Sam Bush, “Redemption > Perfection”
This morning we witnessed 115 children put on an incredible Christmas pageant. There were angels and wise men, even King Herod made an appearance (part of our campaign to “Put King Herod Back in Christmas!”). Sheep, cows, donkeys, camels and…did you hear it in the gospel reading? Vipers! Who were the vipers? According to John the Baptist, that is our role. You and I play the role of the vipers every Christmas. In the gospel reading, people are lining up in the Jordan River to be baptized and how does John welcome them? He says, “You brood of vipers! Bear fruits worthy of repentance or get thrown into the fire!” You can see why John’s character usually gets cut from the pageant.
His talk of God’s wrath has everyone spooked. They’re acting like they were just visited by the ghosts of Christmas past, present and future. They ask him what they can do to be saved and he tells them. He says “Be generous!” He tells the tax collectors to stop cheating people and the soldiers to be content with their wages. John the Baptist is raising the standard of life. You can’t just do whatever it takes to get by anymore. He’s pointing to a more perfect world where people are just and love one another. It sounds like a wonderful world, but not a place that sounds familiar. You see, our little viper hearts are so hellbent on ourselves that even our pursuit of perfection leads to a need to control, whether that’s hosting the perfect Christmas, having the perfect relationship or living the perfect life.
If you’ve seen the new documentary Martha, you’ll know that no one understands the pursuit of perfection like Martha Stewart. Her whole m.o. was “Living a life that’s perfectly perfect!” Rather than selling easy-bake convenience, Martha sold perfection. Hosting a big gathering at your home for Thanksgiving this year? Well, you might want to consider making two different kinds of turkey, one perfectly baked and one wrapped in puffed pastry (thanks for the tip, Martha!). As the original influencer, Martha Stewart created a standard that was inspiring but impossible and a recipe for disaster.
For a while, she achieved perfection, at least professionally. She could make the perfect pie crust on set, but behind the scenes her marriage and her sanity were crumbling. In one letter, she wrote to her then husband, “I’m sitting on a plane right now, crying, and cannot believe myself. I should be vital, beautiful, and desirable. And here I am, a total wreck. I am 45 years old, worried and lonely and hopeless.” Clearly, her pursuit of perfection had its limits.
Several years later, she would be arrested for insider trading and spend five months in prison. At that time, she was the most famous person in America and yet, from her cell, she wrote, “I feel very inconsequential today as if no one would miss me if I ever came back to reality.” All the while, she was getting to know her cellmates, mentoring them and offering business advice, introducing them to cucumber sandwiches, fresh from the garden. For the first time in years, she had no illusions of perfection and began to make friends with people who could not advance her career. After her release, a colleague said, “She had lived before being worried about what people thought of her, and then the worst thing that could have happened happened. She’d been set free by going to prison.” Today, Martha Stewart is not exactly a changed woman - she’s still controlling and seeking revenge on her former prosecutors; she’s still a little bit of a viper - but this event in her life that seemed so much like a bad thing, God meant for good.
Her story brings to mind a poem by George Herbert called “Easter Wings,” in which Herbert writes, “O Let me rise as larks harmoniously and sing this day thy victories: then shall the fall further the flight in me.” That doesn’t make sense. How could anyone fly higher by falling? You see, it’s an allusion to the doctrine of what’s called the “fortunate fall” (felix culpa, in Latin). It’s the idea that being saved by Christ’s death is better for us than being perfect.
The writer Karen Swallow Prior puts it this way: Redemption is better than perfection. Sit on that thought for a moment because I think many of us hardly believe that (or don’t believe it at all). We would rather be perfect, independent, not in need or reliant on salvation and redemption, wouldn’t we? But the doctrine of the fortunate fall says otherwise. It says that being glorified by Christ is better than not having ever fallen at all. Redemption is better than perfection.
Can you believe it? Tell me, what makes a relationship stronger: one where both people expect perfection from the other or one where they inevitably hurt each other but acknowledge their fault and seek each other’s forgiveness?
What makes a person’s life more interesting: a steady line of success and accomplishments or a series of complete breakdowns and subsequent resurrections? What makes you righteous? The fact that you’re doing your best or the fact that God loves you at your worst? Redemption is better than perfection.
As John the Baptist stands on the bank of the Jordan and points the crowd toward perfection, what comes into view is surprising. It’s not a perfect world, but a perfect person. He loves people as they are, not as they’re supposed to be. He calls people who think they’re perfect white-washed tombs while defending the guilty and befriending sinners. Who is this I speak of? The lamb of God. The most important animal in the Christmas story.
We may be a brood of vipers, but through the blood of the lamb, we are presented blameless, not based on the perfection of our apple pie crust, manicured gardens, or meticulously curated morality, but by his perfection on our behalf. Though we strive for perfection like Icarus flying toward the sun, when our own self-made wings fail under the weight of our frailty, we fall not from grace but into grace. Only then are we made perfect before God. And that, in the words of Martha Stewart, is a good thing.
Likewise, today’s pageant was not exactly perfect. Lines were forgotten, queues were missed, but what makes it so powerful is not its perfection, but its story of redemption, of the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world that all who believe in him shall be saved.
Amen.
