There is a very old saying – if you find the perfect church, don’t join it because you will spoil it.  That is probably very true – as human beings we are all far from perfect and since the church is actually made up of people there probably isn’t such a thing (at least on earth) as the perfect church.  In fact our human fallibility even gets in the way of our worship.  At Westcott as we are all training to lead worship (among other things) we are probably more aware of this than most. 

This week I was privileged to be sub deacon at a high mass for the feast of Corpus Christi in All Saints – the beautiful Bodley church next door to college – a redundant church which we are bringing back to life.  We had processed in to clouds of incense, with four acolytes (candles) and angelic singing from the boys choir from Jesus college.  Part of my role was to read the epistle.  Now I had already ascertained that if I stood at the lectern I could not see over the top and the reading would be as from a dismembered body.  So I stood on the chancel steps and solemnly read Paul’s account of the institution of the Lord’s Supper – and then changed the whole sense by getting one word wrong.  I kept going and my friends said they had not noticed.  I knew – and my tutor spotted it!

More noticeable was the servers blunder at a chapel eucharist earlier in the week when, as he was carrying the chalice of consecrated wine, he tripped over the box which the chaplain uses to stand on behind the altar (she is even shorter than me) and time stood still as he flew through the air with the precious sacrament, just managing to correct himself and avert disaster.  All this, I confess, to barely stifled giggles from the congregation.

And it is not just in worship that our human fallibility is found.  In all aspects of our lives, as we strive to live as Christians, we regularly get it wrong – with pastoral blunders, or just in the way we live our lives and relate to other people.  I for one, don’t like failing – I want to be perfect.  And I especially want to get things right for God.  But as a human being I continue to blunder my way through life. 

And I am learning more and more that God wants to say to us – it doesn’t matter.  That is the way we are as humans and we are here to learn to be both more like him, and more human.  And all of that is possible through the grace of God.

In the very first line of the epistle this morning Paul reminds his hearers about that grace of God which is so crucial to us.  Paul was responding to the Corinthian Christians who were arguing about whose leadership they particularly followed.  He makes the point firmly that while different people, including himself, may have laid foundations of faith, all of them were actually laid on the one foundation – Jesus Christ.  It is so easy for us today to look to the inspirational leadership of great Christians – well known or local.  It is easy to seek to follow them or to try to copy their teaching and lifestyle.  It is easy to strive really hard to live as good Christians – to love others, to produce the perfect worship and liturgy and to work really hard to serve God through charitable works and so on. 

But actually all of that hard work is not what God wants.  Micah points out, all that the Lord requires of us is to do justice, love kindness and walk humbly with God and the way that we do that is to trust in God’s grace to enable and empower us.  We simply cannot do it effectively in our own strength. 

Paul told his hearers: do you not know that you are God’s temple, that the Holy Spirit dwells in you?  Very often we think of this as individuals, empowered by the Holy Spirit for Christian service.  It is, of course, true, that we need the Holy Spirit in our own lives, and that at baptism and other special, often sacramental, moments we are specially filled with God’s Spirit.  But I think that in this passage what Paul means is that the early church, as a community, is filled with the Spirit – remember Pentecost has not long happened for them – that was a communal thing.  So Paul is telling them that they are indeed the Temple of God – the place where people outside should look and seek and find God at work and indwelling.  Of course if that was true for the early Christians, it is just as true for us too.

I think this links in with our reflections on the Trinity, which we focussed on last week.  God is community.  Father, Son and Spirit live and work and move together in what is sometimes described as a divine perichoresis – a dance of mutual love and common purpose.  So we too as a Christian community must support each other and move together in a common purpose – always relying on the grace of God which helps us each to cope with each other’s human frailties. 

That supporting each other is important and when Paul writes of destroying the temple of God he is referring to those who at that time were causing factions and divisions in the Corinthian church and so spoiling – yes even destroying the whole body.  And so today we must be very aware of those who would divide the church through emphasis on human issues and a lack of space for the grace of God.  I suppose I have seen this in a small way in relations between and within the theological colleges of Cambridge as specific issues have been allowed to become divisive and of course we see it in aspects of the life of the Anglican communion – which as we prepare for the Lambeth Conference will perhaps become more tense.   As our principal reminded us on Monday evening – actually when he was gently and painfully for us all – telling us off for not going to Morning Prayer – when things are going well or when life is very pressured, the devil can get in and create division and problems if we do not turn to prayer and rely fully on the grace of God to see us through.

I think there are two Greek words which are important for us.  Pistis means faith and it is what we have in God.  It is our response to God’s love for us as we reflect on his creation and redemption of the world – and ourselves. It is a human initiative.  Charis means grace and is God’s initiative to us.  God made us and wants us to love and serve him but he knows that we will fail and so he gives us his grace to support us.  And when we consider the demands that are made of Christians then the only way that we can achieve them is through grace.

