Pentecost 19B
September 30, 2018
September 30, 2018
Mark 9:38-50
INTRODUCTION
In two of
our texts this week, Numbers and Mark, we get stories about one group of people
judging another because they don’t act or believe the right way. That’s nothing
we know anything about, right? Haha, right!
In the first
reading, from Numbers, we will hear about the Israelites in the wilderness.
They’ve been wandering around for some time by now, and Moses has been the main
leader. Finally, he can no longer take their bickering, and cries out to God in
desperation, saying, “I can’t take this anymore! Why did you put me in charge
of this bunch? What did I do to deserve this?” God suggests a change in
leadership structure, to allow leadership to be shared. Promptly, Joshua
notices that some guys, who weren’t assigned leadership roles, are trying to
lead! Tattle tail, tattle tail, he goes running to Moses, who responds, “Um, why
would stop someone who is trying to help? Let them help!”
Our reading
from James has some things to add about how we can live peaceably together, and
then in Mark, we get a similar story to Numbers: someone is doing the work of
Jesus, but not formally following him, and the disciples come tattling and
finger-pointing. (Keep in mind, this is directly following the disciples
bickering about who was the greatest, which we heard last week! Jesus literally
still has that little child on his lap, the one who he told them to welcome.)
Just like Moses had done, Jesus puts them in their place, saying, “Whoever is
not against us is for us,” then he gives some guidance on how we might refrain
from all this nit-picking of one another, and instead focus on our common
mission.
Oh friends,
it all feels so contemporary! As you listen today, think about the ways you
have, even with good intentions, tried to bring others down a notch, or tried
to get them to see things your way (that is, of course, the right way), or accused them of something
before recognizing the behavior also in yourself. We have all done these
things. Let’s listen to how humans have done them all along, and what God has
to say about it.
[READ]
This has
been a pretty hot week for our country, politically speaking, particularly
around the confirmation process for Judge Brett Kavanaugh. I know some who have
been glued to the news, and others who have intentionally avoided it, because
it has brought up painful experiences in their own life. The coverage and the
resulting conversations have been full of mud-slinging, “what-abouts,” and
attacks on individuals and on whole groups of people. Our country was not a
beautiful, unified front to begin with, and hasn’t been for a while, but this
week it seemed like our divisions were especially deepened and charged.
Now, I am a
firm believer that Scripture cannot be honestly read in a vacuum. Because it is
the living Word of God, it speaks to us differently based on what is going on
in the world around us. Even as it remains steadfast and unchanging, this
living Word of God reveals to us different truths, depending on what we are
going through. It hits on different parts of our hearts. And so, in light of
what is happening in the world around us, the line that hit me especially hard
this week was the last one of Jesus’ sermon: Be at peace with one another.
Do you
remember what that was like? Or, did that time ever exist in this country? Was
there ever a time when people in our country were at peace with one another? Or
maybe that line hits you today because of something going on closer to home:
for so many families, being at peace with one another is a dream unrecognized,
or even one that seems unattainable. And yet, I believe it is something we all
want, right? I mean sure, there are some who really thrive on drama, but in the
end, to be at peace with one another sounds to me like a pretty good thing.
Turns out,
it was an unrecognized ideal for Mark’s community, too. Scholars generally
agree that the community for which Mark was writing was dealing with some level
of division. We don’t know what about exactly – perhaps it was gnostic versus
orthodox views of Jesus, or people who had stayed steadfast in the midst of
persecution versus those who had left when the going got tough and now wanted
back in. Whatever it was, there were significant divisions. And so Mark
includes this little incident from Jesus’ life and teaching as a way of
inviting them to use Jesus’ story to reframe how they think about their lives,
their commitments, their identity and their understanding of what makes up an
authentic Christian community.
Two thousand years later, this story serves
the same purpose for us. We, too, live with painful divisions, in our homes, in
our country, in our world. We too, need some guidance from our Lord.
Of course, Jesus doesn’t offer the
disciples or us any kind, sweet words. That would have been nice, wouldn’t it,
because when we are in pain, we just like to be comforted, sing “What a Friend
We Have in Jesus,” and move on. But in today’s text, Jesus takes a different
route: he uses a shock tactic. The disciples come tattling on someone who is
not doing things they way they think they should be done, and the harsh
language Jesus uses in his rebuke is a really good reason not to read
everything in the Bible literally – because if we did, we’d all be trying to
stay afloat with millstones around our necks, with eye patches and wrapped
stumps instead of hands and feet. These are not the sort of loving words we
like to hear from Jesus! Could he possibly have really meant we should resort
to self-mutilation when we realize we have sinned?
