Fifth Sunday of Lent, cycle A

John 11:1 - 45

This last week I have found myself getting pretty upset with God. If this virus ends up injuring someone I love, or disrupting society so much that people will be roaming around in gangs stealing toilet paper from senior citizens, or our life savings will be wiped out and we will have to move in with our kids, whose life savings will probably also be wiped out -- well, you get the idea. And I’m kind of mad at God for a situation in which we can’t go to church, can’t celebrate weddings or funerals or even the Easter services that bring our worshiping communities together. And between you and I, I’m upset with God that I can’t receive Holy Communion. So I say, along with lots of other people, “Why, God? Why are you doing this to us?”

Today we just heard the story of the Raising of Lazarus. I think the story might help us if you, like me, are wondering why God doesn’t seem to be answering our prayers.

Jesus is informed of a tragedy waiting to happen. He does not seem alarmed, even when he tells his disciples that Lazarus has died. I’m pretty sure the apostles wondered why Jesus hadn’t dropped everything and rushed to the home of his dear friends, Lazarus and his sisters. After all, that’s what people do, especially if they can help. And they will especially do it for the ones they love.

That’s what Martha says, as she meets him at the edge of the village. “If you had been here, our brother would not have died!” If God was really in charge, he would have kept Lazarus from dying. After all, dying is about the worst thing that could happen to someone. And Jesus tells her in a calm voice, “your brother will rise”. Martha, being of the Pharisee persuasion, agrees. I know he will rise on the last day, but that doesn’t help now, does it?

Mary then spots Jesus, runs out and falls at his feet, and says the exact same thing, “If you had been here, our brother would not have died!” Now maybe I’m taking liberties here, because I see Martha being very human, shaking her fist in Jesus’ face. I don’t blame her for being angry. Mary, on the other hand, is on her knees. And Jesus reacts very differently, He becomes perturbed, deeply troubled, and he wept. That’s the part that’s so hard to understand about this story. Why did he become troubled and disturbed and weep? Is it all a sham, is it something to make the forthcoming miracle even more dramatic? Does it tell us something about God and human tragedy?

When Jesus weeps, he shows us that our sorrow is also God’s sorrow. We do not have a God who sits in heaven watching everything happen without a care; his grief is as great as, or greater than our own. As the Good Thief found out, God is right up on that cross next to our own. In our current crisis, God is with us. Emmanuel.

When Jesus weeps, he reminds us that there are times when words cannot help, It’s a lesson we need to learn over and over again, because we all keep forgetting it. Sometimes the only response to someone else’s tragedy is to simply weep with them. When you turn on the news or go to your favorite news sources, someone is always talking,speculating, blaming, criticizing, or second-guessing; and someone else answers back. And neither really knows what they are talking about.

When Jesus weeps, he grieves for what is lost. Lazarus will be restored, of course, but not to the way things were. He will suddenly be a cause for disruption in his peaceful village. There will be those who will rush back to church, so impressed by this obvious miracle. There will be those who will want to kill him, as we learn later in John’s gospel, because his very existence is a threat to their way of life, their power, their legitimacy. And there will be those who will decide it was all a trick to make Jesus into some kind of God, and they will blame Lazarus for going along with this ruse. Lazarus has definitely lost something, even though he is raised from the dead. Jesus loses something as well when he is resurrected; he bears the marks of the nails on his hands and of the sword on his side, for all eternity. And when we get through this terrible trial, we all will have lost something.

The climax of the story is that it shows us how God works. God does not make decisions about who he will heal and who he will not. We are invited to pray for healing and for other good things. God may choose to answer our prayers. But in the story of Lazarus, we see God working in his usual way, where he always redeems our suffering afterward. In the miracles described in John’s gospel, you can see that thread running through them. The healings that take place are healings of people who have been suffering, sometimes for a very long time, like the crippled man waiting by the pool of Bethesda, or the healing of the man born blind. Lazarus tells us that God even redeems the suffering after death. And the mystery of the Cross simply universalizes this theme. Does that console me? Do I cease being angry with God? It may be that I am still angry, because I’m human, and his ways are not my ways. But in the end, it comes down to faith. He has shown us how he works. The cross could not be clearer. It is now up to you and I to believe that God is with us, suffering with us, precisely so that our suffering can be redeemed.

