sermons
For a Time Such As This
You Don’t Have to be Perfect. Be Complete in Love.
Lydia Shiu
Mar 08, 2026
Matthew 25:31-46 (Common English Bible)
Judgment of the nations
31 “Now when the Human One[a] comes in his majesty and all his angels are with him, he will sit on his majestic throne.
32 All the nations will be gathered in front of him. He will separate them from each other, just as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.
33 He will put the sheep on his right side. But the goats he will put on his left.
34 “Then the king will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who will receive good things from my Father. Inherit the kingdom that was prepared for you before the world began.
35 I was hungry and you gave me food to eat. I was thirsty and you gave me a drink. I was a stranger and you welcomed me.
36 I was naked and you gave me clothes to wear. I was sick and you took care of me. I was in prison and you visited me.’
37 “Then those who are righteous will reply to him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you a drink?
38 When did we see you as a stranger and welcome you, or naked and give you clothes to wear?
39 When did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?’
40 “Then the king will reply to them, ‘I assure you that when you have done it for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you have done it for me.’
41 “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Get away from me, you who will receive terrible things. Go into the unending fire that has been prepared for the devil and his angels.
42 I was hungry and you didn’t give me food to eat. I was thirsty and you didn’t give me anything to drink.
43 I was a stranger and you didn’t welcome me. I was naked and you didn’t give me clothes to wear. I was sick and in prison, and you didn’t visit me.’
44 “Then they will reply, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison and didn’t do anything to help you?’
45 Then he will answer, ‘I assure you that when you haven’t done it for one of the least of these, you haven’t done it for me.’
46 And they will go away into eternal punishment. But the righteous ones will go into eternal life.”
One thing cool about moving to Boston was realizing that someone helps you get the gas at the gas station. You don’t even have to get out of the car in the cold! I’d never seen that before. One time, a guy was getting gas for me. And me a busy full time working mom, I’ve got a million things in my mind, and I’m like, okay, drop the kids off, get gas, get to this meeting, so while he was doing the credit card, I turned on my engine, and started turning my wheel, and the guy appears and goes what the?! I turned my head and he was like,
“Dude, you almost ran over me!”
I sheepishly took the card saying,
“oh my god I’m so sorry.”
And drove away feeling horrible. And then I kept on thinking about the incident. God I almost ran over his foot. Poor guy, out in the cold, putting up with selfish little drivers like me, I’m the worst. I’m spiraling now. And I call myself Christian. I’m a pastor! Ha. She calls herself a pastor, running people over with her car.
You see, there’s this mode that folks who might’ve grown up Christian can get into. It’s moral perfectionism. Because we were told,
[Matthew 5:48 New International Version]
“Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”
said so Matthew 5:48.
And were told that sinners will burn in hell. Some forms of Christianity widely teach this in a way that’s created a culture of shame and fear rather than love. Even today’s text could be posed as not just an invitation to feed the poor but, be perfect and act according to my command otherwise you are going to eternal hell. And it has turned a generation of Jesus followers into moral perfectionism motivated by fear of hell rather than anything else.
So much misunderstanding and misinterpretation. Or sometimes, our best efforts at understanding carried too far…
The word perfect wasn’t meant to mean perfect, but complete.
Τέλειός (Teleios)
Complete, fully developed, mature, perfect
The original Greek word teleios implies being complete, fully developed, or mature, rather than sinless in an absolute sense. It means growing into a mature, godly character. Look at this Common English Bible translation
Matthew 5:28 Common English Bible
48 Therefore, just as your heavenly Father is complete in showing love to everyone, so also you must be complete. Matt 5:28 CEB
It was never meant to say,
“Now get your act together and do right.”
It was an invitation to love completely. It was never meant to say, be perfect, but instead be complete in love.
So how are we to understand even our text today?
Verse 46 saying,
46 And they will go away into eternal punishment. But the righteous ones will go into eternal life.”
Eternal
αἰώνιον (aiōnion)
Of the age or belonging to the God’s age, eternal, enduring
Again, maybe it does not mean what we think it means.
The word “Eternal” might have meant more Quality, rather than Length.
The Greek word translated “eternal” (aiōnion) can also mean “of the age” or “belonging to God’s age.” It might describe more of two realities we might face depending upon our actions sure, but not literal places we will go to for however long an extended period of time. It could be a word with more the feeling of “enduring” rather than “eternal.”
