EXTREME MEASURES FOR SMALL THINGS


If your right eye makes you stumble, tear it out and throw it from you; for it is better for you to lose one of the parts of your body, than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. If your right hand makes you stumble, cut it off and throw it from you; for it is better for you to lose one of the parts of your body, than for your whole body to go into hell.
(Matthew 5: 29-30)

In the middle of discussing older Laws and the expectation of righteousness that Jesus calls His followers to, He pops in this cautionary warning. And it seems rather extreme.

Just what is this?

“If your right eye makes you stumble.” Okay, that’s odd. When do we see with just one eye? When do we see something that makes us stumble? Doesn’t stumbling usually come about because we did not see an obstacle? What does He mean by this?

What is it that we mean when we say “Out of the corner of my eye I saw ...”? Doesn’t that fit the image of seeing with one eye?

What sorts of things do we look at that way? Usually they are objects that are not, and possibly should not be, our primary focus. They are things we are passing by, not things we are intent upon. Sometimes we look at things through the corner of our eye because we are trying to hide our interest in the object. But hide that interest from whom? And why do we need to hide the interest?

When we start considering these questions we realize that it is very easy for such behavior to cause us to stumble.

And what about the cutting off of the hand?

From ancient times, one of the punishments for theft has been the loss of a hand. Perhaps it was considered preventive medicine: if you used your hands to take things that did not belong to you, perhaps if you lost a hand you would be less able to carry off stolen goods and you might think twice about stealing again.

But Jesus is not saying this to keep us from the act of stealing. He is trying to get at the heart of things, at the heart of each of us, to touch upon why we do these things.

What is it in our natures that makes us look surreptitiously at things. Or, more specifically (since he had just spoken of adultery), what makes us look with hidden lustful and covetous glances at other people, at the spouses of other people or someone other than our own spouse? Jesus says it is better for us if we just lose the eye that is “looking wrongly.” He says it is better if we lose parts of the body than for the whole body to go to hell.

What’s that again? The other option is “going to hell”?

The point He is making here is that little things can lead to complete corruption. That is why He makes this shocking declaration about the “better solution” to the small acts of unrighteousness.

The married man walks down the street and passes a pretty woman going the other direction. He tracks her with his eyes as he goes by, enjoying the view. He stops thinking about his wife and his marriage and wonders what the pretty woman is like, but he goes on.

The next day, he sees the same woman coming toward him, and he watches her more openly. He was wondering if he’d see her again. She glances at him and smiles. He hadn’t thought of his wife ever since he walked out of the door of his home, and now he continues thinking about the pretty woman as he goes on to work.

The third day he leaves home quickly without saying good-bye to his wife, because he’s hoping to see the pretty woman again. Sure enough, here she comes toward him and she smiles at seeing him, so he gives her a “Hello!” as they pass and she returns it. Her voice is beautiful. The married man has not thought of his wife all morning.

And so it goes, all the way down the path of adultery. The whole of the married man’s being has been corrupted by the desire to commit adultery. It would have been better if he had not looked askance at the pretty woman at all.

Human beings are not particularly honest with themselves about their motives. Self-examination and self-reflection take work and we just don’t like to do that work. We don’t like looking into our hearts and realizing that we’ve been letting our fidelity wander away. We don’t like admitting that we’ve let a “little anger” fester and stew.

But consider the options Jesus gives us for that lack of self-attention: cut out the part of our body that is leading us astray, so that we have a drastic physical reminder of how close we came to losing the rest of our entire being.

“But it was just a glance! Where’s the harm in that?”

“That office stapler wasn’t worth more than two dollars! Where’s the harm in my taking it?”

When our thoughts during that glance move from “She is beautiful to see” (something I do not think God objects to our acknowledging) to “I want her to look at me,” we move from an appreciation of the beauty of God’s creation to a desire to be an object of the appreciation of others. When we covet or lust after someone, it isn’t just that we want to possess that person, it is also that we want to be the center of their attention.

All these little things that we let slide because they are “little” are in reality the first steps down a path that takes us away from the Lord.

And Jesus says it is better to hobble our way on the path to the Most High, broken and incomplete with a lost hand or eye, than it is to have our full body but be lost out in the wilderness on no track that leads anywhere near the Lord.

If we are not going to pay attention to our “little sins” than extreme measures will be necessary.

