uniting himself to our imperfect state. 



And if the Gospel required that we be perfect, that would be Bad News indeed, and not the Gospel at all. As I’ve said often before, perfection is a fiction that exists nowhere in the phenomenal universe, not even in God. The only place it exists is in the human imagination, where it proliferates like a raging virus, leaving nothing but emotional, spiritual and social wreckage in its wake. 



This is the wreckage I witness whenever I hear one of these impromptu confessions. People either run or are pushed away from God when they just don’t measure up to some arbitrary standard of alleged perfection. But just as often, people turn their backs on God when God does not measure up to their expectations. How many of us run away from God because God has let us down?



I guess what I’m saying here is that not only does the Good News insist that we give ourselves a break, but shouldn’t we give God one as well?



I mean, if the Jews can forgive Auschwitz, might not you or I be able to forgive God the hurts we have suffered? If the disciples could accept Jesus as he was, even when he was being Mr. Grumpy Pants, why can’t we? If we so desperately long to be forgiven by God, should we not perhaps try to do the same for him?



And remember, forgiveness and acceptance don’t preclude confrontation, exhortation, or correction. Jesus accepted his disciples, and loved them, even though he was probably a little miffed for their lack of faith in our reading. He probably didn’t appreciate being awakened and was without a doubt suffering from low blood sugar and resurgent grumpiness at that moment. That’s okay, and it was okay for him to scold them a little. Just so, it’s possible for us to love, forgive, and accept, and still speak up when we feel let down, or abandoned, or hurt. We can even call God out for such things. 



Because that’s what people who really love each other DO. That’s what REAL relationship is about. And that’s the kind of relationship God wants to have with us. It’s the kind of authentic relationship in community that we ought to have with one another. 



Because everything ISN’T rosy. People AREN’T perfect. God isn’t perfect and neither are you or I. A perfect person wouldn’t really need anyone else. The rest of us, though, need each other to correct us, to love us, to uphold us, and to forgive us. And we do the same for them. 



The disciples “took Jesus as he was.” Wouldn’t we be better off if we could do the same? If everyone could? The Good News is only good, after all, when it is put into action. In the Lord’s Prayer, we ask God to “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” We are being called to a great circle of Grace, where forgiveness and acceptance are offered to friend and foe, the living and the dead, to humans and the Divine. The question before us is–do we want IN? Let us pray…



God, in Jesus you reached out to us just as we are.
Help us to accept ourselves in the midst of our imperfections, and help us to extend that grace to others in return–to our friends, to strangers, to those that bless us and those that hurt us.
Help us to extent it even to you.
Help us to live into the Community of God you call us to be, in our families, here in our church community, and in the world,
as we seek to live out the Good News proclaimed to us by your son, even Jesus Christ. Amen.