These are but a sampling of the impossible things Jesus told us to do.
In the context of these sayings from the Biblical Canon, it is very easy for me to see how completely consistent it was for Jesus to say that it is easier to get a camel to fit through the eye of a needle then for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.
And today we have another impossible instruction. If another member of the Church sins against you... The famous Matthew 18 passage.
I don't know about you, but as I've racked my brain, I don't remember this process being followed either by me or, what probably ought to have happened more often, toward me. Now, that could mean that no one has ever sinned against me, and that I've never sinned against anyone else. Or maybe it means that everyone has always immediately and secretly reconciled in the privacy of individual conversation. Somehow I don't think so.
I mean, really, I've been associating with Germantown Mennonite Church for over 30 years and have left angry twice, each for over five years. I don't know if the Matthew 18 process should have been used during these and other times. But in my experience the process was thwarted – by pride, by expediency, as a consequence of group dynamics, because of the time and energy required, or the emotional intensity or exposure involved, perhaps for the sake of confidentiality: there are many reasons that this passage gets put on my list of the impossible things Jesus asks us to do. There is also the subjective nature of who is sinning and who is being sinned against. Each of us swinging planks at specks of sawdust.
Following this or most of Jesus other instructions throughout the gospels requires a singularity of purpose and commitment beyond the capacity of anyone I've known. Or perhaps I should say, in the spirit of first attending to the log in my own eye, it is beyond my own courage or capacity.
In my experience, we do not want to admit that these are impossible things. Christian theologians and writers, particularly, do not want the things Jesus tells us to do to be impossible. So for each of these impossible tasks, they apply the methods of the Sophists, spinning every single one so that it can be separated out into a comfortable bite size and be swallowed by eager consumers, if not whole, at least in intellectually regurgitated little bits. It is explained on Sunday morning as allegory or parable. It is a teaching story. It has to be taken in it's context. Or perhaps Jesus was using a little hyperbole. Even better, Jesus was pointing to one particularly egregious practice at that time or to some blatantly hypocritical group. It wasn’t meant literally. Not for now. Not for us.
I don't mean to belittle the dedicated, erudite and very admirable scholars who have informed me throughout my life. But as I see it, Jesus simply sets the bar very, very high when it comes to living a life centered on loving God with all your heart and loving your neighbor as yourself. We can't help but fail to meet this standard. Paul says it best: “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” I think we have. Certainly I have.
Yet, even as we accept the Apostle Pauls’ understanding of divine forgiveness for our faults and failings, we still have to live with this impossibly high bar held up for us in the example, teaching and the sacrifice of Jesus. When we look at the composite of the impossible instructions that Jesus gives us it is easy to realize how short we come and, I suppose, it is essential that we use one of the tricks the Sophists might have used: we are but followers of Jesus, and we must learn to accept our frequent failures as part of the path we have chosen.
It is so much easier to go back to believing impossible things. Even the impossible things that Jesus taught us: that there is a merciful God who loves us. That there is purpose in the travails of this life. That the universe has some order and that we each play a part in it. That there is ultimate meaning and that, if we want, all we need do is look around us and the Kingdom of God is already here.
We are more than distant admirer's basking in the lingering glow of God's universal love exemplified in Jesus and the community he inspired 2000 years ago. We are followers of Jesus. We are ever reaching to find ways to move closer to the impossibly high bar he set for us, not, if I may borrow the phrase from the communion litany, because we must, but because we may. For what better way to respond to the message that God loves us, than to try to love the rest of the pathetic bunch of grasping, clawing, selfish Human Beings that God also loves? And what better way to do it than to try to grasp and follow the instructions given to us by the one in whom we see God's love most dramatically exemplified?
In this context, I have found myself wishing that Jesus would have given me something easy to do. And in my sojourns I think I have found it. I think I've found something that I can do, confidently, regularly that says, “I am a follower of Jesus. I am not just trying to do what he told me to do. In this, I am doing what he told me to do. ”