big as we ought ot be

Sirach 15:15-20; Psalm 119 blessed are they who follow the law of the Lord; 1 corinthians 2:6-10; Matthew 5:17-37

Did you hear the words that Jesus spoke in today's gospel. If you did you should be starled, aghast, left scratching your head. Here is the one who comes ot show us God's love and yet he speaks these harsh words, "if your eye cause you to sin then tear it out...if your arm cause you to sin then cut it off, better to go through life lame then have your whole body thrown into Gehenna."

Wow!startling indeed. Talk about a gut check. Jesus means business. We love to speak these words to criminals and wicked people, but we must remember these words were spoken to Jesus' disicples, the ones who sat at his feet, who chose to follow him. These words are spoken for you and me.

How many of us should have glass eyes and missing appendages?

Is Jesus realy speaking about self-mutilation.
Or even worse, he equate sin with Gehenna. Gehenna was a real place in the time of Jesus. It was the ravine in Hinnon. Ravine in hebrew is "ge" thus we get Ge-Henna.

This was a place that was notorious for the place of pagan worship where men and women would sacrifce their children to this pagan god, Moloch. In the time of Jesus this ravine became a dump, a place of refuse.

Jesus is equating sin with sacrificing your own life and becoming like garbage, refuse.

what an image for Hell.
Striking indeed.

So what are we to do...

Obviousy Jesus doesn't mean for us to take it literally but he does mean for us to take it seriously.

Sin is big becasue love is bigger.
When we down play sin we ultimately downplay love and this is exactly what Jesus does not want us to do.

In order to get at the heart of the word of Jesus, from his lip to our ears we need to go to the beginning of today's gospel.

Jesus tells his disciples, "that unless yor righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and pharisee you shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven."

"Unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and pharsees."

Sounds like more pressure ot perform.
What is righteousness?

This is a big word in the biblical record. Remember Jesus tells John the baptist to baptize him to fulfill all righteousness.

What is it and how does it impact us.

Example...

Recently my brother and his family inhereted some land. On this land is a house, some brush and a small stream.

So my brother would take his chidlren to this stream to seine for bait. IT was cheaper this way. When they would go to the river fishing or to my dad's pond fishing, they would first go to this stream for bait.

On one of these excurssions, they pulled out of this stream a little catfish.

My nephews and neices were instantly smitten. they wanted it as a pet. At the time it was the size of a bottle cap lid. so my brother indulged them. They put it in a coke bottle and took it home.

Eventually it graduated to a bowl, then a bigger bowl, then a small aquarium. My little nephew began to notice that the bigger the bowl then the bigger the fish got.

He began to be curious about how big this fish could be. He wanted it to be as big as it was created to be, unhindered.

So he pestered my brother and his wife and they bought a 24 gallon aquarium. And the fish, now named 'muddy' really thrived in this big take and got really really big.

So my nephew thought that they needed a bigger aquarium so he wanted to buy a 50 or 100 gallon aquarium. Well, fortunately, my brother put his foot down before it got out of hand.

Noentheless, the reached a compromise and they decided to release the fish back into the wild so that in its natural element it could get as big as it possibly could be. My nephew wanted thte fish to reach its maximum potential, to be as big as it ought to be.

This is what righteousness means. It means in some sense to be as big as we ought to be. Jesus wants to maximize our true potential.

We all love to maximize things. We want to maximize our income, our profit margin, our tax retrun. we want to maximize our job security and our home security.

This is why he invites us to surpass the righteousness of the scribes and pharisees.

We should go beyond, be more, be superabundant in the goodness we embrace and live. We should maximize our potential.

The scribes and pharisee reduced or limited goodness to external acts or observances.

The minimum requirement became their maximum responsibility.
This is what JEsus is getting at. True goodness, to maximize our potential we can not limit ourselves to external acts, external performance. We are not just external beings, we have an interior life.

Jesus wants to get inside of us. This is where Jesus directs his gaze.

Exetrnal is merely a fruit of the internal.

This is why it is not enough to not murder but we should be attentive to the anger, resentment, ill-will. These are the seeds that produce murder.

Again it is not enough to not commit adultery, to have an illicit affair with the one who is not your spouse. Rather we must be attentive to the thought and desires, lustfullness that cause us to burn. This is where we direct our gaze.

The interior life becomes our hindrance. What we think about and what we desire acts like the walls of the aquarium either limiting our growth or maximizing our potential, allowing us to be as big as we ought to be, inside and out.

So we should be serious and aggresive. We should root it out. No thought or desire should go unheeded. Our minds are like gardens in need of cultivation and weeding. You only get what you plant.

Interior love is just as important as the external manifestation that everyone sees.

To be as big as we were meant to be, to maximize our goodness, to be superabundant, inside and out. is our call as a disciple.

This is the goodnews, from His lips to our ears.