Fourth Sunday of Lent, cycle A

John 9: 1 - 41

One of my granddaughters, who was studying in France, was able to get home this last week. I know she was hoping to take her exams before she got home, but I haven’t had a chance to find out. And now that she’s home, she has to self-quarantine for two weeks. And if she stays in her parent’s home, that means that the rest of the family has to do the same. But all in all, it’s good that she’s home.

How things changed in one week. In our state the restaurants, bars and churches are all closed. We are all beginning to worry about how long this will be, and what we can do to prepare for it, assuming we can actually find what we need in the stores.. And maybe the worst thing for many of us is that our routines are disrupted. I usually know where I’m going to be and what I’ll be doing each day of the week. And that’s all uncertain now, and it seems like time is hanging heavy.

But there is a word for what we are going through -- apocalypse. That means lifting the veil, showing what was hidden. And the gospel today is about the same thing.

The apostles see the blind man and to them he is an object. “Whose sin, his or his parents, made him blind?” Because something had to cause this, and it’s important that we know so that we can avoid it. But Jesus says, neither; Jesus doesn't deny sin, but of course we are all sinners. Jesus implies that God doesn’t punish people for sins, he doesn’t inflict blindness, he doesn’t set loose a virus that is rapidly spreading throughout the world.

And Jesus makes a paste out of spit and dirt, and puts it in the man’s eyes. I don’t know why he did this, but it kind of reminds you of God forming Adam out of the dirt. He then tells the man to go and wash in a specific pool. Up to this point, Jesus hasn’t promised healing, nor has the man requested it. But to Jesus he is not an object to be ignored or pitied or tossed a few coins. Jesus, unlike his apostles, speaks to him and not about him. To Jesus, he is a fellow human being and maybe this was just enough for the blind man to trust him. And of course, at the pool the man can see again.

Jesus restores the man’s connections. And this current plague should remind us how we are all connected. We are all interdependent. As the stock market crumbles and people who wait on tables, who bar tend, who work for churches and synagogues are sidelined, for many it will be a severe economic blow. And it will affect many people who depend on the stock market for their retirement income. And even the wealthiest people will discover that they can’t isolate themselves.

I think it’s interesting that the townspeople don’t recognize the man. He isn’t the “blind beggar” anymore; he looks like everyone else. And his parents, rather than rejoicing, fear being expelled from the synagogue, and themselves almost deny their son -- “We do not know,” they say, “ask him, he’s a grown man”. And of course the Pharisees actively try to get the man born blind to attribute his healing to something, anything, else. “Give God the glory,” they say; because the man has been giving Jesus the glory, and that’s totally unacceptable. And in the face of this coronavirus, many of us will hunker down, as they say, and maybe learn nothing from the experience; maybe, like the Pharisees, we will refuse to recognize what is being revealed about how fragile our lives are, how human are those who govern us, how noble are those who work on the front lines -- not only medical personnel, but grocery store workers, delivery people, those who keep our lights on and our water clean. And maybe when this is over we will start to recognize these invisible heroes as fellow human beings, maybe even more important than our politicians in keeping our communities orderly and safe..

The blind man starts out by trusting Jesus, whom he has no reason to trust. As things progress, he keeps falling back on the fact that at Jesus’ hands he became able to see. No matter what the authorities say, no matter what they demand, he can only say, “If this man were not of God, he could not do anything.” In the story, the blind man’s faith increases in the face of pressure and adversity, even to the point of being thrown out of the synagogue. He is rewarded by Jesus revealing to him that he is Lord, he is the Son of Man promised by Daniel. And that is perhaps the final point in our apocalypse; what will we learn from this? How will the plague change us? Will we strengthen our faith? Because God didn’t cause this plague except in the sense that God is behind everything that happens. But in God’s world, all that happens speaks to us, and some of us will listen and learn, others will not. And we remember Jesus’ words, “I come into this world for judgment, so that those who do not see might see, and those who do see might become blind.” .

