Mark 9:38-50
Growing up I was scared stiff of these verses in Mark’s Gospel that we just heard…
- Where Jesus says that if your hand causes you to sin cut it off…
- And if your foot causes you to sin cut that off too.
- And if your eye causes you to sin gauge it out.
- I remember when I was 5 years old…I stole candy from the little mom & pop store across the street from my house.
- And then hid it under my bed.
- And I remember hearing this passage soon after that and thinking how my hand had indeed caused me to sin.
- And then and there I decided to never steal again lest Jesus insist I hack off my hand.
- Well…Jesus did not hack off my hand.
- But my mom made me give the candy back to the store owner and apologize for stealing his candy.
The Lord be with you
And also with you
Here’s the thing though: My hand and my eye and my foot cannot be blamed for my stumbling.
- To find the culprit behind my sin do not look at my hand.
- Look at my heart…my poor feet just do what they are told.
- But…it would seem…based on this text from Mark’s Gospel…this is what discipleship looks like.
- Being willing to mutilate yourself to avoid sin.
- This is a text of terror for children.
- It’s like the Gospel according to Beetlejuice.
The reading we just heard talks of stumbling…not of sin.
- So…I started getting curious about the word stumble.
- Stumble in Greek is scandalizo from the word group scandalon…from which we get scandal.
- So…then we might think of this text as saying we need to cut from us the things that trip us up.
- The things that cause scandals and dramas?
Since it is political campaign season…I was thinking about what the word scandal means in the political world.
- Scandals are when everything stops so that something small can be made into something huge…
- So that no one will pay attention anymore to the real story.
- Scandals are always a distraction from the main thing.
- And no one seems to love a scandal…a stumbling block…more than Americans do.
So…I wonder…rather than suggesting we literally hack off our own limbs…
- If Jesus is making a strong point about how critical it is to remember what the real story is.
- Maybe his warning against stumbling is a warning against focusing too much on anything that is not the main thing.
- And this is really a simple definition of sin:
- Placing something or someone or some accomplishment at the center…
- And making it…and not God…the source of our identity.
- It is loving something…as God…that is not God.
- It is giving our heart to that…which cannot love us like God can.
When these things feel like the main thing…they need to be cut away.
- Sometimes we might have the insight and will to cut from ourselves the things…the scandals…that distract us from the main thing.
- Perhaps…we may know the thing that needs to be cut out of our life…
- And we may even have the fortitude to do it.
But sometimes these things get ripped from us by God.
- I have had acquaintances tell me things like:
- “I still cannot believe I actually am coming to church.”
- Meaning: “My resentment toward religion and how it has hurt me is no longer the main thing.
- That scandal has been cut from me enough that I am now part of a spiritual community again.
- And I am happy it happened.”
Or someone says to me:
- “I cannot believe I am going to seminary.”
- “I can’t believe I am giving away 10 percent of my income.”
- “I can’t believe I see my work in corporate America as a Christian vocation now.”
- “I can’t believe that I no longer hate some of the people I use to love to hate.”
- “I can’t believe it. “
When we say: “I cannot believe such and such has changed in my life”…pay attention to that.
- Because our bafflement at this stuff is called being a disciple of Jesus Christ.
- It’s called living as a person of faith.
- I thought all this stuff about following Jesus was a matter of mustering up enough self-discipline to amputate my own limb.
- We figure that we are the ones who must hack off our hands and feet…
- And gouge out our own eyes and give away all our possessions…
- And shrink our camel-sized selves down to needle-eye size.
- But in fact…it tends to be God who does this for us…
- Who prunes us…feeds us…cuts us and our bank accounts down to size and shapes us.
This is why we gather every single week and tell the same story.
- We gather as the people of God and tell the same story because THAT STORY is THE STORY.
- And we simply must be reminded of it again and again because we are so easily distracted.
And here’s the thing:
- THAT STORY of God’s redeeming work for all of creation that happens in the birth…life…death…and resurrection of Jesus Christ that we tell every single week.
- THAT STORY is an axe.
And anything that we put in the center:
- Job…relationship…money…status…pride…accomplishments…politics… security.
- The things that lure us with promises that can only be given by God.
- The things that cause us to stumble.
- The promise in the Gospel text is this:
- All that stands in the place of…
- And all that would keep us from God will be burned away.
My confession is this:
- I do not go to church to have my needs met.
- I go to church to have my needs changed.
- The Gospel of Jesus Christ will never meet my needs.
- But watch out.
- Because it WILL change our needs.
- And that is the most beautiful thing I can tell you.