Forget your perfect offering

SOURCE: ROSEMARIE MONNERJAHN

In Leonard Cohen‘s song, which I have proposed as a companion throughout the summer, there stands the sentence »Forget your perfect offering«.

Let us return once more to the passage in Luke’s Gospel, where the angel appears to the shepherds in the fields and announces his message. Here the messenger of God reminds us, that God is posing a mighty challenge to us.

»Then the angel of the Lord appeared to them and the glory of the Lord shone around them. And they were very afraid.«

If we are not sure where the challenge lays in this message, then we need to step back a moment. When we are far away from the experience of God, thinking about it in the quiet luxury of mediation or theological studies, then, for the most part, we feel wrapped in the comfort of speculation. But when we existentially experience, God’s challenge to live beyond fear, we pull back in anxiety and will nearly always name out first reservation: we are the wrong choice, because we are too imperfect. How many times have we experienced this when the call of God has become concrete and tangible, for example, in the call to be transferred to a new community or to take up a new position? What do we immediately do? We name our imperfections. (I am too young, too inexperienced, too busy, too poorly trained, too weak, etc.).

We pull back, when we experience the greatness of God, because we immediately start to deal with the fact, that we have no perfect offering. Our language betrays us: I am not good enough. I am not properly prepared. I am not suitable. And God replies in return: »That might all be true, but you are invited. Forget your perfect offering. I was looking for your willingness to deal with life, especially your life, as it is.«

We are called to be authentic human beings. Unfortunately, we were often denied the chance to develop and unfold our authentic human life, because we were too busy chasing after a clean and antiseptic life.

A long time ago I heard a story from John Shea that I have surely retold hundreds of times over the course of the years. I remember it when my own obsession with perfection gets in the way of living authentically. I retell it for people whose perfectionism is getting the way of being authentically human. William Sloan Coffin, a renowned Protestant pastor and peace activist, had just gotten a divorce and returned from California to New York. His friend, the famous Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, came to pick him up at the airport. The rabbi said to William Sloan Coffin, »You should have called me!« And Sloan Coffin said, »I had many friends in California. I didn’t need to call you. Many people were supporting me and consoling me during this divorce.« Heschel said, »You should have called me!« Sloan Coffin responded, »You don’t understand. I had many people around me. So, what would you have done if I had called you?« Heschel replied, »I would have told you about my father, the greatest rabbi in Eastern Europe. He, too, got a divorce.« And Heschel began to cry. Then he said, »Ah, you Christians. Perfection will kill you!« Then he went on. »By the way, someone has given me the gift of a bottle of cognac. And right now it is unopened in my room.«

The sign of the authentically human is not perfection. I have met and endured the zealots of perfection throughout my life. You can, indeed, know them by their fruits, for the hallmark of them all is the fact that they have no stories to tell, no stories to share. What they always carry with them are commandments and thinly veiled condemnations. They have no stories, because stories do not contain, carry or convey perfection. Stories carry authentic life, with all its messiness and joy, with all its potential and all its pitfalls. I have never met a single one of these soulless zealots to whom I would entrust my soul or the soul of any other person. But I sure would have loved to sip cognac with Abraham Joschua Heschel in the hours of wound and suffering.

And that is exactly what our summer should be like. All too often, we dream of how this will be the year in which we will create the ‘perfect’ summer or go on the ‘perfect’ holiday. Then come the delays, changes of plan, traffic jams, bad weather and heatwaves – and the disappointments caused by our fellow travellers. We would do better to use the summer months to be authentically human. Being authentically human means allowing the fears and passions, the hopes and failures of life to find a home in our lives and hearts, and welcoming them as we seek God, life, love and light. It means accepting our limitations, our finiteness and fallibility just as much as our achievements, our explorations and our successes. Bethlehem, the place the shepherds are called to visit, is the place where people are welcomed precisely because of their flaws. Bethlehem is the place where everything within us that is broken is embraced.

Therein lies the perfection of our God’s love: namely, that no imperfection can prevent him from living and loving. No imperfection in his people has ever prevented him from loving us and living with us. If he were unwilling or unable to welcome our flaws, we would all be lost for ever.

Woe betides us if our quest for the perfect offering (the perfect summer, the perfect holiday) prevents us from telling this story of God. Then we are no longer in Bethlehem, for Bethlehem is the place where the invitation went out to the weak and the wounded. This is the place where the angels sang the first version of Leonard Cohen’s song: »Forget your perfect sacrifice and go to Bethlehem«. This advice is as valid today as it was then.

Erik Riechers SAC

Vallendar, July 23rd, 2026