I have a confession to share: I have sometimes been a pain to secretaries. When I’ve prepared materials for a worship bulletin, I have sometimes slipped in silly jokes to see if they will catch them as they prepare the final copy for print.

One time I included a note that the youth group would be having a pencil-sharpening party. It slipped by unnoticed — and someone brought in 47 pencils the next week in case we needed them. There was the time in a secretary didn’t notice that the Home Bible Study would be meeting in the host family’s attic.

When they’ve first encountered my strange sense of humor, secretaries have remarked that they were sometimes unsure when I was joking, and when to take me seriously. They had to learn to judge the difference.

Although a sense of humor wasn’t the reason, one might imagine people having had a similar reaction to Jesus, asking, “Is he serious?”

Think about some of his statements. “Are we really to cut off a hand or pluck out an eye if it causes us to sin?” (Matthew 18:8-9). And what about: “Are we to sell absolutely everything we have — everything? — and give the money to the poor? Everything? He has got to be joking!” (Luke 12:29-40).

Does Jesus want to be take literally? No. But, he’s not joking, either. Listeners of Jesus’ day would have known he wasn’t talking literally. It was a rhetorical style of his time and culture to emphasize a point by stating it in extreme language.

How hard is it for a rich person to enter heaven? Jesus said, in essence, it would be easier for a huge, gangly, hairy, stubborn, spitting camel to crawl through the eye of a needle. Much more colorful than saying, “Well, that would be next to impossible.”

“God comes first” doesn’t grab your attention like “If anyone must follow me let that one hate mother and father and spouse and children and brothers and sisters.” Jesus does not literally want us to hate them — but he drives home the point that their desires for us had better not be more important to us than what God wants.

And does “Try to avoid sin” have nearly the same force as “If your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out, for it is better to enter the kingdom of heaven maimed than to go to hell with a full body?” We don’t literally have to harm ourselves — but we do have to seriously seek to avoid things that tempt us into sin.

And perhaps we don’t have to sell literally everything and give the money to the poor — but Jesus teaching is a reminder that God’s way of living is to value people more than possessions. Jesus may not mean we literally must sell everything we call “ours” — but he is serious that we must recognize that all we have comes from God, and we must invest all we have and all we are in doing God’s will.

Jesus warned that our hearts will end up being where our riches are. If our riches go only into material possessions, then our hearts will be attached to those things — and when they are taken, or lost, or destroyed — or when we die and must leave them behind — our hearts will be stolen, or lost, or destroyed, or left behind with them.

Jesus knew that we all have basic needs: food, shelter, clothing. But he didn’t want us worrying about them. Jesus doesn’t say they aren’t important or necessary. But they aren’t to consume all our energies: God knows we need them. But, he says, concentrate first on God’s kingdom, and these other things will assume their proper priority.

Ask yourself: Is there some “thing” in my life — a possession, a source of income, a lack of income — which is drawing my attention from God, distracting me from doing God’s will? Are there “things” I value more than people? Do I care for the poor — or for what I possess?

If so, is there something I need to “cut off”? Do I need to shift my focus — put more of my time and energies into other priorities?”

Jesus calls us to live our lives for God, by living for others — and by doing so to find the true source of joy.