Reaching beyond Reach

Matthew 5:21-37; Deuteronomy 30:15-20; 1 Corinthians 3:1-9

Remember the black and white westerns that we watched on television more years ago than we care to remember? At least once in every episode someone – either a white hat or black hat – would confront someone of the other hat color and say, “Reach for sky!” In other words, get their hands where they could be seen and be as far from their pistols as possible. The disarmed person couldn’t literally touch the sky, but they knew what the gun-toting hombre meant.

Michael Phelps has been so phenomenal as an all-round swimmer because of his strength and also because of his reach. He has long arms and as he pulls himself through the water every stroke takes him several inches farther than his competition. Two inches every stroke adds up over the fifty meter pool distance times the number of laps in the race. 

“Reach” is the brand name of a tooth brush. The idea is that its head and handle are designed to enable the brusher to reach better the teeth at the back of our jaws where food particles can get trapped and cause decay.

When the Steelers aren’t playing football, Paula and I like to watch the Cleveland Cavaliers. What so often amazes us is the reach which some basketball players have. In addition to leaping high, they extend their arms so that their hands are way above the height of the rim. Commentators talk about player’s wingspan. Normally a person’s fingertip to fingertip distance is equal to their height. Some players seem to exceed that ratio as they reach upward or outward.

Ergonomists tell us that we need to exercise caution when we reach for things. If we stretch too far or twist just so while stretching, we can injure ourselves, particularly our shoulders or backs. Safety experts tell us that we mustn’t reach to the side of an extension ladder farther than our arms extend without stretching or to stand too high on a step ladder than it can safely hold us in order to reach beyond our reach. If we do, we run the risk of having the ladder shift under our weight and cast us to the ground. 

We need to know our limits in the physical realm and not exceed them, in spite of what the gravity-deniers tell us.

Not all reach is limited. In the realms of learning, work, social interaction, some people fail to reach as far as they might. A student might be content to just get by even though he has the capacity to excel. A capable worker may do just what she is asked to do and not take any initiative to make improvements to the process she uses or to create an alternative that would ensure greater efficiency, reliability, accuracy, or safety of what she does.

While some don’t reach as far as they could in life, others reach farther. Charles Duhigg, a Pulitzer-Prize-winning journalist writes for The New York Times. His book, The Power of Habit, was a bestseller. But when he looked at some people around him, he realized he wasn’t doing as much as he could. Duhigg was especially awestruck by Atul Gawande, a noted surgeon, Harvard Medical School professor, author, and MacArthur “genius” Fellowship recipient. Writing does not come easily to Gawande who relies on his wife to find the right words. He constantly stretches his writing facility and produces scintillating prose.

Impressed by Gawande, Duhigg looked into how some people are able to tackle so much and wrote a book titled Smarter Faster Better: The Secrets of Being Productive in Life and Business. One piece of advice Duhigg offers is to stretch yourself. Big goals are not impossible, even though they may seem out of reach. The reality is that the more ambitious you are, the more you'll do. Duhigg recommends creating “stretch goals.”

“A stretch goal is a huge ambition,” he says. “It inspires our motivation and dreams. But it can create panic.” To avoid panic, Duhigg says that we should break stretch goals down into shorter-term goals that are more achievable. Big stretches are best achieved one small stretch at a time.

Our reading from Matthew’s account of Jesus’ “Sermon on the Mount,” gives us a series of stretch goals. “You have heard that it was said to those who lived long ago...,” Jesus says. Then he goes on to encourage his hearers to stretch beyond the letter of the law. Don’t just stop there, dream further, go further, live further. 

It is not enough to not murder a person, but stretch further. Eliminate the steps that can lead to murder – hatred, anger, unreconciled differences, unwillingness to listen and understand where the other person is coming from.

It is not enough to not commit adultery, but stretch further. Create relationships based on trust and sincere affection rather than lust. Lust is another form of envy or greed. Greed is not only about money. It is about power, hierarchy, egotism, personal insecurity. All these things will put human relationships out of equilibrium.

It is not enough to not make a false solemn pledge, but stretch further by actually doing for the Lord what you have pledged to do. Jesus went even further, telling his hearers not to make pledges or oaths at all. The religious leaders of his day had come up with schemes to phrase pledges so that the maker had ways of getting out of them. We cannot take things which are beyond our control and influence, such as heaven or earth or the Temple, and use them as collateral for the oaths we make. The psalmist reminded us that “The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it, the world and its inhabitants too” (Psalm 24:1). Wherever we look, wherever we turn, we are surrounded by the Divine, and none of it is an appropriate basis for us to intensify the sincerity of a human-made oath. When a person of integrity says “Yes” or “No,” that person’s simple word can be trusted. Christ’s people are to make integrity the standard, reaching beyond the commonplace.

Physically you and I can only reach so far before we endanger or do actual harm to ourselves. Sometimes we have to learn all over again to reach. Many of you can identify with this. You have had a joint replaced or have had an illness that left you significantly weakened. As the healing progressed you had to go to physical therapy – P.T., otherwise known as “pain and torture.” The task of the physical therapist is to stretch you back into shape, to make you reach once more as far as you could or farther. Sometimes we have so coped with a limitation that we reduced the stretching and reaching in order to ease or avoid pain. The therapist uses exercises to get our muscles to once again do all they are supposed to do. Stretching them creates pain, but the pain also creates growth and greater flexibility. 

While we may dare to reach too far physically, and fall off the ladder or dare to gain back the reach we once had, we often fail to reach farther spiritually. We get set in our ways and spiritual activities. The muscles of our spirit life begin to lose their tone because we don’t exercise them like we know we should. Their range of flexibility begins to decrease until there is little or no spiritual muscle mass. We fall back on “You have heard it was said in days gone by,” and we codify that as something we aren’t going to deal with. If it was good enough for the old folks, it will be good enough for me. And our spiritual reach gets shorter and shorter because we don’t exercise our spirits.

The Jesus we meet sermonizing on the mount is the Jesus who insists on interpreting the law from what can be discerned of God’s intention for humanity. Jesus expands and reframes what has been taken as the traditional or normative interpretation of what the ancients understood to be God’s will. Jesus reaches beyond the reach of the Mosaic Law. He places himself solidly within the tradition, but the tradition does not have the last word. The Gospel writer John’s opening words openly declare this: “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God” (John 1:1). 

The images and ideas of the Sermon on the Mount that we have been considering for the last two Sundays and today remind us what the Season of Epiphany is about: Jesus reveals God and God’s nature and intent for humankind. Our quest as disciples of Jesus today is to continue to listen for and to follow the Jesus who came, not to abolish the law and the prophets, but to fulfill them. Jesus calls us to expand our spiritual reach, to reach farther than a lazy spiritual life will take us. 

May the Spirit aid our spiritual reaching.

Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com. 
Copyright © 2017 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.