Be Reconciled

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Very often, when a doctor wants to make a diagnosis, he has to look at your insides. Thankfully, we have come a long way since the days when the only way to do that was “exploratory” surgery, where he literally went in just to take a look around to see what was going on. That’s how surgery was invented, and thanks be to God, things have progressed far beyond cutting you open just to take a look inside. Today there are a variety of means at your doctor’s disposal, everything from ultrasounds and X-rays, to various kinds of CAT scans and MRI scans that can deliver a picture of what’s going on inside you.

 

That is what is going on in today’s Gospel reading and this part of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. Jesus is taking the Law into His own hands, literally into His own mouth, and explicating in such a way that you get a good look at your insides. There is a line from a famous Lutheran hymn that goes:

The Law is but a mirror bright
To bring the inbred Sin to light
That lurks within our nature.

Jesus is delving into the depths of your hearts to assess your internal condition. Not simply your hands and eyes, but your hearts. Not simply the external symptoms we call sins, but the internal condition called Sin that necessitates your being baptized in Christ and being born again from above. Not just the outward action here, but the inward orientation and attitude.

 

A Matter of Perspective

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The perennial question is: Is the glass half full or half empty? I recently saw a cartoon with four panels. The first two showed the same glass with the same amount of water. The first said, “the glass is half full”, and the second, “the glass is half empty”. In the third panel, the same water was filling a half-size glass, and the caption said, “the glass has been downsized”. The fourth panel showed a puddle on the table and the caption said, “the glass made a lateral move”. Is the glass half empty or half full? Of course, the answer itself is irrelevant, but the question serves to identify one's perspective. The optimist sees the glass as half full, that there is more to come. The pessimist sees the glass as half empty, that half the water has already been drunk, and what's gone is gone. The Buddhist might just say, “The glass is.” The post-modernist might say, “The glass has as much water as you think it does.” The Hindu might even say, “The glass is an illusion.” To a certain extent, it is all a matter of perspective.