Third Sunday of Lent, cycle A

John 4:5 - 42

That’s a long gospel, isn’t it? And even though we’ve heard it so many times before, it continues to fascinate us. Part of the reason is that it’s such a good story. If we were raised Jewish during Jesus’ time, we would notice a lot of things that we twentieth century Americans don’t. We would notice that Jesus meets the woman at a well. Drawing water was a woman’s work, and if you were a woman with daughters, you would send them to get the water. And there would often be young men hanging around. Because the town well was about the only place you could meet girls. Isaac, Jacob and Moses all met their wives at a well; King Saul met some women at a well but didn’t pick any of them, and of course that was a sign that he would be rejected by God later on as the king of Israel. And maybe the Jewish listener would recall that the Samaritans, although worshiping the same God as the Jews, were according to legend descended from five different tribes who had been forcibly relocated to that region, and each tribe had once had its own God.

But even though you could write a book about this story of the Woman at the Well, we should probably look at just a few things.

First, Jesus breaks the rules. As the woman rightly points out, Jewish men would never speak to a woman in public, especially a Samaritan. But by breaking that social rule, he invites her to enter into a conversation with him. He takes the lead, and leaves himself open to rejection in doing so. But she gets the strength to overcome the social barriers and speak with him.

Second, Jesus begins by asking something of her. In a way, he makes himself vulnerable. He’s even willing to drink out of her cup. He, who could make water flow from a rock if he wanted to. How often are we willing to begin a relationship by being vulnerable? And yet, psychologists tell us that getting a stranger to do you a small favor is a great way to begin a stronger relationship, even a deep friendship.

Third, Jesus speaks to this woman person to person; scholars tell us that she comes to the well in the middle of the day because she doesn’t want to meet other women; when we learn that she’s had five husbands and the man she is living with now is not her husband, if we take that literally you could draw the conclusion that she had a bad reputation. But although Jesus points this out, he doesn’t condemn nor offer forgiveness; he simply continues the conversation. The real issue is that the woman for whatever reason doesn’t want the company of other women at the well. She prefers isolation. But Jesus sees without shaming her her past, and speaks of a future where Jews and Samaritans will no longer live as hated rivals, but will worship together in spirit and truth. And according to John, this is the first time Jesus reveals himself as Messiah.

Fourth, Jesus makes himself available. The woman, forgetting whatever caused her to seek isolation, rushes into the town and says, “Come and see: he knows everything about me. Can he be the Messiah?” and the people come, and their experience with Jesus validates the woman’s faith, and many of the villagers come to believe.

So what do we take away from this, this gospel in the middle of Lent? Perhaps Jesus is modeling for us how to be evangelists. Because that is our calling. Sometimes we let ourselves off the hook by reminding ourselves of that saying of St. Francis: Preach the gospel at all times, and when necessary, use words.” So we point out our lives which aren’t bad, which are pretty good. But who has been turned toward Christ because of you? Who have you personally helped along their journey to heaven? Have you missed opportunities to spread the Gospel because you were too shy, you didn’t want rejection, you believe in letting everyone find their own way.

But look what Jesus did. He broke rules; he spoke to a person that no observant Jewish man would even think of. And in asking for some water, he indicated to the woman that she could if she wanted get him something he needed -- a very little something, but a very necessary something. I think it’s human nature to feel positive towards someone who has asked for a small easily satisfied favor. And Jesus accepts this woman as an equal. I think when we evangelize, if we do, we see ourselves as bringing something valuable to the unwashed masses. We are doing them a favor. But when we are encountering them in an accepting way, in a way in which we honor their humanity, we are sharing our own good news. And finally, Jesus recognizes another very human trait; if you want to become a better evangelist, evangelize! The woman rushes off in excitement; she expresses what she knows and brings her townspeople back to Jesus. That’s the goal of evangelism after all, isn’t it.

