I’m not dead yet. There is no greater kick in life than what appears to be a good God kick. No drug, sex, money, power or place can compare with the dawning of understanding from without upon we disabled humans. My thing is the Bible, not what people say about the Bible but what it wants to tell us, as garbled as that may be or seem. I am blessed to have gotten a kick this week at age 77, 78 next month. Ready or not, I shall try to share it.
The most
perplexing passage of scripture that has bugged me and everyone else all these
years is Jesus’s words in the Sermon on the Mount. Not the good stuff but those
hard seemingly impossible words like “be ye perfect as your heavenly Father is
perfect” (Matthew5:48). What do we do
with that? We live on the ground floor
of the Empire State Building and perfection resides at the very top with the
spire. I know my life is like that, so what are we to make of this Jesus
command?
Through the
years, I’ve done my homework, checked out the commentaries and what the
theologians say about the entire Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5, 6 &7. Some say, Jesus really didn’t mean ethical
performance perfect, possibly a perfection of intent. Some deny the command status altogether, the Jesus
call to perfection was a kind of intellectual game, a what if of sorts. Some say that Jesus is changing the target of
his command to be perfect, his words were spoken to embarrass the prideful,
status seeking religious leaders as well as the rule making Pharisees. Surely, perfection was even beyond their reach?
The decision of most preachers and teachers, however, is to just avoid going
there, stay on the good stuff, that perfection talk is embarrassing.
A few
preachers and teachers rightly question the word perfect as a proper
translation of the Greek word telios in ancient Greek translation of the
original Hebrew Text. The Greek dictionary
tells us that telios is an ending or completion. All the modern English translations (KJV,
NIV, etc.), however, translate telios as “perfect”, which to most of us means
an ethical perfection. Knowing our portent
for looking good, we can understand why the English translators chose this
word. To my knowledge, limited as it is,
another English word that would better convey what Jesus was trying to tell us,
has not been forthcoming or deemed bulletproof.
The Goslaw
translation of Jesus’s command in Matthew 5:48 is the following, “Be ye eternal
as your heavenly Father is eternal”. Get
it? Everything begins and ends in the eternal,
you and I are completed in the eternal, the eternal should rule our days until
that day when we join the chorus in the sky.
This was to me the message that Jesus was announcing to everyone
gathered together on the Galilean hillside. The eternal priorities, those of extreme
generosity, extreme forgiveness and extreme optimism, should rule our days.
Sorry, we still have to check some boxes. Each of us has to ask ourselves, how do our lives measure up to the eternal standard? Are our lives about chasing the immediate seemingly necessary things or are we living with one foot in eternity. You and I are uncomfortable again. What would that look like, you ask? Check out the picture that Jesus paints as he speaks in the Sermon on the Mount.
G. Goslaw
Landers, CA