INTIMATE MATTERS


You have heard that it was said 'You shall not commit adultery'; but I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.(Matthew 5: 27-28 – NAS)

To our eyes, the word “adultery” seems connected to the world “adult,” for so many reasons. The act of adultery is something we expect among adults, mainly because we view it entirely as an aspect of grown-up relationships. But the two words actually come from different roots. The word “adult” comes from a Latin term meaning “to grow up,” whereas the word “adultery” comes from one that means “to add something other,” to add an alternate. Add-alterate.

Adultery changes things. It’s not something separate and outside. It is something that gets added into an already established relationship, and it is something that ought not to be there.

I have always thought that Jesus was being a bit sarcastic when He begins this declaration by saying, “You have heard it said.” If they were good Jews, of course they had “heard it said,” since it is one of the Ten Commandments, the Laws of Moses that were given to him by God Himself in the desert. It is a rule that ought to be inscribed in our hearts and minds as one of the basics from God. But Jesus is also aware of our frailties as humans, and how easily we shuffle aside even the most basic consideration.

What’s so important about this, then? Let’s start with the Commandment.

“You shall not commit adultery.”

Although God prizes us as individuals, He also considers our relationships to be precious, and how we treat those relationships matter to Him. Most especially, He cherishes the quality of our most intimate relationship. The bond between spousal partners is a reflection of the bond between the Creator and His creatures, between God and us-as-His-children. It makes for a Trinitarian union, when it comes to marriage then: each partner has a personal bond to God in addition to the bond to the spouse. The triangle is a very stable form.

But what happens when one of the spouses commits adultery?

All of a sudden, the geometry of the relationships becomes weirdly disrupted.

First off, the Outsider has his or her own relationship with God. After all, God loves all of His creatures. So there is now suddenly another line coming into the structure from outside. Additionally, the Straying Partner has broken his or her connection to the spouse in order to have a relationship with the Outsider. So the base of the triangle has been disrupted. Instability has been introduced to the primary partnership. And because the Outsider is an outsider, it means that the neglected partner does not have a real relationship with that person either.

It’s easy to see when looked at this way just how disruptive adultery can be. Broken relationships between partners, injury to the neglected partner, imbalance in relationships with God. Okay, these are not good things.

So, we won’t act that way.

But Jesus knows that is not enough. Once again, He addresses the fact that our outward behavior does not always reflect our inward conditions. And it is in our inner conditions, the state of our hearts, where our relationships with God are grounded. This is why He says that just lusting after someone causes us to commit adultery in our hearts.

But what does He mean by that? Are we never to look at other people? Never to admire others?

I don’t think so.

I think that God knows our inclinations to see beauty – whether outward or inward – and appreciate it. Indeed, the ability to appreciate beauty when encountered is very important to the maintenance of a loving heart. But appreciation is not the same as a covetous desire to possess the object of appreciation.

That is what lust is: to look upon something with that hungry desire to have, to hold, to consume as one’s own.

When a spouse looks at an Outsider with that sort of hungry desire, he or she is already starting to shred the bond of intimacy with the partner. Indulging lustful thoughts for someone outside the ternary relationship contaminates each side of the sacred partnership. It isn’t just between the Wanderer and the Spouse, it is between those two and God as well.

Most of the time, we don’t want to think of God’s involvement in our relationships, especially our most intimate ones. We get a bit resentful at that possibility, in spite of the fact that it is the love of God for each partner that provides the true energy that keeps the relationship healthy. When we start “wanting what we want” and thinking we ought to have “what we want,” we start treating God as if He were an electrical power outlet, always ready to power up our relationships no matter how many times we break a previous relationship.

But what about God’s relationship with the neglected or abandoned spouse? Just because you abandon a partner, that does not mean that God does. And if you turn your back on a relationship God has entered into, are you not also turning your back on God? What do you do to your own relationship with God when you start pulling your heart out of the bond?

That’s why Jesus is driving home the point that intimate relationships can be broken by our hearts and thoughts long before we take any physical and outward action.

“But it was just casual sex!” we cry, trying to justify some fling.

I don’t think there is such a thing as “casual sex” in the eyes of the Lord. That is the nature of intimacy – to be as close to another person as we are to God. It isn’t just a pretty metaphor, a descriptive likeness – it is the REALITY. God is there. God is a party to our intimacy. When we treat it cheaply, we slap God in His face. We treat Him as if He’s just the electric outlet we use to power the pleasure machine.