It is no secret that our president
tends to exaggerate. He is so prone to exaggeration, in fact, that shortly
after he began his presidency, people started explaining and defending his huge,
blustery claims by saying, “Take him seriously, not literally.” The same
principle can be applied to Jesus’ words here. Take them seriously, not
literally. He uses this extreme language to get our attention, to show us how
very seriously we are to take sin, especially sin that would keep ourselves or
another from reaching God. Take very seriously the danger of stumbling blocks
along this path – so seriously, in fact, that you would go to great lengths to
be sure that these stumbling blocks are removed.
In Jesus’ hyperbolic language,
removal is straightforward: simply cut it off and throw it into the fire. Drown
it in the sea. Discard it. In real life, removing stumbling blocks is not so
simple, because the stumbling blocks themselves cannot always be clearly seen. When
I had breast cancer, the first step was to determine where exactly the cancer
was, so we’d know what, exactly, needed to be removed. So it is with sin and
stumbling blocks: the first step for removal, is to determine what is blocking
your path to a life-giving relationship with God and with God’s people.
So, what sorts of things could be
stumbling blocks for us? Think for a minute… Could it be your pride? Your
insistence that you are right on an issue and anyone who doesn’t believe that
must be ignorant or blind? … Could it be your temper, how quick you are to jump
to judge and attack, rather than reflect and respond thoughtfully? … Could it
be your envy, jealousy, or insecurity, and a desire to tear down another so you
don’t feel so bad about yourself? … Could it be that thing that you just can’t
bring yourself to forgive, because holding onto it gives you a sense of power
and control over the offender? … Could it be an addiction, a place you go when
you feel lonely or self-loathing so you can self-medicate, rather than finding
your strength in God? … You see there are so many stumbling blocks in our
lives. I can check several of those boxes myself, and many more that I didn’t
mention. There are so many things, you see, that get in the way of the path I
want to be walking, the path that leads to Christ, the path that leads to life.
Once we can recognize what those
stumbling blocks are, we can hear Jesus’ harsh words more like redemptive ones:
cut it off. Get rid of the stumbling block by whatever means necessary. Stop
nursing the grudge. Cut off that relationship that is draining the life out of
you. Reconsider that point of view that has kept you safe all these years, but
is tearing down other beloved children of God. Change that unhealthy lifestyle.
Kick the addiction.
Of course, life-giving as those
choices may ultimately be, none of them is easy. In fact, they might even feel
like what Jesus describes: like losing a limb, or like drowning, or even like
death. In a way, it is – anytime you say goodbye to something that, unhealthy
though it may be, has held a prominent place in your life, it requires a
sometimes painful adjustment. As one commentator writes, “Jesus knows what he
is talking about; it hurts to change!
It hurts to cut off the precious, familiar things we cling to for dear
life—even as those things slowly kill us. The bottle. The affair. The obsession
with money. The decades-old shame. The resentment, the victimhood, the self-hatred,
the rigidity.”
But, once we
do cut those things off… there is where new life begins. There is where the
pathway to God gets a little less rocky. There is where we can live into that
final line of Jesus’ sermon: live peaceably with one another, experiencing the
hope and love and grace of God not in some heaven some time and distance away,
but right here, right now. Because that, my friends, is how God works: death
must happen in order for us to get to new and abundant life in Christ. It may
well hurt along the way. Jesus knows that! But the reward – whether a cup of
cold water, or peace on earth, or life everlasting – is worth it.
I wonder
what would happen in our country if we could follow Jesus’ advice: if citizens
and elected and appointed leaders cut off the greed, and power, and pride, and
the need to be right, and paid more attention to that little child that Jesus
picked up last week, that he is still holding on his lap? That is, what if we
put aside our stumbling blocks, and instead paid more attention to the least,
the vulnerable, the abused, the victims of injustice, the weak, the wounded… and
lifted them up, and heard their stories, and sought to be the light of Christ
to them? We might just find that living peaceably with one another wasn’t some
far-off dream after all. We might find that we would all be just a bit closer
to the new life that is promised through Christ our Lord.
Let
us pray… God of peace, you show us the
way to life, but the way is rough and difficult. In your grace and mercy, help
us to remove the stumbling blocks along the way, so that we might, with all
your children, live peaceably with one another. In the name of the Father and
the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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