Certain places in the world are so iconic that we recognize them immediately when we see a picture of them. Mt. Rushmore. The Eiffel Tower. The Sphinx. The Grand Canyon. The Duomo in Florence. Wrigley Field.

And if you’ve had any experience there, even mentioning the place can flood you with emotion. You remember the kinds of feelings you had when you first saw them—and how they’ve made you feel every time since.

But it doesn’t have to be a specific place to trigger memories and emotions. If I say, “middle school locker room,” I bet that fills some of you with all kinds of memories, with the complex emotions encoded in each of our mental and emotional maps from pre-pubescence.

If I say, “newborn nursery,” or “Grandma’s kitchen,” or “Dad’s car,” or “Mom’s jewelry box,” or “a swimming pool in June and the smell of chlorine”—many of you will immediately see an image in your mind, feel something inside.

But even as we have wonderfully happy memories evoked by images and places and sounds and smells, we can just as easily find ourselves triggered by reference to something awful.

“The DMV,” “the principal’s office,” “a dark cellar,” or “turning left out of the parking lot at the Kroger on Bardstown Road during rush hour.”

Those are more or less the easy ones. But there are deeper, uglier ways to be triggered. Here's a couple: think “Memphis police” and “Tyre Nichols.”

Doesn't take much, does it? Just two words to summon a resigned shake of the head, a foreboding lump in the stomach.

The commemorations surrounding the 78th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz Friday demonstrate the power of memory and why there are certain places in the world that evoke a sense of dread and despair, a sense that evil is very much a part of our world.

Among some folks in our culture who decry the ubiquity of “political correctness,” it has become fashionable to mock “trigger warnings”—that is, exposing someone to an idea or an image or a phrase that triggers a horrible memory and a painful experience—to mock “trigger warnings” as an example of the weak constitutions of liberals and “woke” progressive “snowflakes.”

But talking about being “triggered” is only an observation that there are things in our environment that elicit strong physical and emotional responses within us. Being aware of and taking responsibility for how your actions and words might induce powerful reactions within others isn’t being “politically correct”; it’s called being a decent human being—or in the context of worship, being a faithful follower of Jesus.

Our passage this morning opens with a trigger. It may not jump out at you, but it’s there all the same. Matthew’s readers would have picked up on it.

Can you see it?

It’s in the very first sentence. “When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain.”

Now, why does that produce a response in Matthew’s readers?

Think about it. When was the last time Jesus was up on a mountain in Matthew's Gospel?

Do you remember?

It’s in the previous chapter. Jesus has been out in the wilderness having a wonderful confab with the Devil over the subject of Jesus’ political aspirations. Jesus has been tempted to turn stones into bread and to throw himself from the pinnacle of the Temple.

Jesus hasn’t fallen for it. (Did you see what I did there?)

For the final temptation, Matthew tells us, “The devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor.”