The Sixth Sunday After the Epiphany If Your Eye Causes Sin… Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ! Amen. In today’s Gospel Jesus says concerning everyone (Matthew 5:22, 28, 32), “If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. If your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away.” Dear Christian friends, We should think of these Words in today’s Gospel as a figure of speech. Figures of speech are difficult, especially in the Scriptures, mostly because figures of speech are hard to understand. I cannot see many other options for today’s Gospel. Some people have taken Jesus literally when He says, “Tear your eye out and cut your hand off.” They have lopped off their offending members, only to discover that their problem with sin did not go away when their body part did. That is because the real cause of our sin does not reside the eye or hand. Jesus declares elsewhere, “Out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder and adultery” (Matthew 15:19); and again, “Their heart is far from Me” (Matthew 15:9). We know from other Scriptures that Jesus does NOT wish for us to do violence to our physical bodies. Jesus is the creator of our physical bodies. In my mother’s womb He has knit together my body and soul, eyes, ears and all my members, my reason and all my senses. What God has joined together, let no man separate. Self-mutilation is merely rehearsal for suicide. Sometimes life will lie to you and make it seem as though suicide is the only option. Do not believe it! Suicide provides NO honor to God and NO love for my neighbor. “If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. If your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away.” We have no choice but to think of these Words as a figure of speech. May God prevent us from ever using our Lord’s Words as a way to defy the Christian faith! Luther might have been on to something when he stated that today’s Gospel speaks more about the spiritual than the physical (AE 212, 91). That is to say, · We do not literally pluck out that physical mass of flesh seated in the eye socket. Instead, we must each turn a blind eye toward our neighbor’s vulnerability, rather than exploit our neighbor for the sake of our own sensations. You know what sort of sensations you can receive, simply by looking. For some, it is the sensation of lust; for others, the sensation of greed; for still others, the anticipation sensation of revenge. Set such visions aside and let them go, for the love of Christ. Rather than using your eye as a conduit for sin against your neighbor, just look the other way and pray, “Lord have mercy!” That will sufficiently “pluck your eye out,” so to speak. · Again, it would be far better for us each of us to act as if we had no hands, than to raise a hand against our neighbor for his destruction and our gain. Rather than swinging or clawing at your neighbor, tuck your hand up under your arm so that you will do him no harm while he is at his weakest moment. Restrain your own wrist before your fingers gain trespass in his wallet. Put your arm around him, so that the only possibility of injury is from him to you. Bypass your opportunities to gain from his losses, in the same way that you would need to bypass a dollar on the ground if you had no hands with which to pick it up. If you must raise your hands, lift them toward the sky and again pray, “Lord have mercy!” “Tear your eye out and cut your hand off,” says the Lord. But Jesus is speaking in today’s Gospel about surgery that only the Word of God is able to do. May God the Father grant such surgery—to each of us—for the sake of our Lord Jesus! May God the Spirit continually perform such surgery, for the good of our neighbor! Why would Jesus jump into a figure of speech here in His Sermon on the Mount, especially when He has just been so clear and simple about the sins of anger and adultery? The Sermon on the Mount is a sermon on the Ten Commandments. Perhaps our Lord wants to make certain that no one escapes the condemnation He speaks in His Ten Commandments. What I mean is this: · Someone could argue that our Lord’s Words about adultery in this Gospel apply somewhat more to men than to women. While women certainly may be held guilty of the charge, Jesus seems to focus His Words upon men. “Everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent,” and His Words imply “every man.” · It might be easier to include women in our Lord’s Words about anger. Some poet wrote three hundred years ago—and countless men have found it easy to remember ever since—that “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.” (Too many men just nodded in agreement.) Our Lord’s sweeping generalizations about anger and adultery in today’s Gospel can nevertheless allow some people to slip through the cracks. So, too, what our Lord likewise says about divorce. Small children, for example, might not yet plead guilty to any of these things. No one escapes our Lord’s figures of speech. These Words apply as much to eyes and hands in the cookie jar as they do eyes and hands upon someone’s wife: If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell. For all of the difficulty in determining what exactly they mean, our Lord’s figures of speech nevertheless provide us with certain benefits. For example, if I cannot determine what exactly something means in the Scriptures, it indicates that I will never become a master of the Scriptures. It is disquieting and uncomfortable, not to know the meaning every single thing that God has written. Still, it is necessary. The things of God must remain larger than we are able to comprehend (Isaiah 558-9, Philippians 4:7). Otherwise, our presumption would destroy us. We might end up hearing Jesus says to us, “If your head causes you to sin…” At the very least, when Jesus says, “Tear your eye out and cut your hand off,” we should understand that our eyes and our hands simply cannot be trusted. Perhaps this figure of speech will have the good result of causing us to trust only our Lord’s eyes and His hands, rather than our own. His hands were pierced through for our forgiveness and life, even while He used them to raise us out of the pit of death. His eyes continually look lovingly and forbearingly upon us, despite our guilt, and in defiance of the fact that His eyes were once closed in death. “See My hands” said the resurrected Lord.“Do not disbelieve, but believe” (John 20:27). _______________________________________________ Sermons mailing list [email protected] http://cat41.org/mailman/listinfo/sermons
