Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost
What’s Important
I used to put a lot of effort into smoking cigars. And I mean a lot! Each week I would shop online for bundles of cigars, and wait for them to ship. When I ran short, I’d make trips to cigar stores—some almost an hour from where I lived. I had to keep stocked with the smoking tools: cigar lighters, fluid, clippers, humidors. And then I had to find the time to smoke, because enjoying one good cigar can fill almost an hour.
I spent an enormous amount of time, money, and energy, just to smoke cigars. It was difficult—sometimes stressful—and often forced me to rearrange my daily schedule. But I always made it happen. Can you imagine what kind of Christian I would be, if I had spent the same effort on entering the kingdom of God?
Today, Jesus talks about cutting off hands and plucking out eyes. He is not advocating self-mutilation. Rather, Jesus is insisting that Christians must be willing to go to any lengths to enter the kingdom of God. We must make every effort to follow Christ, and nothing—nothing!—is more important than this: that we seek and obey the will of God.
But we don’t do that, do we? We say that we’re too tired to come to worship. We don’t take the time to welcome an immigrant neighbor. We are silent when a friend makes sexist remarks about women. We stand in the way of change and growth, in our churches—demanding things stay the same. We make our ease, our love of things, our fear of change the driving priorities of our lives. Not our God.
Can you imagine what kind of Christians we would be—what kind of church we would be—if we put the kingdom of God first?
Lance Fox, pastor, Castleton Hill Moravian Church
Staten Island, New York
