You probably already know this, but we have a parish of very intelligent people here, which of course is generally a good thing, but it makes for a tough audience for any preacher, and maybe even for today’s preacher in the gospel, Jesus. The week before last I was around the parish one evening, and I happened to mention to one particular parishioner that I’d be preaching this weekend. “What readings?” he asked, and I told him, “You know, that part of the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus tells us that if our eye causes us to sin we should tear it out, and if it’s the hand, cut it off.” He looked at me intently and shook his head compassionately. “That’s crazy talk,” he said, in a decisive tone of voice that might even have given Jesus second thoughts. I know if he used that tone to me about one of my homilies, it would be a while before I’d show my face up here again.
We’re right to notice that something has happened in today’s gospel. In just one chapter of this Sermon on the Mount, we’ve gone from the Beatitudes, about how the meek and peacemakers and mourners are the blessed ones, to last week’s gospel, when we were told we are the salt of the earth, now to this week, when suddenly after lofty and beautiful words about where we’re headed we’re told what it takes to get there. Jesus tells us that we should apply standards to ourselves that seem so demanding that they present a test we could never pass. Never be angry, never even think with desire about anyone, never allow any conflict to go on, no matter what.
It might seem like this isn’t the same Jesus at all, that there’s some sort of personality disorder at work here. That Jesus who tells us that his yoke is easy and his burden light, that Jesus who after breaks the laws himself when he needs to make a point, that can’t be the same Jesus who tells us that we must be the most scrupulous people on earth, and hold ourselves to very, very high standards.
Before we dismiss today’s gospel as yet more things the Bible asks us to do that it’s unreasonable to think we ever will, let’s remember the whole point of this Sermon on the Mount. It is not a catalog of rules, but a picture of paradise. It’s what ideal relationships look like between us and God and us and one another. Jesus said we should think of ourselves as the light of the world, never act out of anger, forgive to the point of foolishness, give our possessions to anyone who asks, don’t judge anyone but judge ourselves first, avoid caring about money or food or clothes or status, and perhaps most difficult of all, love our enemies. It is radically different from daily life, we fail all the time in making it a reality, but we are here together today because somehow, in our hearts, that is the world we want.
Today, what Jesus wants is fierce and brutal honesty about what is keeping us from that world. We don’t make the Sermon on the Mount a reality by making sure our outward behavior takes an acceptable form. That Sermon is about changing much more deeply, acquiring a focus on God that is part of our life constantly, opening us up at every moment to God’s action and love and presence. All those things we think of as our everyday anger and conflicts and wants and desires, they’re just garden-variety distractions and bad habits, we think, but it turns out they are serious business, life and death. Not because we have a God who’ll never be satisfied with us no matter how hard we try, that’s clearly not the case, it’s because we have a God who is impatient with anything that breaks the relationship that God wants with us, and that has any chance of breaking the relationships we can have with one another.
We are human, and therefore good at a little self-delusion. We think that as long as we avoid doing anything really bad, we are on the right track. But when Jesus in this gospel says we should look at what is causing us to sin, the real word he uses is more that they are stumbling blocks, barriers, traps, maybe one of those holes in the jungle with grass spread over the top that looks safe, but that are more dangerous than they look. Whatever those traps are in our lives, big or small, we need to see them for what they really are, whether they are the anger trap, the desire trap, the career trap, the money trap, the comfort trap. They are barriers to God and to living out this Sermon on the Mount, habits of mind that keep us from seeing our neighbors clearly for who they are. They are stumbling blocks that keep us from reaching out to the God who is always running towards us.
Somehow, through prayer and real honesty, we need to understand ourselves, see our traps clearly, see them for what they are, and yes, cut them off, maybe gradually, or maybe tomorrow. This stark and violent language from Jesus has done its job if it reminds us that part of our work every day is constantly refocusing our desire on this new, liberating, demanding life God wants for us. We’re the ones who would have to be crazy to let anything at all stand in the way of our embracing it.