Sermon: Becoming the Perfect Church
Date: September 14
Scripture: Matthew 5:43-48
Speaker: Paul Walker

Jesus tells his disciples to “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”(5.48) This can sound like an impossible ideal from Jesus. Really, how can anyone be perfect? The key to understanding this passage is “therefore,” because it shows us that this verse is the conclusion of the previous verses. This verse is a calling to live in perfect unity, as the previous verses focus on how Jesus wants us to treat one another. The perfection that we are called to live is discovered in our relationships. Thus, Jesus is urging his followers to be “perfect in love” or to “love completely” in the sense that they are to love not only fellow Jewish neighbours but also enemy neighbours. This is why in the parallel passage in the Gospel of Luke, Jesus says, “Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.”(Lk 6:36) This challenges us to form different sorts of communities in which love is lavished indiscriminately. Yet, so much of how we form community is through a “bounded set” sense of belonging—- in which we love those who believe and behave as we do. Jesus invites us to flip the script and love without boundaries.

Desired Outcome: To explore what it means for our church ‘be perfect’ by explaining the difference between bounded-set, fuzzy-set, and centre-set communities.