This Sunday is the third in a series of five Sundays where we’re hearing some parts of the Sermon on the Mount from Matthew’s gospel, and I think it was going pretty smoothly until today.
Here’s a brief refresher. First we heard the Beatitudes, about how the meek and peacemakers and mourners are the blessed ones, that’s how God is, all wonderful. Then in last week’s gospel, we were told we are the salt of the earth, we are the light of the world that shouldn’t be hidden. Also wonderful. But then there’s this week, when after these beautiful words about how God sees us and where we’re going we’re told what it might take to get there. Suddenly, Jesus tells us that we should apply standards to ourselves that seem so demanding we couldn’t ever measure up. Never be angry, never even think with desire about anyone, never allow any conflict to go on, no matter what. And if you didn’t get how serious this is, then with these images that stick in our minds of the eye and the hand being cut off, Jesus makes it clear you might need to do something really radical, something no sane person would do, really, or otherwise, you’re not measuring up.
It might seem like this isn’t the same Jesus at all. That Jesus who told us once that his yoke is easy and his burden light, this same Jesus is telling us to be kind of at war with ourselves in a way that doesn’t sound very appealing.
But, let’s stop for a moment. Before we dismiss this part of Jesus’s words as yet more things the Bible asks us to do that we’re clearly not going to do, let’s remember the whole point of this Sermon on the Mount. It is not a catalog of rules, but a picture of a kingdom. It’s what ideal relationships look like between us and God and us and one another. But it’s not a make-believe kingdom. People who want to live there can live there now, not in the future. And at times, it sounds very, very much like where we want to be. Think about it, Jesus said that in this kingdom people never act out of anger, they forgive to the point of foolishness, they give their possessions to anyone who asks, they don’t judge anyone but judge themselves first, most amazing of all they love their enemies, they welcome the stranger no matter who they are. It sounds like some future world, except it’s supposed to be this world. But I think you know there are obstacles to living in that kingdom, there are obstacles to even wanting it, it is not what we’re used to. Today, with all this extreme imagery, what Jesus wants is some brutal honesty about what is keeping us from that world of the Sermon on the Mount, because you may have noticed, that world is not yet our world. Not many of us are living there full time.
And here’s the real issue, unfortunately, it’s not our hand or our eye that’s the problem. Life would be so much easier if that actually were the case. Wouldn’t it be great if we studied what’s keeping us from living in the Kingdom of God, and we concluded, you know what? It is my hand! And probably the left one! But the problem usually isn’t a hand, or an eye. It’s inside, it’s our heart, it’s in here, it’s us. That’s where we have our problems, it’s where we have anger and suspicion and cynicism and tiredness, it’s where we get preoccupied with ourselves and how busy we are, it’s where we hang onto judgments we’ve made about the world and other people and opinions we’ve grown up with, and all those things can become as much a part of us as our hand and our eye, and like our hand and our eye we sometimes don’t even see them, they’re just always there. Except at rare moments we don’t see that they are what’s keeping us from this kingdom of God, and we know that these opinions and emotions and habits of our heart it’s hard to change those, very hard, it’s painful, it’s like cutting off a hand, except it takes longer. And when it comes to what’s in our heart, it’s hard to cut things out once and for all, is it? We try, and unlike a hand, our obstacles grow back, they’re always there, in a way, we can’t fix them once and for all, and we certainly can’t fix them alone.
And that’s where we really need to end up today. What Jesus is asking us to do here, this change of heart he wants in whatever urgent way our heart needs changing, this is not something we can do by ourselves, because by ourselves we can easily tie ourselves into knots of confusion and discouragement. We don’t know where to start, or for most of us it’s where to start over, to try to live this life the Sermon on the Mount wants us to live. But that whole sermon Jesus gave should make it clear that God does not want us stuck, tied in knots, what he’s offering in this reading is not endless obligations and impossible goals but something that cuts us free from what is holding our heart back.
God is impatient with anything that breaks the relationship that God wants with us, and that is breaking the relationships we should have with one another. There’s something of that impatience in Jesus’s words today, it’s like he’s reminding us, you have a new life waiting for you, a relationship with God, life in the kingdom, the closer you get the better it is, why would you not want it? If you have something standing in the way, ask God for help to get started removing it.