Hey Lefty, what happened to your eye?

Having no thoughts worth sharing today, I intend to steal today's post.

Father Dwight's sermon was on Mark 9:38-48.  That is the sequence where Jesus says to cut of our hand if it causes us to sin, pluck out our eye....

Father Dwight's sermon threaded the needle between the literal interpretation and dismissing the reading as hyperbole.

Bear in mind that we heard that sin, "being made unclean", comes from within and not from what we eat just two chapters earlier in Mark 7:21-23.

Father Dwight eased into his argument. Rather than quote him, I choose to paraphrase.

We all know somebody who is argumentative so let's use that person as an example. Perhaps that is our own particular weakness. We know that arguing is sinful (Matt 5:21,22). Why do we argue? It is because a part of us, our self-image, demands that we always be right or we have an over-powering need for dominance.

Those are the parts of us we need to excise and cast away from ourselves. The parts of our "self" that lead us into conflict with God's laws.

Ripping out our eye won't save us from lechery or envy. Cutting out our tongue won't stop us from spreading lies nor will cutting off our hand(s) stop us from stealing or hurting our brothers. We need to let go our our sense of entitlement and be grateful for what God has given us.

Too hard to be grateful?  Check this out and get back to me.

Just as a side note: The woman sitting in the pew in front of me took notes.  First time I have ever seen that.