 "You have heard it said ....”

COURT COSTS


Make friends quickly with your opponent at law while you are with him on the way, so that your opponent may not hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the officer, and you be thrown into prison. Truly I say to you, you will not come out of there until you have paid up the last cent.
(Matthew 5: 25-26 – NAS)

After Jesus has made a very dramatic statement about how we should deal with those closest to us (and the awful consequences to our spirits if we do not), He moves a step further out in our social circles. He says that if you are in conflict with someone else, such that you are on your way to court (especially if it is a matter of debt you owe), make peace quickly with that person.

It is interesting that He doesn’t say anything here about who is in the right and who is in the wrong. Instead, He says that we must make peace. Even the statement about paying up the “last cent” is not necessarily about a debt to the opponent, for it can also mean the fees to the court or to the jail (since prisoners were often liable for the costs of their incarceration on top of everything else). Jesus focuses on the spiritual drag on our natures by the conflict itself.

What Jesus expects from His followers at this point requires a great change in the way we respond to conflict. Our first impulse, our strongest impulse, is to demand justification. Not justice, though we like to believe that is our motivation. No, we want to be justified. We want to be told that we have a right to the anger we feel toward someone else, that we have cause for our hostile feelings, that the other person is in the wrong, is sinning greatly, even. We want the upper hand.

But Jesus tells us not to go about things that way. He says that if your conflicts have gone so far that you are actually heading to court, you’ve got things wrong. If you get that far as a follower of Christ, you will not find mercy in the court. Instead, your opponent will hand you over to the judge, the judge will likely find you in the wrong and off to jail you will go

Jesus doesn’t pull any punches, and this seems very harsh. “But Lord! We are your followers! How can you say the judgment would go against us?”

I think by this point in His sermon, Jesus expects His audience to start to have a grasp of the kind of character He expects us to have as His followers. The Peacemakers, the Merciful, those Who Mourn: all that. If you have gotten this far in listening to His words, He’s expecting you to start treating others a certain way.

For the sake of discussion, let us say we know someone who is in conflict with another person, and they are about to enter the court to have a judge resolve the conflict. What sort of person has gotten to this point?

First off, Our Representative has some baggage called Anger. This would have to be the case if things have gotten so far as going before a judge. One or both of the parties to the conflict has become so emotionally entrenched that he cannot step back. Anger is in the air.

Secondly, as I mentioned, there is the desire to be justified, vindicated in the eyes of the community. If Our Representative is willing to take the conflict to court, he wants the community to know what is going on. It is no secret any more. It has become everybody’s business. And Our Representative wants to be center stage.

Thirdly, if things are headed into court, Our Representative has set aside any claim to being a Peacemaker. And in setting that aside, he is also letting go of his participation in the kingdom of heaven. He is letting worldly concerns become more important than his relationship with God.

If that is the portrait of a so-called follower of Christ when that person insists on taking things to court, is it any surprise that Jesus says that person is likely to receive the unpleasant consequences of a worldly judgment?

“But what if you are justified in taking the matter to court? What if you are truly striving for genuine justice? What if you have attempted all the possibilities of reconciliation, and they have failed?”

When we step into court without having reconciled with our opponent, we carry the weight of that failure with us. We carry the load of anger in our hearts, where it smothers the life of love by taking up so much space. When we enter the court without reconciliation, no matter what the decision might be we shall remain bound to the other party.

I know a single father who is very vigilant in seeking justice for his two children. His former spouse ought to be paying child-support, but she doesn’t. He works hard at humble jobs to take care of his children, and his love for them is great. He is a model of good parenting. But every time he has to go to court to try and have the child-support enforced, it opens up a box of anger for him. It is the burden he has to deal with, struggle with, for a resolution is beyond his power.

Jesus knows that matters will not play out ideally for us in this world. That is why He began this teaching with the Beatitudes, and why that set of admonitions ends with reminders that as His followers we will be persecuted. There is very little that is easy about the life He calls us to. Every little thing has an effect on every other little thing. Because the reality is that in God’s eyes there is nothing that is little about our lives.

If you are in conflict with someone, work toward reconciliation. And be prepared for the consequences if you cannot achieve it, for they are costly.

