Perhaps you’ve seen the bumper sticker, “I’m not perfect; just forgiven”. I’ve thought of putting one on my car so that I can drive around town and make obscene gestures to other drivers without hurting my Christian witness. In and of itself, the phrase ends up turning the faith given to the saints into a name that one can apply to one’s self. Rather than a confession of sin that opens the sinner to God’s sanctifying grace, the phrase becomes a justification of sin, not the sinner. Christ becomes a commodity, a get-out-of-jail-free card. In stark contrast, in our Epistle reading Paul writes, “”Let those of us who are perfect.” Of yes, English translations are afraid of the word; they translate it “mature”, but it is the word for perfection. Our reading presupposes that perfection is a call of the Christian life available now. Yet the passage also presupposes that not all Christians are there. The passage depicts a journey of the Christian life, a personal straining with a goal, an obtainable goal, of Christian perfection. I am convinced that we must embrace this good news of full salvation if we are to be formed into saints, holy ones. Let’s spend a few minutes looking at this passage this morning.

1. First, Paul’s teaching on Christian perfection assumes our individual effort. Forgetting what is behind us, we are called to pursue the crown of the high calling of God through Christ Jesus.
Paul gives us an image of the Christian life as a race. Races have goals; they have ends, finish lines. The runner must keep the end in sight, for if not one gets misdirected. Deep, deep down in this slightly portly, middle aged, uptight white guy body is a 80’s distance runner. I remember the last Mid-Ohio Conference Cross Country championship that I ran in at Rio Grande College, home of “Bob Evans, down on the farm”. We had run about 2 miles and I had fallen behind the lead pack of about 10 runners. Suddenly, the pack veered off in the wrong direction – the leader had turned the wrong way; the rest went with him. I kept on the right path – and suddenly took the lead! They had lost sight of the goal, the end. I wish I could say that I won the crown, but I didn’t. They quickly ran me down. But they couldn’t pass me until they too got the end in sight. While I was the only one with the end in sight, I was winning the race.
What is this end of this Christian journey? The high calling, the calling from above, God’s calling to us in Christ Jesus. God has called us in Jesus Christ. In Jesus we see the true human, the image of God in which we were created, to which we are called. The “high” calling is Jesus Christ, his sinless life lived in obedience to the Father through the Spirit, in love of God and, in God, the love of neighbor. Jesus manifested this love when he remained faithful to his mission to initiate God’s kingdom, even if that meant death, crucifixion on the cross. The “heavenly calling”, the “high calling”, the “calling from above” means that God has entered our world, our bodies in Jesus Christ so that we might know God, and in knowing God, know ourselves. The high calling is not a call out of our body; it’s not a call to some inner, isolated decision of our will. It is the formation of our desires, not by the world around us, not by its wealth, by its pleasures, by its personal fulfillments, by a therapeutic happiness, not even to the society’s improvement. The high calling is the formation of our desires to live perfectly obedient to God the Father in love, and in this love, to love our neighbor, a love seen in the person and teachings of Jesus, the natural life that we were created to live.
This won’t happen without straining, without repentance, without acts of repentance, without truthfulness about our own selves, without seeing ourselves in light of Christ, without stopping blaming others for our bad moods and acts, without forgetting the good and the bad behind, and living life to its proper end in God through Christ. Paul writes, “I strive.” We are called to live all of life with Christ in view, to look ahead, to immerse oneself in the kingdom of God in Jesus Christ. We have a problem. We’ve been formed by a fallen world; sinfulness has been encoded into our bodies in ways that we can’t even see. This sin needs cleansed. Yet it can’t be cleansed until we are aware of the lack that possesses us. And we aren’t going to be aware of our lack until we see the fullness – the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. Therefore, we strain toward the end, we keep the end in sight, so that in seeing the end, we might be re-formed, cleansed, made right, not by the fallen world, but through God in Jesus Christ. We might have revealed to us what the fullness of the love of God is, and in God, the real love of neighbor that is not merely a sentimental well-wishing. Friends, Christian perfection involves our effort – we seek the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.

