YOU ARE NOT PERFECT

 

                                                              YOU ARE NOT PERFECT

 

 

The big media just love to find some failure of a church person. They jump on this to show how the Church can be quite dishonest.

 

They have got the perspective wrong. Church must always be viewed as a pilgrim, sinful people working with the Holy Spirit to be redeemed of our weaknesses and sin. This is not a group of saints. It is sinful people working towards redemption.

 

The best way to understand church is like a group of people in recovery from their addiction to drugs and alcohol. They know their weaknesses. They are working for a healthy, clean life filled with meaning and friendship. If one member falls off the wagon, they understand. They walk with him on his journey back to sobriety.

 

In church we are all recovering sinners.

 

The gospel selection for this Sunday’s liturgy gives us the direct teaching of Jesus (Mt. 13, 24-43). The farmer plants good grain. An enemy came in and sowed weeds in this good planting. Both sets of seeds sprout. There are weeds! The wise farmer cautions not to uproot the weeds but to wait until the harvest. At harvest time the separation will be made.

 

Jesus taught us to live with the weeds!

 

Failure to live up to the values of the Gospel is part of the life of the Church. We journey together with the saints and the sinners.

 

There are so many members struggling with addictions. It may be your nephew, thirty-two years old and a successful business person, but he keeps going with his daily fix of drugs. He knows that his life is in a  mess, but somehow has not been able to escape the strangle  hold of the drugs. This addiction does not look good. There could be a tragedy in this life.

 

Your best friend in Church has had a falling out with her sister in Ottawa. The two women have not talked to each other in years. Their Mother does not say anything but you know that she cries many a night over the division of her family. You suffer because your friend suffers and her mother cries at night.

 

And then there is the relative who is always talking about making money. He is very aggressive and has taken advantage of other people in some business dealings. You hold your distance from him. He is not to be trusted!

 

This is not a perfect Christiaan life.

 

This is one of the hardest parts of Christian belief: to believe that God is working in this very sinful, selfish and at times downright miserable people! Can God actually be here?

 

This is where we need the correction of Jesus. The weeds will grow and suck the nutrients that the good grain needs but it is the job of God to make the separation at the harvest time. We have to believe that God is working in this sinful mess.  In  all the human failures that happen God will triumph.

 

In spite of all the sinful lives on the part of Christian people, God is the judge. God’s goodness will triumph over all evil!