Givin it bifters

Call to Worship (Hebrews 12): Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, 2 looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.[i]

Hymns: StF 65 Sing of the Lord’s Goodness; StF 419 Almighty God, we come to make confession; StF 498 God of all power, and truth, and grace; StF 503 Love divine; StF 564 O Thou who camest from above

Readings: 2 Corinthians 13: 1 – 11; Deuteronomy 18: 9-13; Matthew 5:38-48.

Are there any Liverpool supporters here? Well, I’ve got a treat for you in a minute. As you can probably tell from my accent, I’m a Newcastle fan myself, but I’ve had to get used to living in close proximity to a Scouser with very definite opinions about which team – and which city – is the best. And that’s how I came across this video that I’m going to show you now. By the end, you should know quite a lot more about how to speak Scouse! I hope that you’ll also think about some of the things that you’ll hear about attitudes towards the game of football and the game of life.

Are there any Everton fans here? I hope you managed to steel yourselves to listen to what Jurgen Klopp was saying in that video about being able to achieve useful aims without being perfect. Now, here’s a question for you: what is the Everton Football club motto?

Nil satis nisi optimum

My school Latin tells me that this means “not good enough unless the best”. Wikipedia translates it as “nothing but the best is good enough”. Wikipedia also tells me that this motto belongs to lots of other institutions, as well as Everton, including:

The John D. O'Bryant School of Mathematics and Science, Boston Massachusetts
Loughborough University
Southbank School, Caterham, Surrey
Clifton Hunter High School, Cayman Islands.

And a whole lot of others, mostly either sports teams or schools.

I suppose it’s not surprising that sports teams should adopt this motto. After all, sport is all about being the best. If you decide to make sport your career, you have to want to be the best – and the trouble is: only one person can be the best – everyone else can only be second, third or fourth best – or worse.

So I’m definitely not so sure about the wisdom of adopting that motto for a school, where you would hope the students who are less able will be valued just as much as those who outshine their peers. I’m sure that the schools concerned would say that they are trying to instil in their students a desire always to do their best, rather than suggesting that anything less than perfection is not good enough, but I’m not convinced that all the students will necessarily appreciate the distinction.

I feel a bit like Rabbi Lionel Blue in his book “Sun, Sand and Soul”[ii], where he says that he’s uncomfortable with the places in the Bible where we are told “Be Ye Perfect!” We read some of them today – although in the translation that I read, the word that is used in most cases is “blameless” rather than “perfect”. This is what he says:

I always dismissed the biblical injunction “Be ye perfect!” because perfection is not a characteristic of our world. But in old Hebrew, there is no word for perfection. The words that it translates really mean ‘whole’ or complete’ or ‘innocent’. Those made sense.

Now, I hope you were paying attention to the video earlier. Do you remember what Jurgen had to say about being perfect?

“Everyone has some weaknesses and that’s not a problem. We are not in the world to be perfect. We just have to try to get better every day. To make the world a bit nicer.”

Which I suppose brings us back to the idea of not being satisfied with anything less than the best – not as measured against anyone else, but in the sense that there is always room for improvement. Jesus’ words in Matthew’s Gospel, which we read just now, are part of a long sermon in which he repeatedly tells his audience that the behaviour that they have been told in the past constitutes righteousness, just isn’t good enough.

It’s not good enough just to refrain from killing people – being angry with them and treating them with contempt is also wrong;

It’s not good enough to keep your word when you’ve made a solemn vow – you ought always to mean what you say;

It’s not good enough to restrict your revenge to doing to others what they have done to you – you must learn to forgive and to pay back good for evil;

It’s not good enough to show love towards the people who show love towards you – you must be willing to treat everyone as your friend, whether or not they reciprocate.

Jesus is making it clear that those of his fellow-Jews who thought that they were “doing OK” because they were following the letter of the Old Testament law, should not become complacent. They still have a long way to go to reach the state that God wants for them.

It is when we start to think that we have arrived that we need to be reminded that we ought to be aiming for perfection. It is when we start to doubt that we will ever manage it, that we need to remember that we cannot expect to achieve it here on Earth, and that what is required is that we learn to accept our imperfections and yet still to strive for improvement.

We always need to keep reminding ourselves that we are not perfect – but we always need to remind everyone else that God loves us all, regardless.

It’s an old cliché to say that God is easy to please but hard to satisfy. It is nevertheless true. It’s only through God’s grace that we can even start the long journey towards perfection, blamelessness, completeness or whatever we like to call it. But we have to take the step of putting ourselves in his hands and allowing him to change us – so that we do get better every day. And he will be pleased at our first tentative steps along the path – but not satisfied until we reach the goal.

I say that it all depends on God’s grace, but that is not to say that it’s all a private matter between God and me or God and you. Christian Perfection – by which I mean the long struggle towards becoming perfect – is not a solitary activity. Do you remember what Jurgen said was the reason he liked football so much? It was because “you can win against better teams if you work better as a team together.”

Christianity is a team effort. It can be hard working in a team – especially if you don’t get on with some of the other team members or suspect them of not pulling their weight or disagree with them about the best way to do things. But, as members of the team, we don’t have the option of going it alone, or of changing the rest of the squad to fit in better with our idea of what is needed. We have to trust the manager to have acquired the right players for the club and to have chosen the right ones for each match. And we have to make the most of each player’s strengths and work together to overcome their weaknesses.

And, at the end of the day, although we may not be able to be the best, we can always aim to give of our best. Enthusiasm goes a long way in any role – and we need to be enthusiastic for the Kingdom of God. As Jurgen said, ‘I didn’t have the best skills, but sometimes I wanted it more than other people and so I came through.’

Do we really want to become closer to God? Do we want it enough to work for that aim every moment of our lives?

Do we really care about making the world a better place? Do we want it enough to make changes in our lives that will be uncomfortable for us?

My Liverpool accent is not even as good as Jurgen’s, but I’m sure that you will understand when I tell you that I hope that, when we leave the church this morning and go back into our day-to-day lives, in everything that we do we will be Givin it bifters!

[ii] Lionel Blue and Jonathan Magonet, Sun, Sand and Soul: How to have a Happy Holiday, 1999, Hodder & Stoughton.