Jesus said, “If a part of your body causes you to
stumble, cut it off. It is better to go
through life maimed than to be thrown into
hell, where the worm will not die and the fire never be quenched.”
In Jesus’ day, hell was not a theological concept
nor was it located in the center of the earth.
It was a specific place known as the Valley of Hinnon, which is located just
outside the walls of the old city of Jerusalem.
Hinnon is a very deep, narrow ravine with a horrendous history. The bible records that some of the ancient
kings of Israel used it as a place to make sacrifices to the idols of Moloch
and Baal, including slaughtering and burning their own children. The prophet Jeremiah held these practices invoked
God’s wrath and judgment, leading to the ruin and downfall of the nation. After Judah’s return from exile, the valley
was used as a trash dump where, among other things, human corpses were brought
to be incinerated.
It is easy to see how such a site came to be
associated with great pain and suffering.
It was a place to be avoided at all costs. Just like a professional athlete does not
want to end up on the Injury List, so too people in Jesus’ day did not want to
end up in the Valley of Hinnon. It makes
sense to do whatever is necessary to avoid such a fate. If sin destines you to this place, do what
you have to do not to sin, plain and simple.
Episcopalians, as a rule, don’t warm up to such negative
thinking. If we wanted the hell scared
out of us we would be Baptists, right.
So let’s flip this coin around and look at it from the other side. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe puts Jesus’
teaching in a positive context: “Things which matter most must never be at the
mercy of things which matter least.”
Have I told you about the successful businessman who bought a 2015 Ferrari
458 for $250,000? The first day he owned
it he pulled up in front of his business, parked the car, and opened the door
to get out. Just then a bus came
barreling down the street and tore off the car’s door. The businessman was livid that his beautiful
Ferrari had been damaged and was distraught with the knowledge that no repairs
would ever make it like new again. He
was screaming at the moon when a tow truck arrived. The operator jumped out of the cab and
listened to the man rant and rave on and on.
Finally the operator broke in and said, “I can’t believe how
materialistic you are. You are so wrapped
up in your possessions you don’t notice anything else.” The businessman was indignant, “How can you
say such a thing!” “Well,” the operator
replied, “you haven’t even realized that your left arm is missing. If must have been torn off by the bus.” The man looked at his arm, saw that it was gone,
and screamed out loud, “Oh no. Now I’ve
lost my Rolex too!”
Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things
which matter least.
What are your priorities in life? Listen to the counsel a veteran priest gave
to a group of seminarians just prior to their ordination:
“There will come a day when
you will stand before our Lord and Savior to give an account of your personal record
as a priest.
First, Jesus will ask you
to report on your relationship with your spouse. What did you do to add to your spouse’s joy,
how did you provide help and comfort in prosperity and adversity, and how did
you participate in nurturing your children in the knowledge and love of the
Lord?
After this, Jesus will ask
you to provide in-depth information on each of your children in order to
determine the amount and quality of time you invested in them.
Next, Jesus will ask how
you have developed and used the talents with which God gave you from birth.
Fourth, Jesus will ask
about the churches you served. He will
not be interested in their wealth or size, but will want to know how you cared
for the people while you were there.
Fifth, Jesus will not ask
you how much money you earned or how much money you saved. All he will want to know is if you were
honest in all your dealings.
And finally, Jesus will ask
for an accounting of what you did to make your community, your country, and the
world a better place.”
Now, for you, the list of
priorities might be a tad different, but not much. These are the things that matter most. How and when do the things that matter least
get in their way? What do you need to do
to cut them out of your life? Gandhi said
that actions express priorities. What do
your actions say about you?
Perhaps Jesus uses imagery as shocking as self-mutilation and
eternal torment to get our attention, to impress upon us the need to identify
what is important in life, and to force us to deal with all the lesser stuff getting
in the way. Victoria Moran, in her book Lit
from Within, writes this:
“A simple life is not seeing how little we can get by
with—that’s poverty—but how efficiently we can put first things first… When you’re clear about your purpose and your
priorities, you can painlessly discard whatever does not support these, whether
it’s clutter in your cabinets or commitments on your calendar.”
Lest we think of this as a private and personal
exercise intended to give each one of us a better and more rewarding life,
notice what Jesus says about the millstone.
Your priorities, when they are solid, are like stepping stones others
can follow, but when they are skewed they become stumbling blocks that cause
others to trip up in life. In other words,
your actions (which reflect your priorities) affect others. If all you care about in life is getting
ahead in your career, your partner and children will suffer. Your community will be a poorer place if all
your free time is spent with a remote control in your hands. You cannot be the blessing for others God
intends for you to be if your priorities are all out of whack.
I was in a grocery store on Friday. Two very active boys were pushing a cart and
ran into their mother. “Owww! #$@%!
That hurt.” She screamed so loud
I heard her clearly three aisles away.
Moments later we were in the same aisle when another incident promoted
the mother to yell, “Leave the cart right there. We are going.” I don’t want to judge this mother. Who knows what her day and her life are like? But I can tell you if I had gone off like
that I would do some serious soul searching to determine what I needed to
change in order to get myself under control and in a position to be a loving,
positive example for my children. Jesus
says the place to start is to orient our lives around the right
priorities.
It is an insight picked up years ago by a
professor who stood before his philosophy class holding a cardboard box. He set the box on his desk and removed from
it a large glass jar and a jacket of golf balls. He emptied the balls into the jar and they
piled all the way up to the rim. He then
asked the class if the jar was full and they said it was. The professor then took out a container of
pebbles and began to pour them into the container where they fell into the open
spaces between the golf balls. Again he
asked and again the students said the jar was full. That is when the professor produced a bag of
sand and poured it into the jar where it sifted into the cracks and crevices
around the pebbles. “Is it full now?” he
asked. “Yes,” the students said. From the box the professor produced a bottle
of wine, which he opened and poured slowly into the jar until all the sand was
saturated.
“This jar,” he said, “represents your
life. The golf balls are the important
things like faith, family, friends, and health.
These are the things that make your life full and even if every else is
lost you will still have great love and happiness. The pebbles are other things that matter, but
are not as important – your job, your house, your car. And the sand is all the small stuff that
fills up your day and drains your energy, but is not necessarily
essential.”
“Now notice,” he said, “If you put the sand in
first and then the pebbles there would not be enough room for the golf
balls. The same is true with life. If you spend all your time and energy on the
small stuff you will never have room for the things that are important. You must learn to pay attention to what is
critical for true happiness. Spend time with your children. Spend time with your parents. Visit with grandparents. Take your spouse out to dinner. There will always be time to clean the house
and mow the lawn. Set your priorities on
what matters. The rest is just sand.”
With
his point made, a student raised her hand and asked what the wine
represented? “I’m glad you asked me
that,” he answered. “It shows that no
matter how full your life may seem, there is always room for a glass of wine
with a friend.”
Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things
which matter least. Jesus reminds us to
do whatever we must do to make sure we do not lose hold of this simple but
essential principle in life.