Today make it a goal to evangelize someone. If you don't feel you know that much about your faith, learn. If you feel too shy to bring this sort of thing up in conversation, offer your target a book that moved you. Think of someone to personally invite to the next St. Mary social function. And always, pray for that person that you have set your sights on.

It would be nice to know whether we are responsible for bringing someone closer to Jesus. But the truth is that none of us can claim to have done that. First, every convert is acted upon by many influences. Second, God is going to use many instruments to bring souls to him. To be a good evangelist is to do what we can to bring the message to others, knowing that in the end God works through us.

Second Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle A

Matthew 17:1 - 9

I envy the Saints. Not so much because they are in heaven, where I hope to be someday, but because while they lived on earth, God seemed to treat them differently than he treats me. Sure, some got martyred and others spent their lives fasting and wearing hair shirts; that doesn’t sound like much fun. But some of those and some others had moments of direct encounter with God. Saint Francis heard God tell him to rebuild his church. Saint Bernadette and Saint Juan Diego and several other saints got to speak directly to the Blessed Mother. Saint Joan of Arc was on intimate terms with the Archangel Michael. And I look back on my life, and I may have had one experience that even approached anything like this. I was making a private retreat, trying to figure out what God wanted me to do with my life. As I knelt beside my bed praying, I heard inside my head the words, “Whatever you choose to do, I’ll love you and help you”. And at that moment all my uncertainty and inner turmoil disappeared. Was that God or wishful thinking? I can’t tell.

So we can envy Peter and James and John who were given the inestimable privilege of seeing Jesus transfigured there on the mountaintop, seeing him speaking with the giver of the law, Moses, and the greatest of prophets, Elijah. Hearing the voice of God the Father as well. This was so devastating that they collapsed on the ground, paralyzed, relieved only when Jesus touched them and told them in the same words he used to raise Peter’s mother in law, to bring the little girl to life, “Get up”. And everything seemed back to normal.

Some people say that the transfiguration strengthened Peter, James and John for the trial they would soon be put through -- the terrible death of Jesus. But I have two problems with this theory. One is that it didn’t seem to work, because they along with the other apostles went and hid. The second is that when Jesus returned from the dead, that’s when they took courage and began to believe. Why the transfiguration?

I’ve met a few people in my life who insist that they have the experience of God speaking to them all the time. I’ve met a few Pentecostals and Charismatics who almost measure their progress in holiness by how many vivid experiences of the Spirit they have had. Sometimes it almost seems like an addiction. I’ve met a few Catholics that get a high from traveling to holy places; they have special experiences when they are in Medjugorje or Lourdes or the Holy Land. I envy them as well. I wish I could have such experiences.

But I see Peter up there on the mountain -- “Let us build three tents” he says, or three booths, or three dwellings -- clearly Peter wants to prolong the moment, wants to have Jesus and the two great leaders of the Jewish people stick around a while in their transfigured state. But after the earth-shattering voice from heaven and the cloud that comes down, they see only the Jesus who has been their teacher, their fellow traveler, their friend -- and they have to descend from the mountain.

The challenge, you see, is not primarily to seek out those moments when God seems especially near, but rather, to find God in the ordinary moments. Because He is here, he is present. As the poet Hopkins pointed out, “The word is charged with the grandeur of God. It will flame out, like shining from shook foil. It gathers to a greatness like the ooze of oil crushed”.

And I think we learn that from the saints as well. Francis had the mystical insight to see that there was a connectedness in all of nature, even including people, so much so that he could call animals his brothers. Francis de Sales saw something of Jesus in even his protestant opponents, and wrote eloquently of finding God in ordinary life, in the little things we do, the work we toil at every day.

And perhaps an even greater challenge is to find God in suffering and death. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Matthew has Jesus transfigured on a mountaintop between two of the greatest of his ancestors and in a little while he is hanging on a cross between two thieves. On the mountaintop his disciples want to remain with him; at the cross they run and hide. On the mountaintop the Father himself declares that Jesus is the beloved son; on the cross it’s a roman centurion -- not an apostle, not a disciple, but a pagan -- who says “Truly this was the Son of God!”.

