A celebration of ten years of ministry with Rev. Tera Landers and a theological examination of the word “perfect.”

            In 1976, at the Montreal Olympics, Romanian athlete Nadia Comaneci became the first gymnast in Olympic history to be awarded a perfect 10.  Perfection.  

            The scoreboard only had space for three digits, so her score appeared as 1.00.  The stadium was confused until they realized what it meant.  Not a 1, but a perfect 10.

            She did it again, six more times during those games:  four perfect 10s on the uneven bars and three perfect 10s on the balance beam.

            Her main rival, Russian Nelli Kim, also scored two perfect 10s in the same competition, in the vault and floor exercise. 

            At the next Olympics, the Moscow Olympics in 1980 that the US boycotted, Nadia Comaneci scored two more perfect 10s.

            Comăneci’s coach, Bela Karolyi, defected to the United States in 1981.  He then coached the American, Mary Lou Retton.  She scored two perfect 10s in the vault and floor exercise at the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles. 

            The first male gymnast to score a perfect 10 in Olympic competition was a Russian, Alexander Dityatin, who received a 10 on the vault in the 1980 Olympics in Moscow. The American gymnast Bart Connor scored two perfect 10s in Los Angeles in 1984 the same year as Mary Lou Retton.

            By the way, Bart Connor married Nadia Comeneci, in 1996.  Talk about a perfect couple.

            Between 1976 and 2006, 46 men and women scored perfect 10s in various Olympic gymnastic events.  No one has done it since.

            What happened?

            Well for one thing, in 2006, the scoring rule changed.  Before 2006 a gymnastic performance received one score: 1 to 10.  After 2006, they split the score in two:  execution, which includes artistic expression, and a separate score for difficulty.

            The execution score is still scored 1 to 10 so it is possible that a gymnast could execute their routine perfectly, in the eyes of the judges, but no one has, since 2006.

            I don’t know how I feel about that.  How do you feel about it?

            Between 1976 and 2006, 46 people stood on the mat, or hung from the rings, or vaulted through the air, perfectly.  No faults, no errors, no misplaced foot, or hand, perfectly still on the rings, perfectly graceful in motion, sticking the landing like they hadn’t been flipping through the air a second earlier but had just been standing on the ground the whole time.

            And since 2006, no one.  Perfection again out of reach, as we always thought it had been before Nadia Comeneci showed us perfection in 1976.  Every gymnast by at least a fraction of a point, missing the mark.  Sorry, not perfect.

            Olympic diving scores dives in much the same way that Olympic gymnastics is now scored;  there’s one score for the difficulty of the dive, there’s a separate score for the execution of the dive.  And in diving there are many divers who score perfect 10s on the execution score.  A Chinese woman, or I should say, girl, aged 14 scored two perfect 10s on dives just last year at the Tokyo Olympics.

            But when I think about perfection in diving, I think about Greg Louganis.

            In 1982 at the world championships in Guayaquil, Ecuador, Greg Louganis became the first diver in a major international meet to score a perfect 10 from all seven judges.  He would not be beaten in any diving competition for the next four years.  At the 1984 Olympics he destroyed the competition.  He won the gold in the springboard event with a total score 100 points higher than his nearest rival.  In the platform event his total was the highest in the history of the sport:  70 points above the silver medalist.

            At the 1988 Olympics, Greg Louganis hit his head on the springboard during the qualifying round.  The next day, during the finals, he had to do the same dive again.  He did.  He won gold. 

            In the platform event he battled a 14 year-old Chinese diver named Xiong Ni.  Before the final round of dives, Xiong led by three points.  Xiong dived first, executing an excellent dive for a score of 82.56.  Louganis needed at least 85.57 to beat him.  Only perfection could give Louganis that high a score.  He leapt.  He flew.  In tuck position he spun three and a half times, backward.  He unbent his body.  He sliced into the water.  86.70.  Gold.  Perfect.

            For me, watching the Olympic diving on television, Greg Louganis was perfect in more than just his diving.  It was widely rumored he was gay and I assumed he was.  I needed a gay man to be doing what he was doing.  Succeeding in international competition.  Succeeding in sports, which gay men weren’t supposed to do.  Physically beautiful.  Charming and talented.  Amazing skill and discipline.  Courageous.  Winning.  Perfect.

