Sermon – February 20, 2011

Seventh Sunday after Epiphany

“It is true that we cannot turn the cheek to the smiter; it is true that we
cannot give our cloak to the robber; civilization is too complicated, too
vainglorious, too emotional…The command of Christ is impossible, but it is not
insane; it is sanity rather preached to a planet of lunatics. If the whole world was
suddenly stricken with a sense of humour it would find itself mechanically
fulfilling the Sermon on the Mount. It is true that we cannot turn the cheek to the
smiter, and the sole and sufficient reason is that we have not the pluck.”
G. K. Chesterton, “Twelve Types”

These are the words of Gilbert Keith Chesterton. For those who may be
unaware of him, Chesterton liked to refer to himself as a journalist and he did
write for many publications, including his own G. K. Weekly. However, he should
more properly be known as one of the brightest of Christian thinkers of the late
19th and early 20th centuries. At the heart of much of what he wrote, whether he
was focusing on cultural criticism or penning one his Father Brown detective
stories, was the idea of paradox, defined as “a statement or proposition that seems
self-contradictory or absurd but in reality expresses a possible truth.”

This concept of paradox is evident in the statement I began this sermon

with. We find it particularly in the statement, the command of Christ is
impossible. This statement is troubling, for if it is impossible to do what is
commanded of us, why would Christ command it. If all of those things that we
read about in the gospel reading were impossible, yet commanded, it would be a
very poor, even an evil command that Christ has given us. Indeed we live in a
world today where there are many who think that is in fact the case. That
following after God and trying to live a life pleasing to God, is in and of itself an
evil thing.

Yet as we look further on we realize that Chesterton isn’t quite saying what
he at first appears to be saying. For he goes further and tells us why it is
impossible. It is not simply that the ideas themselves make no sense and
1
therefore we are unable to follow them, but rather that we are so caught up in
ourselves that we are unable to follow them. It is not our inability to function as
the Sermon on the Mount would have us function, but our unwillingness to do so.

I find the idea that Chesterton puts forward that if we only developed a
sense of humour, we would find ourselves fulfilling the Sermon on the Mount in a
mechanical way. I don’t think by mechanical he meant that we would simply be
going through the motions, but rather we would do the things that sermon calls
for us to do much in the same way that we make our morning cup of coffee or
tea, it would become the most routine of behaviours for us.

If only we had a sense of humour. That’s where the problem really lies. I
once read that the difference between wit and humour is that wit allows us to
laugh at other, while humour allows us to laugh at ourselves. We live in a very
witty world, and I for one am glad that we do. For much of what is wrong with
our world is better treated with laughter than with anger. Yet we seem to have
gotten to the point where we are all wit and no humour. We are able and willing
to laugh at others but unwilling to allow others to laugh at us and particularly we
are unable to laugh at ourselves.

For to laugh at ourselves, requires that we are able to see ourselves as we

truly are. “It is not the plain facts of the world which stand in the way of that
consummation, but its passions of vanity and self-advertisement and morbid
sensibility,” as Chesterton says.