Year B Pentecost 18
Mk 9:42-50Causing to Stumble
42 “If anyone causes one of these little ones—those who believe in me—to stumble, it would be better for them if a large millstone were hung around their neck and they were thrown into the sea. 43 If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life maimed than with two hands to go into hell, where the fire never goes out. [44] 45 And if your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life crippled than to have two feet and be thrown into hell. [46] 47 And if your eye causes you to stumble, pluck it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into hell, 48 where“‘the worms that eat them do not die,
and the fire is not quenched.’49 Everyone will be salted with fire. 50 “Salt is good, but if it loses its saltiness, how can you make it salty again? Have salt among yourselves, and be at peace with each other.”
Mk 9:42-50
© New International Version,
(Biblica, Inc) 2011In the name of God. Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.
Let’s read that again.
If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life maimed than with two hands to go into hell, where the fire never goes out. And if your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life crippled than to have two feet and be thrown into hell. And if your eye causes you to stumble, pluck it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of god with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into hell, where “‘the worms that eat them do not die, and the fire is not quenched.’
That is Jesus speaking. You know Jesus – son of god, saviour of the world, prince of peace. The same Jesus that in his poem for children Charles Wesley described as
Gentle Jesus, meek and mild,
look upon a little child;
pity my simplicity,
suffer me to come to thee
Bit of a difference here. Gentle Jesus or the Jesus who advocates self-harm? Which one represents the real Jesus? Now that’s a simple straightforward topic for a sermon – shouldn’t have any troubles with this should I? Yeah right, why am I walking into this minefield? For the same reason Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing climbed Mt Everest – because it’s there and ignoring it will not make it go away. Sometimes it is necessary to wade through the tough stuff because in doing so, sometimes something real is learnt.
Firstly, let’s look at the official ‘party line’. The Jesus of Christian propaganda is a man of love, inclusiveness, tolerance, forgiveness, godliness, wisdom, courage. He is the man that saved the woman taken in adultery from stoning and forgave her. He is the man that wept over Jerusalem. He is the man that healed the sick, fed the crowds and stood up to authority figures who abused their power. He is the man that even as he was on the cross dying still thought to forgive his fellow prisoner and to care for his mother’s future. He is perfect, divine and immortal. As Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice said – this is truly Jesus Christ superstar.
That in short is the Jesus that in my Sunday school years I was called to believe in. And everything Jesus did and said was always to be interpreted through the prism that Jesus was perfect and divine. This was Jesus the god.
Now many of us like to stay in this position – some through honest conviction and faith, others through reverence for tradition, others through scholarly attention to the scriptures and others because it’s safe and secure and comforting. Jesus the good and perfect. It sounds about right doesn’t it? That is the kind of thing we can say out loud in church and not expect anyone to object. It is the glue that holds us together right?
Well maybe.
What about this Jesus? The Jesus who rebuked peter when he expressed his disbelief that Jesus would suffer and be killed in Jerusalem:
“Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the concerns of god, but merely human concerns.”
What was peter’s crime – wasn’t he being a friend? Wasn’t he trying to support and console Jesus? How would we feel if someone responded to our words of comfort and support with a severe rebuke?
What about the Jesus who rebuked the fig tree. The bible says
“And on the morrow, when they had come out of Bethany, Jesus hungered. And seeing a fig tree afar off having leaves, he came, if perhaps he might find anything thereon: and when he came to it, he found nothing but leaves; for it was not the season of figs. And he answered and said unto it, ‘no man [will] eat fruit from you from now on — for ever.’ .and as they passed by in the morning, they saw the fig tree withered away from the roots. And peter calling to remembrance said unto him, ‘Rabbi, behold, the fig tree that you cursed is withered away’
Jesus cursed and caused to die a fig tree that wasn’t bearing fruit even though it was not the season for it. Think about it – would we chop down an orange tree in winter because there were no oranges on it?
What about the Jesus who cleared the temple of the moneychangers:
“And they came to Jerusalem: and Jesus went into the temple, and began to cast out them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers, and the seats of them that sold doves;
Now this was soon after the fig tree incident and this is a man in a public place creating a serious public disturbance. People get arrested for this sort of thing. What would we think if someone came into here and started turning the chairs over and raving on about how we’re only doing it for the money?