Paul wrote to the Corinthians that they should become fools for God.  Certainly, as he wrote, the wisdom of God seems foolish to human beings.  The gospel reading helps to explain what Paul means by this.  It is part of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus’ reflection on the Old Testament law.  In the sermon he emphasises the moral standards expected of his followers, which were far higher than those of the world, and even seemed daft to human mind.  In the passage that we heard, Jesus far exceeded the old maxim of lex talionis – punishments fitting the crime – and said that people should not seek revenge, but turn the other cheek (not necessarily literally).  He spoke of going a second mile which would have seemed outrageous to those suffering under Roman occupation – they could be forced by a Roman solider to carry an item for him for just one mile – Jesus doubles that.  He spoke of loving enemies, praying for persecutors.  We have become used to hearing that teaching – but think about it – to those first listeners it would have seemed ludicrous.

But of course God’s wisdom is far greater than ours.  Jesus knew the impact that such behaviour would have ultimately and how it might change and vastly improve relationships.  Paul recognised that – but he also knew that it was only possible through the grace of God in one’s life.

At the end of today’s gospel passage comes the lynchpin of the whole sermon – I suppose also of Jesus’ teaching:  be perfect therefore, as your heavenly father is perfect.  Of course that is impossible for us as fallible humans to achieve until we reach heaven – my earlier examples prove that.  I used to believe that this was a maxim that Jesus gave as a kind of target to aim for.  When I was a teacher I always used to tell students to aim for a grade A and they might then achieve a B or C.  We had a poster on the wall which said: Aim for the moon and you might reach the stars.

Now I am not sure at all that that is what Jesus meant.  In fact that idea is rather cruel – aim high and well you might achieve close.

The Greek word for perfect is teleios.  It comes from the word telos which means end, goal or purpose.  For Greeks perfection was not abstract but functional.  So for something to be teleios mean that is was just right.  I’d use the phrase fit for purpose but Ofsted has changed the sense of that now as meaning simply Satisfactory.  Teleios is more than that – it is just right, what it was made for.  William Barclay uses the example of a screwdriver which exactly fits the size and head of a screw that is needed to mend something.  The screwdriver that fits does the job perfectly and the end purpose is achieved the drawer or shelf or whatever is fixed – job done perfectly.

And so it is with us.  Jesus calls us to be perfect – teleios – to achieve the purpose for which we were made.  And that purpose, according to the Bible, is to love God and neighbour.   We can try really hard to do that in our own strength.  But we will fail.  We can do it with God’s grace and in his strength and we will succeed far more than we can possibly imagine.  And in doing it we will become more like God but also more and more human – the people that we were made to be. 

Last Thursday we celebrated the feast of Corpus Christi, the thanksgiving for the institution of Holy Communion.  As Paul told the Corinthians that they, and we, are the temple of the Holy Spirit of God – we are also the body of Christ.  By sharing communion together we are drawn closer together as members of the body.  We are drawn into fellowship with the Trinity and we join in the divine dance and loving movement together.  We are lifted up towards heaven – never alone, always with the whole body, the church.  It is imperative then that we seek within our power and God’s grace to hold the unity of the church in every way and to seek to build it up – inviting new members and sharing the love of God for all with all. 

As I prepare to leave the Epping Team and to move to Romford and am ordained as deacon, I am very aware of my own need to rely wholly on God’s grace.  I fail him constantly, but I know that he loves me and asks me to continue serving him despite who I am and not because of who or what I am.  And I can see so much of that loving turning to God in this church in particular.  I am very sad to be leaving here at a time when there is so much exciting development in the church as you as a congregation together recognise your calling to be the temple of God, the body of Christ in this place.  Look back over all that has happened in the last few years although some things have been tough, we can also, I believe, see God’s grace ministering to us through his people here and under Geoffrey’s godly and spirit filled leadership.  He would be the first to say, like Paul, that he builds this church through God’s grace and on the firm foundation of Jesus Christ.

So the challenge to us today is to be perfect, not in an impossible way, but in a way which turns to God’s grace and which allows him to make us fit for the purpose for which we are created – to love him and to be his body here in this place in Epping.  As we do so, we will become more and more human and more ready for heaven. 

Archbishop Rowan Williams wrote:

… one of the greatest paradoxes of the Christian faith is that we only learn to live in heaven in the presence of our maker, saviour and lover when we learn to live on earth in the here and now, inhabiting the space in which God has placed us’ 

Let us live in this place, in Epping, though God’s grace, learning to trust his grace to love and serve him more.

Amen