            It wasn’t until 1994 when he came out, and then in 1995 when he published his autobiography titled, Breaking the Surface, that we learned that Greg’s life was anything but perfect.  He was raised by foster parents.  He was teased and bullied as a child.  He was called sissy.  He was name-called for his dark skin.  He thought he was unworthy of love.  Incredibly, this physically beautiful man, thought he was ugly.

            During those amazing years of the mid-80s when he was unbeatable on the springboard and platform he was involved in an abusive relationship with his business manager.  Greg had to keep the relationship, and the abuse, secret.  Greg’s partner lied to him about his HIV status and in 1988, just six months before the Olympic competition in Seoul, Greg tested HIV positive, at a time when the diagnosis was a death sentence.  He dived in Seoul while taking AZT, the highly toxic drug that was the only treatment available at the time.

            What the world saw and what Greg felt were nothing alike.  He was perfect, but didn’t feel it. The judges scored his diving a 10.  Greg scored himself, far less.

            Tonight begins Rosh Hashanah.  A new year.

            The year begins with 10 days called the High Holy Days.  There’s that number again.

            The High Holy days are 10 days of repentence.

            Before we can properly look forward to a new year, we spend 10 days looking backward at the year just past.

            10 days of accounting.  10 days of awareness, humility, and judging.  A score for difficulty.  A score for artistic expression.  A score for execution.

            How do those scores add up for you?

            If you score less than a perfect 10, the religious duty is to make amends.  Perhaps there’s someone you need to apologize to.  If a relationship has suffered because of some less-than-perfect behavior of yours, you’re supposed to take action to heal the relationship.  And if someone comes to you asking for forgiveness, you should try to receive them graciously.

            But many of our sins are not the kind where there’s a person to make up to.

            There are ritual ways to clear ourselves of the faults that we can’t clean up, such as casting bread upon the water.  Literally we throw away.  We say, I don’t want this behavior, or this thought, to be a part of me anymore.  I don’t want to act that way again.  I don’t want to be that person any more.  We create a new me, for a new year.

            And on the final day of the 10, we come to the holy day called Yom Kippur, the day, “Yom”, of Atonement.  Here we gather as a community, and through prayer and ritual, we announce all the ways that we have collectively failed to be the people that God calls us to be.  We acknowledge that we aren’t perfect.  We didn’t do what we said we would do at last year’s prayer service.  And then, perversely, we make the same promise again.

            Today, this congregation celebrates ten years of ministry with my friend and colleague, Rev. Tera Landers.

            Ten years of her ministry, and ten years in the ongoing life of Throop Unitarian Universalist Church.

            Have they been a perfect ten?

            I want to say, yes they were.  10 out of 10.  Perfect.  Yes they were.

            But to do so, requires that we think of perfection in a slightly different way.

            When I was in seminary, so many years ago, we discussed the theology of divine perfection.

            We define God as perfect.  All the best of human qualities:  justice, mercy, power, moral goodness, love, but raised to perfection.

            God is perfect.

            But from this theology of divine perfection, troubling consequences start to unfold.

            By definition, if a thing is perfect, then it is the best possible.  A perfect 10.  Which means it could never be better.  The only possible change from being perfect is to be less than perfect.  Of course, God could never be less than perfect, so logically it must be that God cannot change.

            Perfect means unchanging.

            But if God cannot change, then God cannot respond to our human lives, or anything about the constantly changing world.  To make a divine response would require at least a small change in God, a sudden sympathy or a new understanding in God’s consciousness, or an action taken now that God hadn’t been doing before.  But being already perfect, any new thing could only diminish God’s perfection.

            So you have a perfect God, entirely self-contained, and satisfied in its own perfection, but entirely cut off from struggling humanity and our ever-changing world.  An unchanging God can’t hear our prayers.  An unchanging God can’t save us.  God may be perfect in love, as we sang in our opening hymn.  But an unchanging God can’t love us.

            In some Christian theologies they attempt to get around this problem by assigning intermediaries between us and God who can respond to us and also, somehow, communicate with God without blemishing God’s perfection.  Maybe Jesus can help us with that, or Mary, or the saints.

            But that doesn’t really solve the problem, does it?

            So the better answer is to re-think what we mean by perfection.

