It is better for you to enter into life maimed
than with two hands to go into Gehenna,
into the unquenchable fire.
And if your foot causes you to sin, cut it off.
It is better for you to enter into life crippled
than with two feet to be thrown into Gehenna.
And if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out.
Better for you to enter into the kingdom of God with one eye
than with two eyes to be thrown into Gehenna… Mark 9
Jesus’ radical, seemingly ridiculous exhortation to us is meant to catch us off-guard. Jesus is speaking kingdom language here, spoken in the kingdom, that place where nothing whatever is more important than doing the Father’s will. So, Jesus speaks these crazy words to us: “Cut off your hand, your foot, poke out your eye if they cause you to sin.”
And the invitation is to get beyond the words, beyond the obvious, to the heart of his message - God’s desire for our absolute holiness. Jesus is teaching us that whatever impedes love and compassion must be eliminated at its root. It must be yanked out, cut off. He sets the bar higher and higher, demands that we go beyond ourselves. He expects so much of us, too much of us, demands a very high standard of excellence of us his disciples - like the teacher or the coach we loved and simultaneously found absolutely infuriating, who always expected more, who had such confidence in our abilities, who knew we could do it. “I won’t accept shoddy work from you. Take it back; do it over. You can do better. I want more. I expect more of you.”
Our initial response may well be: “You’ve got the wrong party. Sorry. It’s too much. You want too much. My heart is too small. I can’t.” His response, “Of course you can’t. We can, I can do it through you, with you, in you. I can stretch your heart wider than you ever imagined.”
Some years ago, my friend, John, was dating a plastic surgeon, who was interning at Boston Children’s Hospital. I remember her telling us about her work with little children in the burn unit. When children are terribly burned, their skin has to be replaced. She told us how doctors harvest tiny oblong patches of skin from hidden places on a kid’s body, under legs and arms, then take these teeny pieces of skin and make a series of alternating cuts on opposite sides of the pieces, so that the little patches of fresh skin can then be stretched open like little accordions and placed in the scarred areas. New skin grows in the gaps. It seemed wild, wonderful, ingenious to me; something small becoming wider in no time. Healing by cutting and stretching.
Maybe that’s what Christ wants to do with our tattered hearts if we let him in. Frankly, I wonder how available I am to this stretch, this conversion of heart that Jesus so desires. It’s awesome work; certainly, somewhat painful. But he promises that healing, hope, wholeness, and love will be accomplished through our availability to his skillful touch and cut and stretch. Jesus says to us, in other words, “Trust me. You can afford it.” And the good news is - if your heart has been broken open, the more little holes and slashes and old wounds you’ve sustained, the more stretchable your heart will be, and the easier his work will be. He can then make our hearts like his own Sacred Heart burning with love and mercy. “Just as we resemble Adam the man of the earth, all dust, so too, we are like the man from heaven" - Jesus our Lord" whose heart is big as all outdoors.
Baptized into Christ, we are bound to live in covenantal relationship with him and with one another, and to hold to the conviction that peace and love and reconciliation and tender mercy are "not far away things to hope for, but things we can do together now." We are bound to believe and proclaim that love is shown in deeds now. All those small cuts - small choices to love and defer and restrain our tongues and our judgments do matter; our faithfulness in little things has consequences far beyond what we could hope or imagine - far beyond the walls of this monastic enclosure because “those who love more can do more.” Love does stretch hearts wide open. We believe this because Love himself has shown us; Love himself has given himself away for us, to us on the cross and on this Table over and over again. Love never fails, never runs out, because a little bit of love freely given multiplies like crazy, because our tiny hearts in Love’s skillful hands can be stretched far beyond what we can possibly imagine.
Detail of fresco by Masaccio. Reflections by one of our monks.