William James, the psychologist, said that there are people that seem built to have mystical experiences, and others who can’t or have them really infrequently. And sometimes it's related to aging. I knew an elderly nun who had gone into the convent because of a mystical experience -- and she had no others after that. She knew she had made the right choice in life, but she always missed that moment of intimacy with God.

But all of us can find God in the ordinary. So this lent, as winter turns into spring, try to see God in ordinary life, in nature, in other people; and once you become more able to do this, you will find the authentic life-long experience of God.

First Sunday of Lent, cycle A

Matthew 4:1 - 11
You can never tell what a person really feels like inside, but if the inside is anything like the outside, my ten year old grandson has a well developed sense of who he is.  He isn't at all shy, and will engage anyone in conversation, and hold his own.  Even though he is the youngest of five boys, he hasn’t got a trace of an inferiority complex.  He goes door to door to his neighbors to see if they might have a dog that he could walk, for a fee of course; he’s an entrepreneur..  It’s a good thing to know who you are, to be comfortable in your own skin, as they say.  And a lot of us aren’t.  We worry about how we look, about making mistakes in the way we speak, about being looked down on by people we respect.  There are whole sections of book stores devoted to helping us get to know ourselves better.
The gospel we’ve just heard is sometimes seen as an example of how clever Jesus is, as he matches the devil quote for quote, from scripture.  It’s also sometimes seen as a model for how we should resist temptation.  But remember, just before going out into the desert Jesus was being baptized, and heard the voice of the Father saying, “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.”:  And that is the real temptation Jesus faces.
If you are God’s beloved son, why are you hungry?  God wouldn't want his son to starve, would he?  Change these stones into bread.
If you are God’s beloved son, what are you doing out in the desert?  Show the world that you are His son, jump off that tower and let the angels catch you.  After all, God wouldn’t let anything happen to his beloved Son, right?
If you are God’s beloved son, take your rightful place and rule over the world.  That’s what God would want for his son, right?  And I can make it happen, just ask. 
In other words, Jesus is being tempted just like Adam and Eve were tempted.  If you are really God’s friends, if he really created you in his image and likeness, why did he tell you not to eat the fruit of that tree?  I bet he’s afraid you will become gods like Him. 
Our sense of self is fragile; most of us can think of a lot of things about us we’d like to change.  I could stand growing some hair on my head.  More seriously, I don’t really like getting old and knowing that there is much less life ahead of me than behind me.  I don’t like losing loved ones or being separated from my children and grandchildren.  And I really don’t like the fact that I keep confessing the same things every time I receive the sacrament of reconciliation. And you probably can think of a lot of things in your own life that you wish were different, that threaten your sense of self. 
But here’s the thing.  When God told Jesus that he was His beloved son, Jesus hadn’t really done anything except be baptized.  And when God gave Adam and Eve life, when He created them in his own image, when he gave them each other and Paradise to live in, They hadn’t really done anything to deserve all this.  And when we are baptized, whether as babies or adults, we haven't done anything to deserve what we become, which is to become a son or daughter of God the Father.  And at that moment he says to us, as he said to JEsus, and probably to Adam and Eve, “You are my beloved, in whom I am well pleased.”
But from that moment on, the world, the devil, and even our own minds and bodies begin to question that. If I am God’s beloved, why am I living paycheck to paycheck?  If I am God’s beloved, why did He take my husband, my wife, my child, my parents from me?  If I am God’s beloved,  why do I have chronic pain that no doctor seems to be able to do anything about? 
And even Jesus, there for a moment on the cross, seemed to say, “If I am God’s beloved, why has God forsaken me?”  And of course, moments later, Jesus knows that even death can’t change the fact that He is God’s beloved: “Father”, he says, because he is God’s Son, “into your hands I commend my spirit.” 
On this first Sunday of Lent, let us recognize that despite everything, despite our failure, our sins, our shaky sense of self, we remain God’s beloved son, His beloved daughter; and that doesn’t change even if we decide we want nothing to do with Him.  When Adam and Eve left the garden, lost their Paradise, it says in the book of Genesis that God himself made clothing for them.  Justice demanded that they become mortal, that they take on all the failings of being human.  Mercy gave them clothing to wear; Mercy sent a savior, because they remained God’s beloved son and daughter.  And so do we, every day, every hour.

Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle A

Matthew 5:38 - 48

“Do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also… Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect. Nice sentiments, but could you ever find human beings who actually tried to carry out these commands of Jesus? As it turns out, you can.

At the time Jesus died on the Cross, the number of Christians in the world would probably be less than 50. Historians estimate that by 150 AD, there were about 40,000. By 200 AD, there were 218,000, and by 250 AD, 1.17 million. And all this was going on before Constantine, despite persecution, despite other economic and social pressures. There were competing religions as well; Roman and Greek paganism was given lip service, but Mithraism from Persia was attractive especially to members of the Roman army. Manicheism, a relative of Zoroastrianism, was popular among intellectuals, and for a time St.Augustine practiced this religion. And Judaism was growing as well; there was an active missionary effort in those days and Jesus even referred to it when he talked about the Pharisees crossing the ocean to make a single convert.

But the massive growth of Christianity was unique. And perhaps the major reason was that you could see how Christian communities behaved. They followed Jesus’ teachings. They took care of each other, and even their enemies. If you were a starving pagan, you knew you could get a meal from the Christians. If you were sick or in prison, Christians would be there doing what they could. This is all well documented in the writings of people of that time who weren’t Christian. Sometimes they looked down on Christians as weak, lacking in the virtues you would expect of good Romans. Other writers spoke favorably, but the fact remains that those early Christians were not like we are.

And of course there is the testimony of martyrdom. Christians embraced it, because they saw themselves following in the footsteps of Jesus. But they were martyred in other ways as well. If you were a Christian, you might spend a lot of time in jail. There were numerous jobs you couldn’t have. And yet people converted; more and more were added to the ranks of Christianity.

There really isn’t anything comparable in history. Islam was spread by the sword, and still is, in a way. Buddhist missionaries were welcomed by rulers who saw this faith as a way to unify their subjects. And we’ve seen nothing like the growth of Christianity.

And it’s interesting to note that when Christianity became the official faith of the Roman empire, the monastic movement attracted large numbers of men and women; and when the Europe of Saint Francis time was corrupt, the Franciscan movement grew very rapidly. And we see that over and over again; there is something wonderfully attractive about people who genuinely live the values that Jesus taught, and it is the only way real Christianity spreads.

But can we be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect? Jesus seems to think so, and he points to a characteristic of the Father that bears thinking about: “He makes the sun to rise on the evil and the good, and the rain to fall on the just and unjust alike.” So why does the Father do that? He doesn’t condition his gifts on whether we are good or bad; he gives freely to all his creation out of sheer love. He expects nothing in return. He is pleased, if we can think of God as having moods, by whatever small token of love we can offer. He wants all his children, who he created in his own image and likeness, to live in perpetual joy with him. And if this is the way the Father is, it should be the way we are as well. Jesus is not expecting the impossible; when he calls us to repentance, he isn’t asking us to be sorry for our sins, precisely. He wants us to get rid of those attitudes that ask how far we can go without committing serious sin, those attitudes that are content as long as we can convince ourselves that we are better than someone else. Lovers never ask what the minimum requirement is to show the beloved that they are loved. In a way JEsus is asking us to put aside the ten commandments which put a floor under us, and turning our attention to the possibilities of how high we can go.

And I think Jesus knows that there will be a vast number of his followers who are trying to get by, who don’t give religion a lot of thought, who really aren’t changing much over the years. And they will be saved, we hope, because Jesus wants that. But every now and then a Benedict or a Francis or a Theresa will come along and live the Sermon on the Mount, and we will all be astounded and make a resolution to try a little harder. And the world will move a little closer to becoming the Kingdom of Heaven.

Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle A

Matthew 5:17 - 37
When I was in grade school, I remember having attacks of scruples.  That probably doesn’t happen anymore in our permissive society.  But as I learned more and more about my faith in my Catholic school, I began to view God as someone who was just waiting for me to make a misstep, at which point he would zap me.  This problem  became severe when I was preparing for confession:  I fought with my sister five times -- or was it six?  If I don’t get this right, I will make a bad confession, and that is a really serious sin; and if I make a bad confession but don’t know about it and go to communion, that will be a mortal sin as well … and my mind would go on and on as I examined my conscience.  In other words, if I wanted God to love me and bring me to heaven, I had to be a very very good boy.
But we know that’s not a true picture of God, right?  Although when you hear today’s gospel and next weeks, you might think someone forgot to tell Jesus.  This part of the gospel of Matthew is referred to as the six “antitheses” -- four today, two next week.  Each starts out with Jesus saying “You have heard it said … But I say…) and each time he seems to paint a picture of a very harsh God who is going to treat calling someone a fool the same as killing someone in cold blood. 
But I think we can get a different perspective. First of all, Jesus is addressing his followers and not the world in general.  And he is addressing them as a community, the beloved community that will usher in the Kingdom of Heaven, that will show the world a radical and wonderful new way to live; a community which will be the beacon calling all people to take part. 
If you look at it this way, the God who is revealed is not sitting up there with a lightning bolt ready to zap us.  The God who speaks to us here cares profoundly about the relationships between people.  Murder is terrible, a horrible sin.  But what about behavior that estranges people, that destroys the bond that should exist in the beloved community -- like the one Jesus wants to form, like the one that this parish family is supposed to mirror?  When anger, or calling someone a bad name, or belittling someone drives a wedge between you and someone else, for God that is very serious.  That’s why Jesus says it’s more important to heal that division than to even worship in the temple.  Relationships are a big deal to God. 
The same is true of the other sins named; adultery ruptures the relationship between a married couple; divorce does that and even more, considering all those affected.  And when Jesus talks about oaths, he is really referring to the common practice in those days of swearing by something sacred that what you said was true.  It happened in the marketplace a lot and in courts of law.  It’s sort of like when my kids were young and came to me to decide who was right and who was wrong -- I think they thought that the louder you shouted the more likely you were right.  And in the world of advertising isn’t it the case that they try to persuade you of the quality of a product because someone famous endorses it? Or in politics, where you are confronted with promises you know will not be kept in order to persuade you to elect someone?  In the beloved community everyone simply speaks the truth, because lies and equivocations harm relationships.
But what about all the terrible consequences Jesus mentions?  The Pharisees had a practice called “putting a fence around the Torah” .  This meant that they would take a law like “you cannot boil a goat in its mother’s milk” which is right there in the Old Testament for reasons I doubt anyone knows today.  After much thought and argumentation, that would lead to “you can’t serve dairy and meat at the same meal, and maybe you shouldn’t even use the same dishes.”  Modern Jews who follow these rules today do so because they see following the law as a wonderful way to worship God -- it doesn’t matter if the law doesn’t make sense -- God gave it.  We Christians have other ways to worship God.  But Jesus is sort of mocking the Pharisees.  They would argue about how far you could walk on the sabbath day before you broke the commandment forbidding “work”.  They would classify sins against the commandment “Thou shalt not kill” by how severe the penalty was -- if you stoned a woman for adultery or a man for blasphemy, that was ok; there were different penalties for killing your slave versus your fellow citizen.  So Jesus is basically saying with his exaggerations that it’s all serious; in the beloved community everyone works toward perfection; we don’t consider how much we can get away with. 
It’s worth asking today, just as we are about to begin Lent, am I working to heal broken relationships? Am I growing in virtue through my relationships?  Are my friends and family members growing in virtue because of me?  Because I am part of the beloved community.