Counsels of Perfection?
What do you make of that nice device, the 'counsel of perfection'?
It has been used down the centuries to deal with those commands of Jesus that are just too hard for us - commands to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us, not to look at women to lust after them, not to lay up treasure on earth, to take up our cross daily and follow him. Or the command to sell what we have and give to the poor..
Surely, I say, Jesus didn’t mean me to take this literally? Wasn’t this a Rabbinic device, a pedagogical exaggeration, indicating in a generalised way that there should be some limits to my vindictiveness , lewdness, cupidity and self concern?. Only saints, lunatics and children would take such teaching literally. The ordinary pewfiller like myself is surely not expected to actually do any of this?- They are 'counsels of perfection'.
Could I not say the command to the disciples to 'sell what they have and give to the poor', was for then, and this is now and we have to contextualise the gospel. You couldn’t live that way now. If I gave away everything I possess I would become a burden to my family, a burden to the state. How irresponsible is that?
Could I not say that the problem for the rich young man was that his possessions were a form of bondage, preventing him from finding the freedom of the Kingdom, preoccupying him to the exclusion of everything else, distancing him from his poorer neighbours?
Could I, perhaps, dodge those uncompromising words and take refuge in the principle, that what I have is never absolutely mine - everything is ultimately God’s and my possessions are lent to me until someone else needs them more?
Could our congregations take refuge here, content to hold our possessions with light hands, ready to yield them to anyone in greater need - congregations that need pastors, or are struggling with an influx of children or refugees, or overwhelmed with fourth agers? Could we do this? Or are our congregations, like the young man, cocooned against the need around us, self- sufficient, self-aggrandising, and sad, because we have too many possessions?
And might Home Mission be one, mundane and unromantic but deeply gospel way to respond to Christ’s command, nudging us a few inches in the direction of this 'Counsel of Perfection'- one way that we can demonstrate the Lordship of Christ and the demands of love, without actually selling all we have and giving to the poor. Five percent could not be considered extreme in the light of that uncompromising command, do you think?
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