(at left: a fragment of the Gospel of Matthew from Egypt, early 4c.)
More fun with words! I’m on a roll with my Greek New Testament. If I had any energy left after toddler-fest each evening, I would even start declining sentences again (a great thing to do while watching Top Chef – sort of like crossword puzzles)!
This week the word “perfect” in our upcoming Gospel lesson caught my attention. It’s actually been on my mind throughout our reading of the Sermon on the Mount, since the fifth chapter of Matthew culminates in this statement: “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matt. 5:48). I don’t want to reflect too much right now on why I think this phrase holds within it something special for our church – I’d rather save that from the sermon! However, it seems that trying to open up Jesus’ idea of perfection here would be a good exercise for a high-achieving group of people. My guess is that most of us don’t hear Matthew 5:48 and assume that Jesus wants everybody to be faultless – but I could be wrong. The Sermon on the Mount can be pretty startling and confusing.
Perfect is the Greek word teleios. It’s only other usage in the Gospel of Matthew is in the nineteenth chapter at verse 21: “Jesus said to him, ‘If you wish to be perfect, go, sell your possessions, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.’” This is the story of the pious rich man who pressed Jesus for an answer to the question, “What good deed must I do to have eternal life …. What do I lack?” (Matt. 19:16, 20).
Teleios has some pretty predictable meanings that feature more prominently in other New Testament passages. The epistles, particularly James’ letter and Paul’s letter to the Romans, use it in the sense of meeting high standards. In other places, Paul uses it to express the idea of being mature, or fully grown. Throughout the Bible and other ancient literature, teleios suggests completeness, or wholeness. One interesting use that gets at that meaning is the cultic definition of teleios: it can be used to refer to a member of a Greco-Roman mystery religion who has completed all of the rites of initiation. Paul plays on this sense of the word in his letter to the Colossians, a group of people who may have been dabbling in mystery religions. Paul’s point is that by virtue of our baptism, we are already ‘perfects’ who are “mature [teleios] in Christ” (Col. 1:28).
What we’re talking about in Matthew 5:48 and 19:21 is being fully formed in a moral sense, a use of teleios that is applied only to humans and not to objects or ideas. Though the word describes people, in the particular context of the Sermon on the Mount it is a quality or a characteristic that belongs properly to God. So when Jesus tells us to be perfect, or tells that poor guy to sell all of his belongings, he’s not asking us to sink into our best inner selves and rise again to the task of unblemished living. He’s asking us to be a part of something that belongs to God, to share in the life of God that is being offered to us, to seek to know the heart of God and make our home there. A terrible (terrible!) analogy is this: it’s the difference between being told, “Play tennis like Pete Sampras” and “Take tennis lessons with Peter Sampras.”
And now, in addition to knowing a little more about the Sermon on the Mount, you also have an idea of when I was last following tennis.
(Danielle Thompson)
