Close to Perfection

All Methodist ministers, at ordination, are asked the same questions John Wesley started asking prospects for the ministry in the 18th century. One of those is: “Do you expect to be made perfect in this life?” Like every other ordinand since Wesley, I said “Yes,” because the only acceptable answer is “Yes,” even though neither the questioners nor the questioned really know what that means.

There is one thing I do know, though: Since I am getting close to the end of this life, and I vowed to become perfect “in this life,” I must be getting close to perfect.

So I’m looking at myself with a careful eye, figuring out what it is about my old age that is making me perfect. I think I’ve got it…

Jesus said, recorded in Mt. 5:48, “Be perfect, even as your heavenly father is perfect.” Obviously, there is not some standard of perfection outside of God, to which God must adhere, some yardstick of morality or harmony or love. God IS the yardstick. God is perfect by always being God.

So we are perfect by always being human. When we try to be God, as in the Garden of Eden, or when we sink below the standard of humans and act like animals or germs or parasites, that is sin, brokenness, diverging from the wholeness of perfection that comes by being true to our identity as humans.

I’m acting more human these days. It may be that I just don’t have enough energy to try to play God or be a parasite anymore. If so, that’s a gift of old age, the gift that allows us to be only human, to go on to perfection in this life.