Baptism: The End of the Quest for Perfection

Psalm 62:5-12

I Cor. 7:29-31 

Friday evening I made a green curry that wasn’t very good.  What I was trying to make was a green curry exactly like the one we order at Hot Basil, our favorite Thai place on 119^th in Kansas City.  Their green curry is creamy and rich, and the spice level is just right.  When I began building the base with the curry paste and the coconut milk, it was on track.  But then I made a mistake.  Rather than sauté the vegetables and shrimp in a separate pan, I just cut everything up and threw it into the curry.  The vegetables and the shrimp released too much water, which made the curry too thin and turned it a weird color.  What I had in mind was a perfect curry, but what I wound up with was something far from ideal.

 

Striving to imitate an ideal of perfection might work when we’re cooking, but it will cause a host of problems if we approach our lives that way.  Far too much of the media we consume and the ads we are pitched are an attempt to persuade us that there is some perfect life which we don’t currently have, but which we could have if only we would buy a product or start this diet or pursue this career.  There’s a perfect shape your body should be.  There are perfect communities where you should live.  There are perfect families who get along and really like one another.  You get the idea.  And these visions of perfection, if you let them into your heart and your imagination – they can really do some serious damage. 

If there is some model of the perfect life by which yours and mine are measured, then our lives are always going to feel like pale and imperfect versions of some standard to which we can never measure up.  Simply put, that is not how God has called us to live in Jesus Christ.  That is not the life that begins in baptism and moves further and deeper into the love of God, grateful for the specific gifts we have, willing to receive our lives in all their uniqueness and in all their limitations, but still to receive them gladly.

Leonardo da Vinci made a drawing around 1490 that is commonly called “Vitruvian Man.”  It’s an ink drawing of a man in two different body positions, legs spread and arms outstretched, superimposed on one another, framed within both a circle and a square.  Da Vinci was working with ideas of human perfection and symmetry handed down by the ancient architect Vitruvius.  He was enamored with notions of the beauty of human proportions.  So, for example, according to da Vinci, the perfectly proportioned body will be eight “heads” tall, the outspread arms will equal the height, the width of the shoulders will be one quarter of your height, and so on. 

Now I’ll be honest.  I love this sketch.  I’m fascinated by the Renaissance emphasis on beauty and symmetry and mathematics.  But if I were to take off my clothes and strike the pose of the Vitruvian Man, I am afraid that my proportions might be a little off.  In fact, I doubt there are many men who will look truly Vitruvian.  And when you consider that this ideal of human perfection is, of course, a male – then you also begin to see that women’s bodies and women’s proportions will never stand a chance of measuring up.  Nor will anyone who is disabled.  When you adopt a picture of what a perfect human being looks like, you begin to see all actual human beings, including yourself, as a pale, poor rendition of some ideal.

When we receive baptism and begin to swim out deeper into the waters of God’s love and delight, something very different begins to happen.  Our reading today comes from the middle of I Corinthian 7, but let me back up a little so we can listen in on an important conversation.

Some of the Corinthian Christians wrote to Paul, asking whether it would be good "for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman" (7:1).  They are asking Paul for guidance about the connections between their baptism and their sexuality.  But in a larger sense, they’re asking about the best kind of life.  Is the best kind of life one where we are free from the body's desires for sex and connections?  Is the best kind of life one where we avoid the distractions of marriage and family life and all the burdensome obligations that come with those entanglements?  

Before he offers any guidance he lays his cards on the table.  “I wish that all of you were as I am” (vs. 7).  That is, Paul wishes that all the Corinthians were single, like him, and relatively free from sexual desires and from the distracting responsibilities of family life.  Paul’s clear preference for the single life comes as a surprise to Americans used to hearing the “family values” line that God wants everyone married and raising a flock of kids.  But Paul teaches that there are clear advantages to remaining single.  The primary advantage is that if you’re single, you’ll be less distracted by family obligations and have more time and energy to devote to the worship and work of the church.

Now if Paul stopped with his recommendation to remain single, we might assume that the single life is the best life and that everyone should pursue that kind of life.  But after Paul says, “I wish that all of you were as I am,” he continues, saying, “but each of you has your own gift from God” (v. 7).  That is, despite his own preference for the single life, Paul allows that there is no “one size fits all” life for God’s people.  There is no perfect way to organize our lives in response to God’s love.  Some are gifted with married life.  Others are gifted with the single life. 

