Between a Rock and a Hot Place
Scripture Reading: Mark 9:38-50
Do you remember Mad Libs? For the uninitiated, Mad Libs was a word game in which one player would prompt others for random words to substitute for blanks left in a short story which would then be read aloud to comedic effect. The original Mad Libs book (it came in books in which each page was a new story) gives the following example: “Ouch!” he said stupidly, as he jumped into his convertible cat and drove off with his brave wife.”
Mad Libs was a popular party game, especially among pre-teens, who were just the right age to appreciate it, i.e., old enough to get the humor but not too old to find it corny. I’m speaking of Mad Libs in the past tense because it was part of my childhood, but, in fact, it’s still around. You can buy Mad Libs books with all sorts of themes, everything from Give Me Liberty or Give Me Mad Libs to my personal favorite—Dysfunctional Family Therapy Mad Libs.
Why am I talking about Mad Libs? Well, in the scripture reading from Mark chapter 9 we read about all sorts of seemingly disconnected things: demons, millstones, cutting off various body parts, salting with fire, and finally a command to be at peace with one another. There’s no obvious narrative thread holding all of these images together. It almost seems as though Mark chose a random noun here and a verb there. As a preacher, it makes preaching from this passage quite a challenge. But here goes.
We pick up the story right where we left off last week. Jesus and the disciples are on their home turf. Jesus has just finished telling them a second time that despite their dreams of glory, he is going to Jerusalem not to be crowned but to be crucified. They can’t make sense of this and they’re afraid to ask. Then, because he had overheard them arguing about who among them was the greatest, he holds up a small child to symbolize the kind of humility that his followers are called to embrace.
You get a sense that the disciples are somewhat chastened by Jesus’ rebuke because they change the subject. John interjects, “Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him because he was not following us.” John seems to be engaging in some what-about-ism. It’s as if he’s saying, “True, we may have been thinking only of ourselves with our talk about which of us is the greatest, but what about this guy over here who’s using your name even though he’s not one of us? This is not decent or in order. He hasn’t even been approved by the presbytery!”
The church has always faced a tension between being open to outsiders on the one hand and maintaining its identity as distinctly Christian on the other.
In other words, John and the other disciples are concerned with boundaries. Who’s in and who’s out? This exorcist is not on the team, but he’s wearing our jersey! Someone should stop him!
The church has always faced a tension between being open to outsiders on the one hand and maintaining its identity as distinctly Christian on the other. Going back to the church’s earliest days, the question was whether Gentiles could be welcomed as is into Christian fellowship or did they first need to become Jews in order to worship the Jewish Messiah? If we accept Gentiles, some were thinking, they might bring with them foreign ideas, like eating all kinds of things that we know God has forbidden.
What about soldiers who wore the uniform of the Roman legions, who enforced Roman rule at the point of a sword and the terror of the cross? Are we really going to open the door to the powers that crucified Christ?
What about Christians who renounced their faith during times of persecution but later repented? Could they be welcomed back into the fold? That was a major controversy for the church in the 3rd century.
In more recent times the church has debated whether to welcome, and to what extent, various sexual minorities.
Underlying all of these controversies is a fundamental question: How can the church be open to those on the outside without losing its distinctly Christian identity? Where is the line between being inclusive and welcoming versus watering down our core beliefs?
The disciples clearly want to draw a sharp line, but if they’re waiting for Jesus to show some anger against this outside exorcist, they’re in for a disappointment. Not only is Jesus not upset with him, he’s fine with him. “Do not stop him,” Jesus tells them. Let him do what he’s doing. “No one who does a deed of power in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me. Whoever is not against us is for us.”
That seems counterintuitive to how the world works. We’re more accustomed to hearing, If you’re not for us, you’re against us. But Jesus turns that idea on its head because he’s more concerned with compassion than with control. He would rather his name be used to administer compassion than to maintain control over a boundary marking who’s in and who’s out.
