Fans of PBS might recognize G.K. Chesterton as the author of the Father Brown detective stories. He was a prolific author and famously once wrote: “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.” That he had a sharp wit can be seen in another of his saying: ‘The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because they are generally the same people.’ The gospel for today, St. Luke’s version of the Sermon on the Mount, details some elements of those difficult Christian ideals that Chesterton suggested have not been tried with much regularity for the past two thousand years. Let’s make a list. Jesus says we are supposed to love our enemies and do good to those who hate us, to turn the other cheek, to give to everyone who asks, to lend money without expecting repayment, to be as merciful as God is, to stop judging, to forgive. Yeah, that sounds difficult all right. Looking at that list, it strikes me it’s not that Christians do not try to live up to those ideals. Rather, we (or at least I) are unsure about how to apply them to real life situations we find ourselves in. Take, for example, the Lord’s command that we “give to everyone who asks of you.” In contemporary America, every day in the mail worthy charities solicit a donation. Occasionally one letter in particular catches our eye and we say, “That sounds like a worthy cause” and we send in a buck or three. Then the flood gates are opened. Instead of getting one or two solicitations daily we get dozens. Sorting through which of the charities to support becomes overwhelming so they all go straight into the circular file. Does Jesus really want us to give to every one of those charities which ask of us? It might have been possible in the village culture of his time but how does it apply in the global marketplace of today? Even though we want to live up to the gospel we are unsure how to apply these ideals in our circumstances. What to do?
You probably have heard the story (and it might be true) of a tourist in New York who once stopped a man carrying a violin case down the street and asked “Can you tell me how I can get to Carnegie Hall?” To which the musician answered, “Practice. Practice. Practice.” That might be the answer for us on how to live out the gospel ideals. Practice. We won’t do them perfectly. We will try this and then try that. We will fumble around. But the point is to keep trying, to keep at it. For example, Jesus told us to forgive. There are some wounds so deep and long-lasting we have a hard time forgiving them. We can practice forgiving, however, by starting with smaller hurts. As you build up the forgiveness muscle by forgiving smaller things you will, in time, we able to forgive the more grievous wounds. Or take Jesus’ word: “do good to those who hate you.” If you’re not ready to love the haters yet, you can practice it by, at least, not talking about them behind their backs. The commandments of Jesus are difficult but we get better at them by practice, by keeping at it.
Once upon a time three frogs. Larry, Darryl and his other brother Darryl, fell into a vat of milk. The rim was too high and they realized they were not going to be able to jump out and escape. Larry the frog said, It’s no use and sank to the bottom and died. The two Darryls were kicking and kicking trying to get enough purchase to escape from the vat of milk. The first Darryl got tired, gave up and sank to the bottom. His brother Darryl kept going. He just wouldn’t give up. He kicked and kicked and, in time, his kicking churned the milk into butter which gave Darryl a solid place from which to hop out of the vat. The end. The moral of the story: if you keep at, good things will happen and you might even end in a bucket of butter.