Anyone who’s ever taken up something as a hobby or pastime, or who’s taken up something for a more serious purpose such as a sport with the intention of entering into competition, will know that, in order to improve at what we’re doing requires at least some dedication to the activity in question. We may find that we have some natural ability at what we’ve decided to take up but, unless we practice what we’re doing, we’ll never be as good as we could be at that, or indeed any activity we engage in.
We usually take up hobbies and sports, of course, because we want to do them and enjoy doing them and so practice isn’t usually too much of an effort for us; or at least, up to a certain point it isn’t. But what happens when we’ve reached as far as our natural ability at an activity will take us? If we want to improve beyond that level, practice becomes harder. It’s not so easy for us anymore because we’re having to push ourselves beyond our comfort zone, probably both in terms of what we’re having to do in practice and the amount of time we’re having to spend in practice. And that can make something we took up for pleasure, not so pleasant as it once was. Once we’ve reached that stage, what we’re doing becomes just as much about hard work and dedication as it is about pleasure and so it’s usually when we reach that stage in our progress at an activity that we have a decision to make. Do we settle for the level, the standard, we’ve managed to achieve already and simply do what we need to do to maintain that standard? Do we give up on that activity and look for something else that’s easier and more enjoyable? Or do we knuckle down to the task in hand and put in the work and the time we need to, so that we can carry on getting better at it?
I’m sure we’ve all found ourselves in that situation at some time in our lives. I know I have. At one time, I was learning to play the piano and, at first, I’d happily put my ‘hour a day’ and more. But once I’d reached a certain level, things started becoming a bit harder. For one thing, I was having to play pieces of music that I didn’t really like. My piano teacher said it was what I needed to do to take my playing to the next level but, because I didn’t like the pieces, I didn’t enjoy learning or playing them and so I began to find practice hard work and did less of it. At the time I was also quite keen on a young lady I was seeing. She’d always thought that I spent too much time on the piano and not enough with her and, as piano practice became harder and not so enjoyable, I started to come round to that point of view myself. Obviously, that didn’t please my piano teacher because I wasn’t progressing as he thought I should have been. He thought the young lady in question was holding me back, and he told me so in no uncertain terms! So, in the end, I felt that I was faced with a decision; the piano or the girl? I chose the girl, which in hindsight wasn’t the best decision I’ve ever made, but that’s another story!
To be honest, I don’t think I’d have ever been a great pianist, no matter how much practice I’d have put in; I started too late for one thing, I was 20 before I took my first lesson, but it doesn’t matter how good we are at something, there’s always something we can do to be better at it. For example, I remember once reading an article written by an England international speedway rider of the 1970s in which he spoke about his early years in the sport during which he was a team-mate of one of the true greats of the sport, a man who was a 5 times individual Champion of the World. What he said was that while he benefitted enormously from those years, they also taught him that he, himself, would never be a world’s champion. Not because he didn’t have the potential, in fact he went on to win world championship gold medals at team events 3 times. No, he realised he would never be an individual world champion because he saw just how hard you had to work to achieve that standard and the sacrifices you had to make to get there and stay there. And he decided that level of work and dedication was something he simply wasn’t prepared to take on.
So whatever we do and whatever level we reach at a particular activity, there’s always something more we can do to be better at it. But, if we really do want to be better, we have to be prepared to do what it takes, whatever that might be, to improve. We have to be dedicated enough to what we’re doing to put in the hard work that’s necessary to improve and to carry on putting in that hard work to make sure that our standards don’t slip, and we don’t backslide into bad ways or errors. And just as it is with anything else we do, the same is true of our lives as Christians too, as Jesus makes abundantly clear in this morning’s Gospel.
The standard we’re all trying to achieve as Christians is the standard of Christ himself. That’s a very high standard indeed and one we can achieve on perhaps only a very few occasions but, nevertheless, that is what we should all be aiming for.
And we do need to aim that high because that is the standard, the level of performance if you like, that we need to achieve if we’re going to be sure of winning the gold medal, the prize of a place in the kingdom of God. And in this morning’s Gospel Jesus sets out in very vivid terms just what we have to be prepared to do in order to reach that standard;
“And if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off… And if your foot causes you to sin, cut it off…. And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out.”
And we have to do all these things because it’s better for us to enter the kingdom God crippled, lame and blind, rather than not do these things and be thrown into the unquenchable fires of hell. Which is really just a very vivid way of saying that we have to be prepared to do whatever it takes to live as God intends us to live and Christ taught us to live if we really do want to have a place in heaven.
I’m sure we can all think of ways in which our hands, feet and eyes cause us to sin, but I’ll give you a few examples. Do we use our hands to write unkind, or even worse, untrue things about people in letters, emails, texts or any other media? If we do, we should stop. Do we use our feet to walk away when we see people in need, or to walk, or perhaps use the pedals in our cars to go to drive to places in preference to coming to Church or attending Church meetings? If we do, we should stop. Do we use our eyes to feed our greed? In other words, are our eyes bigger than our bellies? Do we see something, want it and have it, not because we need it, but simply because we can have it, even if we then waste it because we don’t need it? That’s a very common way our eyes cause us to sin around Christmas time, isn’t it? How much food, for example, do we buy simply because ‘it’s Christmas’ but then waste because we’ve bought far more than we need and can eat? If we do things like that, we need to stop.
To stop doing these things though, requires dedication. We might be very tempted to say something unkind about others; we might truly believe that what we’re saying is true and justified, but how would we feel if someone were to say similar things about us? And so, no matter how much more difficult it is for us not to say those things than to give in to the temptation to say them, we have to have the dedication to our faith to do the difficult thing.
No matter how much easier it is for us to walk away from those in need than to help them, we have to have the dedication to our faith to do the difficult thing instead. No matter how much more we might want to watch the football, or whatever else it might be that we’re interested in that’s on the TV, than to come to Church, we have to have the dedication to our faith to put our faith first. And no matter how much more enjoyable it might be to meet friends, go for a drink or a meal, or even just watch something on the TV than to attend a Church meeting, we have to have the dedication to our faith to do the less pleasurable thing.
And no matter how much we might be tempted by what we see, no matter how much we might want what we see, we have to have the dedication to our faith to stop and think before we give in to temptation and take what we want. To ask ourselves whether we really need what we’re so tempted by or whether we’re just being self-indulgent, greedy and wasteful. We have to have the dedication to our faith to stop ourselves from doing what we want to do if what we want to do isn’t the right thing to do.
Like everything else, these things are a matter of practice. The more we practice our faith, the better we’ll be at living it out. The more often we stop and think before we speak, the more likely we’ll become to stop and think before we speak, all the time. The more often we put our duty and responsibility to the Church first when it comes to deciding what to do, the more likely we’ll be to put our duty and responsibility to the Church first whenever we have to decide what to do. And the more often we follow Christ’s example of resisting temptation, the more likely we’ll be to be able to follow his example and resist temptation at all times.
We all want to be good disciples of Christ, we wouldn’t be here in Church if we didn’t, and I’m sure we all want to be better disciples of Christ than we are now. So let’s have the dedication we need to put our faith into practice however hard, and even unpleasurable that might be at times. We all want to win the gold medal, the prize of a place in God’s heavenly kingdom, so let’s cut out and cut off anything and everything that’s holding us back from achieving the level of performance that we need to win it.
Amen.
The Propers for the 26th Sunday of Ordinary Time can be viewed here.
Parish Church of St Mark Chadderton 