2. But we must seek as members of the right people – we must know to whom we belong. Christian perfection comes only as we live our true citizenship – our citizenship that is in heaven as members of a local congregation.
You know that race that I mentioned before in Rio Grande. If I recall correctly, there was this beautiful young woman there. Red hair, intelligent, single. As a matter of fact, she was so impressed with my performance that we left together after the race to go to a church to be part of a puppet team; if I recall correctly, this woman ultimately married me. She was at the starting line and she could see the end, the goal, the finish of the race. Yet she didn’t win the crown. She didn’t even break out in a sweat. She was not in the race. She didn’t belong in the race. She could watch it; she could even jog along. But the course did not belong to her. She was not a member of the race. To get to the end, one has to know to whom, and in whom one belongs. For your citizenship will ultimately determine your formation; to whom you belong will provide your end.
Your citizenship is in heaven. Before perfection, on the way to perfection, you have to enter the journey by repentance, by faith in Christ through baptism. By faith in Christ, in baptism you die to this world, and are reborn into the kingdom of God. To experience the fullness of salvation, the image of God in which we were created, the maturity of the love of God and neighbor, we have to live out citizenship in heaven. God does not allow dual citizenships – one cannot serve two masters, you will hate the one and love the other. I’m not talking about some “spiritual citizenship” while you live your bodily citizenship here. To have the Spirit cleanse you of inward sin and renew you in righteousness to make you perfect in Christ, you must live completely, totally, absolutely as a citizen of heaven, a citizen in the kingdom of God, as experienced within the church, a specific local congregation as it as a whole participates within God’s kingdom in Jesus.
Believers in Christ are aliens here in the United States; this is not our home. The states laws are not ours, although we do not need to go out of our way to violate them; our loyalty does not even lie in improving the conditions of this societies members, even if our actions may bring this about, especially for the poor, the sick, and those in need. As soon as we become defined as a citizen of this society, our citizenship becomes defined in its categories, rather than God’s in Christ. The citizenship of this society will manipulate us to its ends—it will force us to run a different race, even if the courses overlap for a certain period. To run the race for the prize of the love of God being shed abroad in our hearts to bring about the perfect love that casts out fear, we must belong to the political unit that is the kingdom of God. We cannot live in a kingdom without a king, Jesus Christ, the Savior who is coming to us. I put on my blog some excerpts from the Archbishop of Grenada, Spain this week. He wrote, “I cannot bring myself to imagine the Church of the second or of the third century trying to overthrow and take over the Roman Empire to make it Christian, instead of converting it. . . . . I do not believe. . .that any strategy to conquer influence or power in our societies will do any good to the Church or to the cause of Christianity in any sense. . . . A strategy of looking for influence will only continue to hide to most Christians the fact that the real "enemy" is not truly outside us, but within us, in the exact measure (which is a very large measure) we share those very assumptions whose consequences we criticize so sharply in the decisions of some politicians . . . . That strategy will only distract us from the only "politics" that is needed in the present situation, and the only one can really make a difference in the world: being the body of Christ, living in the communion of the Holy Spirit in this concrete hour of history. . . . the "politics" we most need is conversion in order to build up of the Church again as a banner among the nations, as "a nation made from all nations".. . . The life the Lord has given us . . . lives in the Church, and not in a political party, not even in one that would eventually present itself as being at the service of the "Christian values". We must make the trip to Christian perfection as citizens among the right people -- our citizenship is in heaven.

3. Finally, we live must live in hope that God’s rule will come in Christ. We travel looking forward to God’s consummation of all things in Christ.
To have the Spirit bring forth the fullness of salvation, perfection in us we set our eyes on our calling in Christ, we live as citizens of heaven within local congregations, and we look forward to God’s transformation of all things in Christ. We have to keep the big picture in mind. He will transform our body of humiliation into the body of his glory.
Now hear this correctly. Your body of humiliation is not that your body is bad. Your body of humiliation is the body not seen in light of its citizenship in heaven, the kingdom of God, living for the end of love of God and neighbor. Your body of humiliation is the suffering that comes on your body because of non-conforming to the practices, the citizenship of the world; your body of humiliation is the price that one pays for being different. Your body of humiliation is the realization that comes upon us when we look to our end, the high calling of God in Christ, and realize our lack, our sin, our malformation from what God calls us to be, is deeply embedded in our bodies; and we are led to repentance in humility. The body of humiliation is the helplessness that we experience in our cries for justice amidst the plight of the poor, the hungry, the thirsty, the naked in our world, the temptation to return evil for evil, to try to take control by becoming a citizen of the world. The body of his glory, however, is our body seen in light of God’s coming kingdom in Jesus. The body of his glory is hearing, well done, my good and faithful servant. The body of his glory is living in light of God’s coming judgment, the life of the resurrection. His body of glory is the end times body, still with the scars from this world embedded within it, but with these scars now healed as a sign of God’s victory over sin, over evil, over death, and thus made beautiful.
This is living in hope. Hope is necessary to remain open to God’s Spirit cleansing us of inward sin and shedding God’s love abroad in our hearts. Hope fails not, for it tells us that success amidst God’s creation is not up to us, but to God. There is a reversal coming. We live in hope of this reversal. Hope in God’s final victory frees us to forgive others, speak truthfully but not judgmentally, not seek vengeance, but live our lives for Christ as members of God’s kingdom, to let the Spirit bring forth the love of God in our hearts, so that we might learn to love our neighbors, truly, deeply, wisely. God calls us to keep our sight on Christ, to live as a citizen of God’s kingdom, to live in hope.

Conclusion: And as we so live, God works – often even when we don’t know it, bringing forth God’s perfection, the fullness of true and unending life in God. God’s Spirit rewires us, bringing forth who we really are – the image of God in which we were created. God moves us to perfection – who we are truly are in God at any moment, love of God shaping our whole bodies, and in God, loving our neighbor as ourselves. God enfolds us completely into the body of Christ. God works to bring forth God’s perfection – not as imagined by us, but as it truly is in God. And God has given us a glimpse of this perfection here we at this Table. Here is the high calling of God in Christ; here is the banquet for citizens of the kingdom; here is a sign of our hope, that God will bring for the consummation of all things in Christ. Come friends. Come, in repentance; come in faith; come in hope; come to be made over in love. Come, and by all means, be thankful.