Perfect as the heavenly Father is perfect

Saturday 1 of Lent

Readings: Deuteronomy 26:16-19; Psalm 118; Matthew 5:43-48

As at the beginning of the week the collect today calls us to conversion, to turn our hearts to God. The description of the covenant ceremony between God and the people of Israel reminds us that we are already in a mutual relationship with God, baptised into the new covenant. We are called to walk in the Lord’s way, to be a people holy to God. For as children of God we are, as Jesus says in the climax of today’s gospel, called to be perfect, as our heavenly Father is perfect.

And this is, surely, an unreasonable and excessive demand. We might even agree with Dostoevsky’s Grand Inquisitor that to be presented with such an unattainable ideal imposes an intolerable burden on us. But to construe the passage in this way misses the point. Both readings today conclude lengthy passages of moral teaching – of the promulgation of the law in Deuteronomy and of the beatitudes, the sermon on the mount, in Matthew. They are best read as exhortatory, as a summons to action, to put into practice the statutes and ordinances of God, to be holy as God is holy. ‘Perfect’ here does not mean so much being ‘free from faults’ (which of us could claim that?) as being grown up, being adult rather than childish, fully developed in a moral sense. God then is our role model for unlimited display of beneficence; and we are called to grow into such a God-like perspective loving even our enemies (i.e. everyone) with the care God shows to all, just and unjust alike.