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| Some life lessons are more painful to learn, like not doing too many things at once on a bicycle. |
© Seth Olson 2020
February 16, 2020—The Sixth Sunday after the Epiphany
When I was a junior in college my dad offered to buy me a new car. It was generous of him, but I responded with a counter-proposal. Buy me a new bicycle instead. Sounds crazy, right? Who passes up a car for a bike? My reasoning was that my college’s campus was much easier to navigate on two wheels rather than on four. What I did not realize when getting this bicycle though was all the valuable life lessons I would soon learn riding it.
The first lesson? On a bicycle one can only do a certain amount of activities at one time. How did I learn this? One afternoon, as I was excitedly riding to track practice, I tried to take off my sweatshirt, take a sip from my water bottle, and hop a curb all at the same time. This proved to be a bit too much. When it came time to pop up on the curb instead I went flying over my handlebars. That moment is clearly etched in my memory—and the scars from that accident are clearly etched under my right eye. A friend was standing on the sidewalk nearby. I still recall his horrified face, snarling as I crashed onto the pavement face first. He ran inside to tell my track coach that I was probably unconscious or maybe dead. An Emergency Room visit and 25 stitches later I learned a valuable lesson: don’t do too much at one time, or as Jesus might say, “There is need of only one thing.”
Another piece of wisdom I learned on that bicycle happened just a few weeks later. I was hurrying to breakfast before class, when I tried to take a turn too aggressively. As usual it was foggy and misting in Sewanee where I went to school, and my tires slid sideways on some slick sandstone. Again, I found myself headed to the ER. This time it was my lower leg that required stitches with 4 deep incisions made from the teeth of the chainwheel cutting into me. By this point, my father began questioning whether he should have purchased this bicycle for me. 2 ER trips in one month, maybe a car would have been a cheaper gift? The second valuable lesson: One cannot steal time. Or as it says in Proverbs, “Ignorant zeal is worthless, haste makes waste.”
The third lesson I learned on that bicycle came years later. After graduating from Sewanee, I had the privilege of living and working there for three more years. During that time I rode my bike even more. My roommate worked in the local bike shop and some weeks we traveled more than 100 miles together. One day we were descending down Highway 41 from Sewanee towards a little town called Cowan. In the early morning we rode through a slight fog just as the sun was rising. There was just enough light to see a piece of debris in the road. As I zoomed closer and closer to the object I found that my path was completely locked onto the thing in the road. At the last second, I clumsily swerved out of the way, barely keeping my balance.
My friend noticed my awkward darting, dodging maneuver. When we finished the descent and were calmly pedaling down a valley road, he asked, “What happened?” I told him that I was so locked onto the object in the road that I barely missed it and almost crashed getting out of the way. He told me, “You can’t focus on where you don’t want to go. Your hands and your bike will follow your eyes. If you look at a pothole you will steer towards the pothole. If you steer towards the clear path, then that’s where you’ll go.” This was the third, and perhaps most enlightening lesson I learned on that bicycle. And, Jesus has a lot to say about this lesson too, especially in today’s Gospel text.
In this passage from the Gospel according to Matthew, we observe Jesus talking about several places where we are not to steer. What are the objects for us to dodge along the way? Not only murder, adultery, and swearing falsely, but also anger, name-calling, lusting, lying, and swearing by anything at all. Some of the language Jesus utilized makes it sound like he was trying to scare his audience into doing what is “right.” But, Jesus wasn’t saying we must miss all these obstacles or else we will be steering our lives into hell. Instead in this passage, Jesus revealed that our actions follow our intentions.
In other words, steer towards where you want to go—not where you don’t want to go. Jesus urged us to understand that our intentions inextricably link with our actions. Perhaps, in the bicycling analogy, it’s more apt to call murder, adultery, and lying the ravines off the side of the road rather than the tiny pebbles along the way, regardless our intentions are the eyes that direct us toward our destination—whether it be healthy, unhealthy, or somewhere in between.
This is why Christ Jesus said it’s not good enough not to murder, we are not to become angry with our neighbor. Because our anger towards another has the potential to dehumanize and destroy relationships. It’s not good enough not to commit adultery, we are not to lust after our neighbor. For our lust towards others objectifies them and distorts relationships. It’s not good enough to avoid swearing falsely, we are to let our yes be yes and our no be no. Because any exaggeration of the truth destroys trust and makes honest relationship impossible. And, I believe these intentions exist as the highest goals for us as individuals and as a community. We are to aim our lives toward them, as we follow Our Lord. But…
What happens when we do become angry with our neighbor? Are we to ignore it bottling up the rage? What happens when we lust after someone, or someone’s car, house, job, or life? Are we to just ignore it hoping it magically goes away? What happens when we lie, swearing by something or someone? Is it good enough for us to just pretend like it never happened?
No! Of course not. But herein lies the challenge of this passage, Jesus provided for us targets impossibly difficult to hit—establishing that it is no longer good enough for us to keep ourselves from killing or committing adultery or swearing falsely by God’s name. Instead, the path has become much narrower. So what do we do?
I love the image of our aim affecting our steering. I love the comparison to the bicyclist’s hands guiding where she goes. I love the analogy of aiming toward the place where we want to go, not the place where we do not want to go. But, still there are moments when we will go the wrong way—intentionally or unintentionally, through thoughts, words, and deeds, things done and left undone. And, the question is what do we do then? It’s pretty easy actually. We turn around.
Jesus lets us know that we are called to immediately turn around to reconcile with our neighbors. To seek repentance even before bringing in someone else. We can wonder, what about when that doesn’t work? What if the crime is too grave? Or what if we are too scared?
Oftentimes we psych ourselves out. We start to believe sin is some particular action that is on a list somewhere that Jesus wrote down for us. “Don’t do these things” it says at the top of the page. However, sin is not a particular act, but whatever causes separation between God and ourselves, between our neighbors and us. We all sin. We all steer to the wrong spot. We all aim at the wrong thing. We all make mistakes. But more than some list of things that we aren’t to do, sins are the ways in which we distort our relationships with God, with Creation, and with one another. Whatever sins we commit cause separation. If that sin consumes us, it can distort who we are, and we can believe that we are separated from God. This sounds scary. It feels scary. Because it is scary. Yet, it is not the truth.
The truth is that even though our sins and wrong intentions create a sense of separation between us and God, there is nothing—absolutely nothing—that can cause God not to love us. When we recognize this reality—that God loves us unconditionally, eternally, limitlessly—then we can see with new eyes who’s steering us on our lifelong journey.
When we invite God to guide our lives, then we can begin to see where the distortion and separation exist within us, which sounds like a good Lenten practice if you are looking for one. God will remove those parts from us, like Jesus invited his audience to proverbially cut those parts off in today’s Gospel. There is no way to completely avoid potholes, debris, and even the ditch on this side of the road. They all come with the journey. And, yes we probably crash or go the wrong way. But, as we bring our wills in line with Christ’s own, we realize the journey is not about keeping from crashing, going the “right” way, or even getting to the destination. No, our journeys are about inviting Christ to be with us every mile we travel. Keep pedaling and let Jesus steer. Amen.
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