SIXTH SUNDAY after the EPIPHANY

February 13, 2011

Text: Matthew 5:21-37

Rev. Dale G. Bauer 

Early in mid-high, I think it was, I memorized and analyzed my first poem. It was introduced to me by my teacher and it was Robert Frost’s The Road Not Taken. How many of you know it? Here are the opening lines:

            Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

            And sorry I could not travel both

Ever been there? I have, thousands of times.

It’s called decision time. You’ve got to make a choice. One path or another, but not both. And you cannot know where the road will take you. When I went to college, I didn’t know where my degree would take me in life. When I went to a small, nearly bankrupt congregation in the mountains of Colorado, I didn’t know how well it would turn out. One of the greatest insights in my life was from a friend, a psychiatrist, who made the observation that no decision is 100 percent. Every decision we make has a margin of error and consequences we cannot know.

Now, my inclination would be to take the road most traveled. The one marked with lots of footsteps. The beaten path. The path of least resistance.

But Jesus suggests that we take the path of most resistance, the path less traveled. The road not often taken. The Sermon on the Mount is about the road not taken, although we do know where this road ends up: a future wrapped in the love of God.

That’s why the lessons of the Sermon on the Mount confound us. I’ve read them a thousand times. And a thousand times I do not understand. My only insight is that they are the road not taken in an age when lust sells, Hollywood sets our moral direction, and sin is a hopelessly outdated concept.

A couple of examples:

... if you remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother or sister ...

Jesus recommends that I reconcile in a tit-for-tat world. Please. He just doesn’t seem to understand. It is like he is speaking a foreign language to me. It was G. K. Chesterton, the great English writer and Roman Catholic, who said:

The reason Christ told us to love our neighbors and to love             our enemies was undoubtedly because they’re often the same people.

Just think about it. If I lived this position of reconciliation and so did my enemy, we just might meet in the middle.

Another:

But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart.

I live in a day and age when sex sells. It is everywhere. It is by lust to capture my attention. Everything from Beaver Toyota to The Mentalist. Guilty. I think I just heard the pearly gates slam shut.

The road not taken is one that suggests that I am a sinner. That means that all of my motives fail to be pure. I fall short of every commandment not just by the letter of the Law but by intent.

To fail to live by this standard Jesus sets is to fail my need for Christ Jesus and grace. The planet is riddled with the bodies of those who were victim of leaders who failed to understand and accept their own sinful, existential state.

One more:

But I say to you that anyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of unchastity, causes her to commit adultery; and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.

Now I’ve got your attention. Jesus is pointing to a road that is rarely taken. The last I heard, divorce affects one-half of marriages. These words have resulted in a mountain of guilt and uncertainty. It is as if Jesus were speaking a foreign language again.

The road Jesus wants us to take is one that understands marriage is the norm for male and female and God intended it to be permanent. Never broken. That may not be the way it is, but it is certainly the way God intended it.

But it militates against taking marriage lightly. It militates against marriage as a source of personal fulfillment or growth alone. It militates against divorce as moving on.

As we walk with Jesus through the fifth chapter of Matthew, we will journey with a Jesus who calls us to a fork in the road, the place to make a decision to take the road not taken and less traveled.

The end of Frost’s poem goes like this:

            Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

            I took the one less traveled by,

            And that has made all the difference.

The road Jesus calls us to take may be less traveled, but it ends by bringing us to the kingdom of God.

Amen.