            A perfect god would be capable of loving the world.  A perfect god would be in the world with us, hearing our sorrows and joys, encouraging us, noticing our struggles and triumphs, and changing the divine response depending on the present condition of the world.  That’s more “prefect” than an unchanging god constantly turned away from us.

            So if perfection includes the possibility of change, then we must think of perfection as a movement, moving from perfection to perfection, always perfect, but perfect fitted to each moment, and then perfect again, but in a different way, for the next moment.

            This is called Process Theology, by the way.

            But there it is already in Emerson:  “These roses under my window make no reference to former roses or to better ones; they are for what they are; they exist with God today.  There is no time to them.  There is simply the rose; it is perfect in every moment of its existence.”

            Exist with God today.  Perfect in every moment of existence.

            Forty-Six gymnasts performed perfect routines at the Olympics, but they didn’t all perform the exact same routine in exactly the same way.  There were forty-six versions of perfect.  Nadia Comenici scored perfect 10s on the balance beam and uneven bars in 1976, and then scored perfect 10s on the same events in 1980.  But she didn’t do in Moscow in 1980 exactly what she had done in Montreal in 1976.  So which performance was the perfect one?

            Well they both were.  Not the perfect routine.  A perfect routine.  A perfect 10.

            Perfection isn’t one thing.  It isn’t something you train for, and then reach, and then hold on to, unchanging, while the world changes around you, and you change, too.  Perfection is many things.

            Perfection is the dive you need to do now, for this competition, against this guy from China, for this day, and a different dive for tomorrow.  Perfect is the dive you can do now, while you deal with doubt and fear, and a personal life in turmoil.

            The gap between what we think is perfect, and what the world actually needs from us in the moment is sometimes large.  Greg Louganis couldn’t see his own perfection.  But despite a concussion from hitting the springboard the day before, he did exactly what he needed to do and he gave me exactly what I needed at that moment in my life.

            Perfection is the perfect fitting of situation and response.  We say, during the High Holy Days, and God says, too, so this is what we have to work with now, what is the best we can do?

            Perfection isn’t for some time yet to come.  Or in some perfect past.  Perfection isn’t over there.  It’s here.  It’s here.  And here again.

            In the Gospel of Luke we read, ^“Once Jesus was asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God was coming, and he answered, ‘The kingdom of God is not coming with things that can be observed, nor will they say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or ‘There it is!’ For, in fact, the kingdom of God is among you.”

            The translation of that last word is a little tricky.  You might say, the kingdom of God is “within” you, or “in your midst.”

            Does this look like perfection, here today, in this hall, this very moment?

            Because it is perfection.  We are in the midst of perfection.  And it’s been perfect here, every moment for the last ten years.

            In the Upanishads we read, “You could have golden treasure buried beneath your feet, and walk over it again and again, yet never realize it because you don’t realize it is there.  Just so, all beings live every moment in the city of the Divine, but never find the Divine because it is hidden by the veil of illusion.”

            So we sing:

            “Seek not afar for beauty; …

            Go not abroad for happiness;

            behold it is a flower blooming at your door.  

            Bring love and laughter home, and evermore

            joy shall be yours as changing years unfold.”

            You have had ten changing years of ministry with the Reverend Tera Landers.  Look how Throop has changed.  Look how Tera has changed!

            And yet at every moment, you and Tera found the response that the church needed.  You dug up.  You planted.  You tore down.  You said an enthusiastic yes.  You said a quiet no.  You persevered.  At times it was challenging.  At times it was tough.  Maybe you were sure you were wrong.  And maybe you were.

            Some moments you could score a 10 out of 10.  Sometimes only a 4, 5, or six.  Sometimes, let’s be honest, a 1 or a 2.  But we can celebrate a 1 or a 2, can’t we?

            Let’s lift the veil of illusion.  Because like Nadia Comenici’s 1.00 that turned out to be a 10.  Even a 1, might end up being exactly what that moment required.  Perfect.

            At your highest moments, but even at your lowest, you contributed to each moment the changeable sort of perfection modeled by the divine perfection:  amid the totality of all the circumstances of reality, the world around us, and the needs of the church, your own gifts and including your limitations, with your faith, and your faithful minister, you did what the moment demanded you do.

            Was it perfect?

            Yes it was.