THE LITTLE MURDERS OF THE SOUL


You have heard that the ancients were told, 'You shall not commit murder' and 'Whoever commits murder shall be liable to the court.' But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother shall be guilty before the court; and whoever says to his brother, 'You good-for-nothing,' shall be guilty before the supreme court and whoever says, ' You fool,' shall be guilty enough to go into the fiery hell. Therefore if you are presenting your offering at the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your offering there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother, and then come and present your offering.(Matthew 5: 21-24 – NAS)


Jesus consistently addresses our inner lives when it comes to the consequences of following God’s laws. The meticulous behavior of the scribes and Pharisees in His day, where they strove to abide by every stricture of action, gave Him plenty of fodder to criticize. They followed the letter of the Law but were totally divorced from the spirit of it.

That is why in this passage He is so emphatic.

Everyone can easily agree that murder is not a good thing, that if you commit murder, you can and should be hauled to court and punished. By murdering someone you have stolen that person’s life, removed everything he might have accomplished, everything she might have given. We understand that much.

But Jesus pushes it further. He says it is not enough that we understand that truth. It goes deeper. “But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother shall be guilty before the court.”

Wait! What?

Is Jesus really equating being angry at a sibling with murder? That is certainly what it looks like, especially since He elaborates on that statement, adding two more examples.

Why does this matter so much, we wonder? Because anyone who has had siblings knows how easy it is to get into fights with that brother or sister.

Jesus is not talking about the flashes of friction that spark up due to close proximity. He is talking about the type of passionate anger that we can carry around with us day in and day out. He is talking about the kind of anger that makes us refuse to look even our closest relative in the face. This is the type of anger that even if it does not turn to active violence, it pulls out the verbal weapons and with every conversation makes cutting jabs at the heart of the sibling. “You worthless idiot!” “You incompetent!” “I wish you’d never been born!”

Most of us do not have defenses against our immediate family. Our emotions, our hearts, our very souls are laid bare to them because they are family, bone of our bones. Even when it is a family of adoption, these are the people that share the air we breathe, who eat from the same dishes. Our very nature is to give our families our total trust (whether or not as individuals they deserve or have earned it). God designed us to love and trust our families.

But in this fallen world, even those closest to us can do us great damage. Because they are so close, because our defenses are not raised against our family, the wounds they can inflict are the worst.

Most people have been on the receiving end of some sort of wound inflicted by a family member, whether intentionally or not. We carry the memory of those injuries with us wherever we go. And when the wounds have been words spoken in anger, words that cut away our sense of identity, our sense of self-worth, we have a hard time recovering from that.

So we have all suffered from this sort of anger.

But do we remember when we ourselves have lashed out?

How easy it is to say harsh things to our siblings (of blood or of choice – for that is what our close friends are, siblings-of-choice), especially when we are angry or irritated with them. But anger, once indulged that way, can take root in our own hearts and minds, becoming a toxic venom that we can inject into even casual conversation without realizing it. Anger breeds contempt in our souls, and contempt sneaks into our words with tiny dismissals and belittlements. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.” “Why should I listen to you?” “Don’t start up with that again. I don’t want to hear it one more time.” When we stop looking at the face of our sibling, when we start plugging our ears when our sibling speaks, we are behaving as if they are of no value. We are killing them in our hearts, behaving as if they are dead to us.

“Oh, no! I don’t do that! You must be mistaken, Lord!”

But we all do it. And we all ignore it. And we go before the Lord in worship, only vaguely thinking of seemingly minor clashes we’ve had with those close to us. But surely they weren’t important. Worship is important, right? Do that first.

What we forget when we choose to let anger and disagreements ride is that every individual is precious to God. And that includes the person we are angry with.

From God’s point of view, as He looks down upon us coming into worship with unresolved conflicts in our hearts, He sees someone who doesn’t care about what God values, but only about what that worshiper values. He sees His wounded child that we’ve left outside somewhere, bleeding and losing strength. And we’re not even thinking about that person. They’re not important to us.

And we expect God to love and favor us when we treat our siblings with contempt. Just how foolish can we be?

But Jesus doesn’t leave us there. He points out that the remedy is within our power. He says, “If you know your brother has something against you,” do something about it. I have always loved the way this is expressed, for He captures the point that the conflict goes in both directions at once. “If your brother has something against you” can be both your brother’s anger against you that is wounding you and your anger against your brother that is causing you to wound him. It doesn’t matter “who started it.” It matters that the anger and wounding are there. And Jesus doesn’t say “Go back and win the argument.” He says “Go and reconcile yourself with your brother.”

