26th Sunday of Ordinary Time (Cycle B)

September 26, 2009

by Reverend Deacon Lawrence A. St. Onge

Today’s three scripture readings have a cutting edge to them. Jesus’ words in today's gospel are not gentle ones, and are not spoken calmly; in fact, they are spoken rather urgently and firmly. The choices Jesus lays out for us, his followers, are very black and white; with no gray areas. Jesus states emphatically that anyone who is not with me is against me. He also infers that the life choice we make must be a total one. He continues by saying that anyone who cause another to stumble, to be a roadblock in anyone’s journey to heaven, merits eternal punishment. It would be better, he says: “that you be thrown into the sea with a millstone around your neck.”

The writer, 0. Henry, in one of his stories, tells about a little girl whose mother had died. The little girl would wait all day for her father to come home from work. She desperately wanted to sit on his lap and just listen to him read her a story. But every night her father followed the same routine. He'd eat supper and then flop in his favorite chair, light up his pipe, and read until bedtime. When the little girl came to sit on his lap, he'd always reply the same way: "Honey, can't you see your daddy's tired? He worked all day. Go outside and play." So, the little girl would go outside and play in the street, amusing herself as best she could. Then, the inevitable happened. As the girl grew older she began to accept expressions of affection from anyone who offered them. And instead of playing in the street, she took to the street and became a prostitute. One day the girl died. As she approached the gates of heaven, St. Peter saw her coming and said to Jesus. "She's a bad one, Lord. She's a prostitute. There's only one place for her." But Jesus says to Peter, "Let her come in. But when her father comes, hold him responsible for her life."

The point is clear. God will be merciful to those, who, through minimal fault of their own, were led astray. But God will be demanding toward those who are responsible for leading them astray.

In today’s gospel, Jesus goes on to say, that those who might hold back in their own choice of accepting Jesus' values had better do some drastic re-evaluation and re-arranging of their lives, if they hoped to be saved. In somewhat gruesome imagery, Jesus tells his followers, “if it is your hand or your foot or your eye that causes you to go astray, then cut it off, pluck it out ...better, he says, then to be thrown into Gehenna, where the worm never dies and the fire is never put out.”

The reference to Gehenna was well understood by Jesus' disciples. It is a valley just outside of Jerusalem. It was a very unpleasant place, because at that time and for hundreds of years prior, it had been used as a garbage dump. It was filled with not only the waste and refuse of the city, but also, with the bodies of both animals and human beings. Executed criminals and the poor who had no burial place of their own, were dumped there. The place was constantly burning, with lots of small fires smoldering all about that were constantly being re-fueled by new refuse... so that quite literally, the flames never went out and the worms had a steady supply of food. This foulness and decay of Gehenna is a rather gruesome imagery, but one that Jesus used to describe the fate of those who would refuse the salvation he offered. It is from that imagery that we draw our own present day mental image of hell as a place of fire.

Jesus does not literally suggest the cutting off of feet and hands, and the plucking out of eyes. They, themselves, are not the obstacles to our salvation. Rather, it us who use them, that become our own obstacle to our salvation. What Christ is saying is that nothing...not even our hands or feet or eyes or whatever...is worth the sacrifice of our salvation – that of eternal life in the Kingdom of heaven. The message is absolutely clear. We have to make a radical re-arrangement of our life's values, because so much of what we often consider being important in our lives, so central to a full and satisfying life, is in reality empty and meaningless. And, those who are foolish enough to throw away their hope of salvation in favor of anything else deserve just what they get.

In the second reading from St. James we hear, “Come now, you rich, weep and wail over your impending miseries. Your wealth has rotted away, your clothes have become moth-eaten, your gold and silver have corroded, and that corrosion will be a testimony against you; it will devour your flesh like fire." In other words those who concentrate all their focus and energies on the materialism and attachments of this world will find them to be worthless in attaining eternal life, which is the only true treasure. Those are the satisfactions that decay very quickly, and leave those who pursue them with nothing. And if we are foolish enough not to realize that, then nothing is what we shall ultimately have.

There is an anecdote that illustrates this whole point. In the last century, an American tourist paid a visit to a Rabbi in Poland. He was astonished at the sparseness of the rabbi's home, which was a simple room filled with books, plus a table and a bench. "Rabbi," asked the tourist, "where is your furniture?" "Where is yours?" replied the rabbi. "Mine?" asked the puzzled American tourist. "But I'll only be here for a while; I'm just passing through." "So am I," said the rabbi. We must remember that we are a pilgrim people only journeying through this life to our true home, which is the life to come - eternal life.

It may sound like Christ has been somewhat demanding in today's gospel, and there is a ring of truth to it. However, it isn't that God is harsh. He isn't. He is actually infinitely understanding and forgiving of our human weakness and sin. But He is impatient with our vanity, our arrogance, and our attitude that consistently refuses to realize that it is, after all, God's world and not ours. We can only live in it successfully on His terms. We may not always meet those terms, and that is the occasion of sin. But it isn't really so much our sin that dams us, as it is our attachment to sin, our affection for it, our refusal to honestly recognize and name it for what it is, and honestly try and eliminate it. It isn't sin that angers God so much, as our attempts to justify it, to rationalize it, to excuse it, and to make it seem like something good, or even preferable.

Jesus' blunt words in today's gospel remind us of something that our modernistic society would rather forget; hell does exist. It is a real thing and all the foul and gruesome imagery of Gehenna, literal or not, adds nothing to the real horror of the place — the true fact is, it is made up of people who have chosen to be there through their choices in their living and life.

We pray O Lord Jesus that you help us to remember always that your Word is true, it is spirit, it is life.