Friday – Matt. 5:27-32
Today’s verses are packed with ideas and commands that are highly applicable to people in our culture. I’ve heard that divorce rates are no different in the Christian community than they are in society at large.
Additionally, sexuality is the hottest commodity on today’s market. The message is everywhere: old or young, if you’re not expressing yourself sexually, you’re not human.
There is so much that could be said, and needs to be said, about today’s text. But I think I’ll save my thoughts for a sermon. Or a sermon series on what God thinks about marriage & sexuality. Matt. 5:27-32 would be a great text to exegete.
This morning I decided to go another route. I decided to employ an ancient practice of meditation called Lectio Divina (spiritual reading). Richard Foster says, “Distinct from other ways of approaching the Bible, the ancient Christian practice of lectio divina is the primary mode of reading the Bible for transformation.” Foster, Life with God, 62.
Lectio Divina involves four elements or movements: lectio (reading with a listening spirit), meditatio (reflecting on what we are ‘hearing’), oratio (praying in response to this hearing), and contemplatio (contemplating what we will carry forward into our lives). There is much more that could be said about this practice but I’ll leave that for another day.
As I read the text through a few times, the words “throw it away” stood out. It was interesting because in the first part of the text Jesus calls us to throw away our eyes or hands if they cause us to sin. But in v. 31-32 he confronts the common practice of his time that wives could simply be “thrown away”. Our selfish tendencies long for what we don’t have (as with seeing others with lustful intent or going one step further to claim them with our right hand).
Jesus knows that sin, especially sins of lust and covetousness, can spread. And to keep a contaminated part from spreading and contaminating the whole, it must be cut off.
I remember visiting an elderly gentleman and his wife in my first pastorate. He spent his days in a wheelchair because his legs had been amputated. They had been infected. And that infection was spreading. He lost his legs to save his life.
I wonder how many of us should be taking sin, especially sexual sin, a little more seriously than we do.
