Sermon by Damien Jourdain
The Problem
What is the most difficult instruction you have ever been given? Have you ever received an order that seemed impossible to follow? In 2015 I had been working in California for Google for 6 months, and we had a meeting with the two co-founders of Google Larry Page and Sergey Brin, to discuss our delivery drone project.
I had carefully prepared my team’s roadmap for the development of the drone’s autopilot, and I had done my best to be both ambitious but realistic about how long it would take. During the meeting, Larry Page asks how long the development will take, I take a deep breath. I tell him 3 months, explaining all the necessary steps. He looks at me with an incredulous look, and answers « 3 months? But you should be able to get it done by the weekend, right? » How do you react when the co-founder of one of the most influential companies in the world, who has more than 50 billion dollars in his bank account, tells you to do in 3 days what you think you can accomplish in 3 months?
This morning in Leviticus 18 to 20 we will also see a command given not by Larry Page, but by someone much greater, by Yahweh, the perfect creator of the universe. He will also give a command that is probably impossible to follow for Israel, the people he has chosen to reveal himself to the world: be holy, like me. How to react to demands for perfection when, frankly, we are… far from perfect?
(la suite…)