He would rather his name be used to administer compassion than to maintain control over a boundary marking who’s in and who’s out.
This then leads to a warning from Jesus: “If any of you cause one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for you if a great millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea.” I don’t know about you, but I get my bread from the supermarket already sliced, so I’ve never had to grind grain with a millstone. Have you ever seen a millstone? It’s the size of an industrial tire but made of solid rock. If you go for a swim with a millstone around your neck, you’re not coming up for air. Yet better to do that than to be the cause of another person’s stumbling, Jesus says.
If that sounds harsh, you might want to brace yourself for what Jesus says next. He is still speaking of the cause of sin, but now the object moves from other people to oneself. It’s no longer about causing another to sin but causing oneself to sin. “If your hand causes you to sin,” he says—perhaps with it you take what does not belong to you or you raise it in anger to strike, “cut it off.” Better to enter life maimed than to dive with two hands into a lake of fire.
The same goes for your foot. If your foot causes you to stumble headlong into the same sinful situation over and over again, enough with that! Cut it off! Better to enter life on crutches than to be thrown feet first into hell.
And if with your critical eye you see only the worst in people, or perhaps see them not as autonomous creatures in their own right but as a means to getting what you want, well then, don’t just look away, get to the root of the problem. Tear out your eye! Better to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to gaze upon the horrors of hell with perfect vision.
What in the world is going on here? It was only last week that we witnessed Jesus take a little child in his arms and say “whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.” It was a touching scene. A lovely portrait of gentle Jesus, meek and mild. Then what do we make of this shift, just moments later, into fire and brimstone?
First of all, this is hardly the first shocking thing that Jesus has said. Let’s not forget that earlier in the Gospel his own family, concerned about all the commotion surrounding what he was saying and doing, went out to restrain him. They feared that he had gone out of his mind (Mk. 3:21). And the scribes even accused him of being possessed by the devil himself (Mk. 3:22)!
People would come to him to have their bodies healed and he would tell them that their sins were forgiven, as though he were God himself (Mk. 2:5)!
He redefined the concept of family from one of blood relation to one of moral action, saying, “Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother” (Mk. 3:35).
And if we step outside Mark and sneak a peak at the Gospel of Luke (which we’ll read next year), we hear Jesus say, “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, even life itself, cannot be my disciple” (Lk. 14:26).
So, is all this just hyperbole? Should we take Jesus seriously but not literally? Surely, he doesn’t really mean that we should cut off the parts of the body that cause us to sin. That could be…debilitating.
Normally, I would say, “Of course, this is hyperbole.” Jesus is just using provocative language to grab our attention. But not this time. I want to let this language stand without trying to tame it, because what Jesus is doing is holding up for us the full weight of the law. And a millstone may as well be a beach ball compared with the weight of the law. There is no lifting it. There is no getting our arms around it. Samson in all his might could not move it one millimeter.
The problem is not the law. The problem is us.
The problem is not the law. The problem is us. Sin has taken root in each of us, and no matter how much pruning we do, we can never cut it off. It taints everything—our will, our desires, our actions, or in biblical terms, our heart, mind, and strength, the very things with which we are commanded to love God. To quote Paul in his Letter to the Romans, “Wretched man that I am, who will save me from this body of death?” (Rom. 7:24).
And that’s just the thing. There is no measure we can take to solve the problem. Ultimately, we are powerless. We need saving. But we are not cut off from hope because we have a savior—one who is without sin—who chooses to be cut off for us. He chooses to take our sin into his own body and be cut off in order to save us.
This was God’s plan all along, and the prophet Isaiah foresaw it. Writing hundreds of years before the time of Jesus, Isaiah prophesies: “By a perversion of justice he was taken away. Who could have imagined his future? For he was cut off from the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people” (Isa. 53:8).
Jesus, our savior, is the one who took the millstone around his own neck on the cross, and in doing so extends God’s infinite grace to all, erasing the boundaries that separate us from God and from one another.