This morning Jesus leads us up a very high mountain, draws us up higher and higher, asking more and more of us at each step. “You can do it! Come on. Come higher. Yes, yes. Forgive. Turn the other cheek. Lend. Give to those who can’t possibly repay. Be exceedingly kind to those who despise you or hurt you. Love your enemies. Return good for evil. Be merciful, merciful like God. Do not judge, don’t even think of it. Refuse to retaliate. Pardon. Give without expecting a return. Give. Give. Love and forget yourself.” It seems like much too much. Higher and higher we go. The air gets thinner, it’s cool and misty, and I can’t see the way ahead or behind for that matter. And perhaps you, like me, feel a bit light-headed, even faint. Jesus’ message is dizzying after all. In short, he expects so much of us, too much of us, demands too high a standard of excellence of us his disciples - like the teacher or the coach we secretly loved and 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.”
Jesus calls us this morning to be creative, to get beyond the tit-for-tat mode of reaction in relationship with one another, to do the opposite, to go beyond the logic of our sensitivities, to respond in love and not react in fear, to do what St. Paul and St. Benedict are always reminding us. “Outdo one another in showing respect. Defer to one another.” “Don’t be so obvious,” Jesus might say. “Do something different for a change- do good to those who hate you, even pray for those who annoy you. Give them the shirt off your back!” He sets the bar higher and higher, demands that we go beyond ourselves. My initial response, perhaps yours too: “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. Children are terribly burned, and skin has to be replaced. She told us how doctors would harvest tiny oblong patches of skin from different hidden places on a child’s body, under legs and arms, then take these teeny pieces of skin and make a series of alternating cuts halfway down on opposite sides of them, so that these little patches of fresh skin could then be stretched open like little accordions and placed in the scarred areas. New skin would grow in the gaps. It seemed wild, wonderful, ingenious to me; something small becoming wider in no time. Healing by 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, 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 earth, all dust, so too,” Paul reminds us, “we are like the man from heaven, Jesus our Lord, whose heart is big as all outdoors.”
Not long ago, a mother of twelve whom we know remarked to me that people sometimes ask her how she can love each one of those kids, so many. “They’re too many.” “Nonsense,” she says, “love does run out. You just love; the more you give, the more there is.” I said, “You know sometimes I feel like that, afraid to keep loving after I’ve been hurt, afraid I won’t be loved in return, afraid I won’t have enough love left.” “Nonsense,” she said again. “Don’t you understand? It’s like that boy’s picnic lunch- only five loaves and two fish- but Love could bless it and break it and stretch it and make it enough to feed thousands with scads of leftovers.” “No,” she reminded me, “Love is not something you ever run out of. The more you give, the more there is.” But when I’m hurt and angry, I want to shut down close the shades, say, “Sorry, closed. No one’s home.” Jesus begs, demands something much more from us today. “Open up. Give. Forgive. Be merciful. You can manage. You have no idea how big your heart is, how big it can become.”
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, that small choices to love and defer and restrain our tongues and our judgments do matter, that 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 stretched his Heart wide open on the cross. Love never fails, never runs out, because even a little bit of love freely given will multiply like crazy; our tiny hearts in Love’s skillful hands can be stretched far beyond what we can possibly imagine.
Photograph by Brother Brian. Homily by one of the monks.