Reaching reconciliation is no easy thing, of course. It’s not about winning an argument or making a point. It is about restoring balance between two people. That can mean forgiving the person for injuries they didn’t even know they’d inflicted. It is not about being a doormat for the other person to walk on, but rather about doing what you can to cleanse your own wounds and whatever wounds you might have inflicted on someone else.

God waits for us to come before Him. And He knows that many times we may come with open, bleeding injuries. Those He can heal. But if we have let festering wounds scab over, leaving rotting flesh underneath, or if we are engaged in delivering little stabbing cuts to the brother standing in front of us, those are not circumstances that please Him.

Reconcile with family first, for those angers are the most deadly.

WHY KEEP THE LAW?


Whoever then annuls one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever keeps and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I say to you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.
(Matthew 5: 19-20)

Jesus offers up some interesting tidbits in these two sentences. First off, there is preferential treatment in heaven for those who do keep the Laws of God. And secondly, that it might not be very easy to enter into the kingdom of heaven.

Let’s look at that second one first.

“Unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.”

Elsewhere and many times we can find Jesus condemning the so-called righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees. But the point about this statement is why he condemns them: their righteousness is all on the outside. They “keep” all the laws in their actions, but never let the laws touch their hearts. The scribes and the Pharisees have forgotten God’s purpose in giving the laws. The failure of the scribes and Pharisees is not that they keep the Laws, but rather that they no longer see the Laws as a means of coming close to God but rather an end in themselves. To the scribes and Pharisees, the Laws must be kept simply because they are the Laws of God. They have lost all perception of the love of God, and because of that they have come to believe that God is somehow in the Law, rather than beyond it.

How many bow down before the rules and regulations as if they are an end in themselves? How many stick so strictly to the guidelines that they no longer see where the guidelines are going nor what the Big Picture is? We all know people in our lives whose perceptions are set that narrowly, who worry more about the Law and keeping it than they do about why God laid out the Law in the first place.

That is why Jesus says that to enter into the kingdom of heaven, our righteousness must be greater than the scribes and Pharisees. He isn’t talking about keeping the Law better than the scribes and Pharisees. As we continue on through the Sermon on the Mount, we’ll find that He is very aware of how easily we stumble. What He is talking about is how well we remember the purpose of keeping God’s Laws: that they are designed to bring us closer to the Holiness of God, to bring us into His presence to stand before Him. The Most High wants to bring everyone to that place, because He loves us so very much. He doesn’t want to leave anyone out. But the reality is that His very presence burns away unrighteousness. And if we have let the substance of our being become so contaminated by unrighteousness, there won’t be much left of us when we stand in that place.

Which brings us back to the warning Jesus gives in the first part of this passage. Whoever annuls or alters even the least of the commandments of God, and who teaches others to do likewise, that person shall be among the least in the kingdom of heaven.

Now that is an interesting point. Jesus does not say that such a person -- someone who is righteous enough to remember the purpose God has in giving the Law and who still decides to dismiss one such – is condemned and excluded from the kingdom of heaven. He just says that they are the least. He goes on to say that the person who does keep the Laws and teaches them to others will be called great in the kingdom. Such a one will be near to the throne of God and not far off.

These two verses are like breathing in and breathing out. We need to remember both parts of the passage, or we can end up like the scribes and the Pharisees, rigidly following forms while forgetting their purpose. The forms are necessary to get where we want to go – into the presence of God – and yet they cannot become more important than the destination. We cannot mistake the forms that are supposed to be our means of transportation for the final destination we are trying to reach.

We can ride the train of the Law right into the station called Heaven. We have to stay on the train, though. For the only entrance to the station is the gateway through which the tracks are laid. You can jump off the train and try to get to the station by other means, and you may indeed find the outer walls of it, but there is no other entrance to the final destination, the lobby that is before the throne of God. Let us not be one of those who has become so enamored of the train ride that we refuse to get off the train, even when it has reached the station.

Do not mistake the means for the end. The Laws are to bring us closer to the God who loves us. He has His reasons for them, and even if we don’t understand the specific reason, we should trust that He has a point to it. But most importantly, we should remember that our Lord is a merciful God, and His desire is that we strive to come as close to Him as we can. We are not excluded for failure to keep specific Laws, we exclude ourselves when we forget the purpose of them.