In fact, whenever Jesus was talking about heaven and hell-ish concepts, we cannot simply imply our modern day conception of heaven and hell. Jesus did often speak of God’s age, God’s realm, a world which knows and abides by enduring God’s sovereignty as opposed to the “earthly” or man/ego driven world, one absent of God’s reign or presence.
Theologians like James Cone would go on to say that heaven and hell are realities or revelations that get unveiled to us. It is less a judgement or a sentencing but an awakening. Upon seeing and meeting the oppressed, we realize and find ourselves in the revelation of God’s age being revealed right before our eyes. When we stand with those who are oppressed, we see and get to experience where God is standing. Which, being in the perfect (complete in love), in the eternal (or belonging to the age of God) presence of where God stands, one could call that reality–heaven.
And so maybe this revelation of heaven doesn’t just happen at the end of time, or after we die, but in our lifetime, here and now. Sometimes it happens in history, where once there was hiddenness, no knowledge of God, but then God’s revelation and truth becomes known.
Apartheid
In 1980’s, South Africa had a system called Apartheid. Apartheid wasn’t just social or political—it shaped everything. It legally separated people by race and gave minority white South Africans power while oppressing Black South Africans and other communities of color, determining where they could live, who they could marry, what beach you can go to.
The word Apartheid originates from Afrikaans term meaning “apartness.”
The Dutch Reformed Church, one of the most influential churches in South Africa at the time, supported the apartheid and taught that racial separation was part of God’s plan. In fact they used religion to justify inequality.
But there was another church body, the Dutch Reformed Mission Church, made up mostly of people classified as “non-white” under apartheid.
They were directly experiencing injustice—and they saw clearly that apartheid didn’t line up with the message of the Gospel. So in 1982, they wrote a document called a Belhar Confession. It said
Belhar Confession
“God, in a world full of injustice and enmity, is in a special way the God of the destitute, the poor and the wrong…”
Therefore it concluded that
“the church as possession of God must stand where the Lord stands, namely against injustice and with the wrong.”
One could say that by seeing the oppressed and recognizing them, truth was unveiled and they were able to craft a document that described this new reality, one where God’s justice prevailed.
Another way to say, “God is in a special way the God of the destitute”… In liberation theology shaped by voices in Latin America, says that:
God has a preferential option for the poor. Not because the poor are morally better—remember we’re not going for moral perfection—but because injustice has placed them closest to suffering, and therefore closest to the heart of God. That’s where God stands, with the poor.
If we want to find Christ, we do not look upward—we look outward, and downward, into places of pain.
In our Scripture text today, the Human One, traditionally translated as Son of Man, appears in glory—but immediately identifies himself not with power, but with vulnerability.
“I was hungry.”
“I was a stranger.”
“I was in prison.”
This is not metaphor. It is location. it’s not abstract pain. It’s specific bodies. It’s specific lives. Specific places and people.
So what do you think it means to identify ourselves with God, when God identifies Godself with them?
I really appreciated the invitation from Hanna Reichel in this book, For Such a Time as This: An Emergency Devotional, a book our church is using as a Lenten guide in this season.
Reichel
Reichel goes by they/them pronouns. They are a professor of Systematic Theology at Princeton. Reichel is German, an expert on Karl Barth. Karl Barth is the theologian who was the primary author behind The Barmen Declaration.
Barmen Declaration
The theological Declaration of Barmen 1934 was a document adopted by Christians in Nazi Germany who opposed the German Christian movement.
So for Reichel, in these times that we’re living in the United States right now, they said that they couldn’t help but have the voices of the Belhar Confession and the Barmen Declaration that they were so steeped deep in their studies and research pop up into their minds. South Africa during apartheid. Germany during the Nazis.
Now I also appreciate, Reichel in the beginning of the book mentions that they have no prophecy that the US is specifically going toward authoritarianism, or Facism, or is it totalitarianism or something else. They say,
“I am not arguing that history is repeating itself. But noting certain similarities directs us to models we could learn from.”
And they wrote this book with the question,
“What should the church’s response be?”
Reichel titled their chapter 9,
“Stand Where God Stand,” or Protect the Weak
They ask this question that struck me
“What difference does belief in God make in such a time as this? Belief in God is not a comfort in affliction; if anything, it makes injustice and suffering more acute.
(I so resonated with that…)
“Belief in God is not a special talisman that will keep you safe, or a miracle weapon that will save the day. Belief in God is a commitment to stand where God stands.”