Now why is it that Paul worries about the distractions of the married life?  Because he is convinced there’s not much time.  “The appointed time has grown short” (v. 29) and “the present form of this world is passing away” (vs. 31).  Paul was convinced that Jesus Christ would return in glory and usher in the fullness of God’s kingdom on earth within his own lifetime.  He lived with the expectation that God would decisively alter the world at any moment,

It turns out that while Paul was wrong about God’s timing, he was absolutely right about the importance of hope – that life-shaping desire for God’s kingdom to arrive and transform how the world works.  Paul was also right in raising good questions about the connections between baptism, sex, singleness, and marriage.  We may not agree with every assumption Paul has about bodies, sex, desire, and singleness.  But surely we can learn something from Paul’s passionate commitment to live a life of “undivided devotion” to the Lord (v. 35).  Without that hope for a new world where justice, peace, and mercy cover the earth, we will never find the energy to resist the way the world is currently organized and to participate in efforts to change how things work.

When Paul was asked about bodies, sex, desire, and marriage, he wisely avoids setting up some ideal set of life circumstances as the perfect human life.  Instead, he gives us room to differ from him, and to differ from one another, and – this is extremely important – to differ from any models of human perfection that emerge from our wider culture.  But Paul’s argument is even wider than issues relating to singleness and marriage.  He expands the conversation to include a cluster of life-shaping issues (in vs. 29-31) that include how to deal with success and failure, with wealth and possessions, and how to use things without becoming “engrossed” with them.

For those of us who belong to Christ in baptism, these life circumstances are important.  But they’re not the whole story.  Whether you’re married or not, whether you’re experiencing success or failure, whether you have sufficient wealth to buy things or are living simply on a limited income – these things matter.  They are part of who you are.  But even so, none of these circumstances can become the aim of our lives.  These things make a claim on us, you might say.  But they don’t claim our affections and allegiance in the deep way that God does.  The goal is to live a life that is devoted to God and others.  And by refusing to name any one way of life as the right path for everyone, Paul offers us a picture of the baptized life as a life of flexibility and freedom. 

If you drive out Wall Street, then turn left on Brown, it eventually becomes a private lane that leads you to the home of Kevin Allen (whom many of us know as “Skitch”).  There is a sign on the right hand side of the driveway that reads, “Skitchville, Population: 4.”  Or at least that’s what the sign read at one time.  But when Kevin went through a divorce, rather than take the sign down, he crossed out the “4,” and wrote a “3.”  So now the sign reads, “Skitchville, Population: 3.”

That sign is funny to me because it expresses Kevin’s playful spirit and his ability to roll with what life brings our way.  And when we think about marriage and singleness, about success and failure, about wealth and possessions, about our daily obligations, it’s important to stay flexible.  Because life is always changing.  And our attempts to offer to God our undivided devotion will look different in different periods of our lives.

I want to urge you to receive baptism as God's invitation to let go of your assumptions about the "best" or "perfect" life, so that you can live the life that is truly your own.  We are baptized into a new community gathered around Jesus Christ, and as part of that community we’re learning to live by a new set of commitments.  Whether we’re baptized young or later in life, it will likely take us quite some time, living in community, to work out the various commitments contained within that baptism.

So be married or be single.  Be free enough to move through periods of exhilarating joy and periods of difficult sadness.  Live with gusto and pursue an education and a well paying job so that you can have nice things and open your home and share generously with others; or choose a simpler life with less possessions and fewer payments and enjoy the freedom from stress that life can bring.  Take on responsibilities and obligations to children and neighbors and community organizations and bless others by your active leadership; or keep your life relatively free of demands so that you can be available to serve and help others in times of crisis.  And whatever kind of life you decide to lead, don’t let anyone else tell you that you’re “not doing it right.”

Through the doorway of baptism, God welcomes us into a spacious, expansive, open and free life.  And God has different kinds of gifts for different kinds of people.  I like it when I hear people say, “You do you.”  But I think it only goes half the way towards the good life God wants for all of us.  You do you.  And I’ll do me.  And we’ll all do our thing together -- a wonderful mashup of different people with different gifts all devoted to the Lord as we hope and work for the arrival of God’s kingdom on earth.