This humbled me, because this is me. Asking, what difference does believing in God make when things continue go the way they go and I have no power to change it and it seems as though God has either no power or interest in changing it. Believe in God? For what? What is God doing about the children dying from bombs?
Nothing! God is not putting a stop to this, so why, why would I pray to a God that does nothing to stop violence and injustice? In fact those who are waging wars are doing it in God’s name!
And to all the people that are throwing their hands up in the air, while scrolling in the comfort of their homes with distraught minds but safe bodies screaming,
“Where are you God?”
The question gets turned on us and asks, where were we?
Jesus does not ask what we believe. He asks us, where were you? He does not ask what we profess, or how often we prayed, or whether our theology was correct. He asks us, Whom are you standing with?
Reichel invites us to see that in moments of emergency, faith is not about clarity—it is about proximity. About drawing near to suffering rather than explaining it away.
Let me say that again. Faith is not about clarity but proximity. Drawing near to suffering rather than explaining it away.
What if “salvation” is not just about where we go afterlife—but about where we stand now?
The “sheep” are not praised for correct doctrine.
They are recognized because their lives were oriented toward connection, toward presence, toward care. This passage reframes righteousness not as purity, but as solidarity. Let me say that again. Righteousness not as purity, but as solidarity.
Reichel’s devotional reminds us that we are living in urgent times. There are crises everywhere. It is tempting to feel overwhelmed. To ask,
“What difference can I make?”
But this passage does not call us to solve everything.
It calls us to notice someone.
And the question is not: “Will you be perfect?”
The question is simpler, and harder:
Will you draw near enough to see?
I go back to that gas station a lot. This is funny. Next time I was getting an oil change from there, and he was jotting down my info. I was trying to be friendly and said,
“you have a nice handwriting for a guy.”
He glared up and said,
“that’s sexist.”
I wanted to crawl into a hole. I leaned over sheepishly and asked,
what’s your name?
He said, Mike. I said,
Hi Mike, I’m sorry I almost ran you over the other day.
He said
you did?
I said,
you were doing the credit card and I turned on my engine and wheel and you were like what the.
And he flashed a smile at me and said,
Oh that happens like 4-5 times a day so I don’t remember you.
I said
oh my god, really?
He was like
yeah especially old ladies, they don’t see anything!
And I was like,
ugh I’m so sorry, no I’m super aware everytime I get gas to not turn on my engine.
And he’s like yeah,
just get the credit card first
and then, and I was like
yeah, what am I in such a hurry for.
And I left that gas station wanting to picket outside saying, please watch your driving around Mike!
I share my silly story to show how silly we are sometimes. Obsessed or embarrassed about the wrong thing. Or not getting it right. It’s nothing about feeding the poor but I share the story to show how we don’t have to be, er, we don’t get to be perfect. In fact, when we actually lean into things, we might make mistakes, say the wrong things, become the rude, sexist, old lady who can’t do anything right. But there, we’re changed. We might not even get to be the one who changes the situation. We are changed. That’s a taste of heaven right?
Right now, many of us don’t feel like we know exactly what to do about the condition of our nation, for example, in which immigrants can be taken off the streets without due process. Many smart minds have come together to try to make a change. In fact GBIO right now has found some organizing power around trying to defund or at least make it difficult for detention centers around the country to get financing by engaging a top lender bank, Citizens Bank. We’ll be sharing about this more at the House Meeting after church today, if you want to join us.
At the same time, GBIO is also trying to stay grounded to not just tackle/solve an issue, but be connected to those who are actually impacted by unjust immigration policies and practices, the people. Which is why we are going to keep running house meetings and listening sessions and 1-1’s, even as we go into some kind of issue campaign. In some ways, doing one (tackling the issue) is easier than the other (being connected to the people). But we MUST keep asking ourselves, how can we gain proximity to those who are suffering?
Jesus shared in our text today that that’s where we will see and recognize God. I wonder where that place is for you. I wonder how our church can stand where God is standing more boldly. Cause if not, what are we doing all this for then?
We don’t have to be perfect. We only have to be completely in love. Can we do that?
Let me pray for us.
Prayer
God of the hungry and the hidden,
open our eyes where we have learned not to see.
Draw us close where we have kept our distance.
And teach us to recognize you—
not in power alone,
but in every vulnerable face we encounter.
Amen.