And finally the reading for today:
If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life maimed than with two hands to go into hell.
Does Jesus want us to maim ourselves to prevent us from sinning and do we only do this to avoid hell?
So there you go – two sides to Jesus. The perfect one and for want of a better word the crazy one rebuking friends, cursing trees, creating a public nuisance and advocating self-harm.
So where does that preamble leave us? Well there are two things that need a little more thought. The first is how we interpret the bible and the second is who is Jesus? Now these topics have been the topics of discussions of theologians for centuries and I’m not about to flatter myself that I can answer them now or ever. But I’d like to say a few things about how we approach these two questions.
Firstly did Jesus really mean that in certain circumstances we should harm ourselves? So how literally do we interpret everything in the bible? Sure we argue over stuff – how did creation take place, were the Jews the chosen race and are they still god’s people, is there a heaven and a hell, what is right behaviour, what’s the balance between justice and mercy – everything, the whole gamut of human experience can be argued in biblical terms – and often is. When you think about it we all draw our interpretation line somewhere. Some draw it at the literal end and so we have sincere committed Christians arguing for the genesis creation story and using the bible to defend their views on gay marriage and women’s rights and so on. In earlier times a literal interpretation of the bible was used to defend slavery. But that was an earlier time.
And then there are others at the non-literal end who interpret everything in the bible through cultural and rational lenses so that everything is relevant to its time and place and nothing is eternal. So no miracles, no healing, no walking on the water and no resurrection. And of course there are all the others in between. I’m not about to tell you how you should interpret the bible but just to say you should be self-aware how you approach it. It is said that god created humanity in his own likeness – just be careful that in the way we interpret the bible we don’t re-create god in our own likeness.
As an aside, John Shelby Spong the American theologian once said if you preach that we follow the bible you better know what’s in it. Not just the bits we like.
Which brings me onto the second question – who is Jesus? Once again I’m not going to tell you who he is. Mainly because that has to be done by you and I’ve found that in the struggle is the only way to truly start to understand. I say start to understand intentionally because we may never truly understand.
But let me say that in your struggling do not block out the unpalatable or the inexplicable Jesus – the Jesus who cursed the fig tree and said we should cut off our hands. I chose those examples because they have not sat right with me. But, don’t rush over those bits in our haste to come to our conclusion that Jesus is perfect, divine and a really good guy. Don’t start the journey with a pre-conceived view of what you will find out. Similarly don’t start with the Jesus who showed human traits and interpret everything to prove he was only human after all. Let the record speak to you, struggle with it – as they say, do the hard yards.
I won’t leave you hanging with ‘work it out yourself and good luck’. Let me leave you with this. This may be totally inadequate for you but simply what I currently think is the Jesus who rebuked peter may have been a man who saw that his life’s true purpose was being diverted by a true friend who cared but did not understand. The Jesus who cursed the fig tree may just have been having a bad day. There may be a more profound reason there somewhere but I’m satisfied in thinking well this just says the guy got tired. The Jesus who cleared the temple may have just been a man who was so outraged by the desecration of what is holy that he lost it and acted in passion and the Jesus who advocated self-harm we’ll that’s an easy one for me – it’s called a literary device and it reveals not a literal truth but a profound truth. He was just saying you are better off doing without really important things if it gets in the way of a right relationship with god. But because he said it the way he did you’re sure to remember it, right?
In closing I don’t think there are two or more Jesus’. There is and always has been one Jesus and it’s up to us and worth the effort to get to know him and try to work him out. Others more profound and learned than me will come to their own conclusions. Others will be content will more simplistic views. The important thing is that we have a relationship with Jesus – a real one based on understanding not just adopting attitudes we think we should. The Jesus I know is a man, who gets tired and frustrated and angry and talks in poetic language when he needs to make a point. I’m content to struggle to know a multilayered Jesus who may be difficult to understand.
I’m not content with just gentle Jesus meek and mild and try to block everything else out and interpret everything so it fits that image. Nor am I content with crazy Jesus and just use that prism to understand him. I like to think I’m content with Jesus as I find him, as he was, as the bible recorded he was and to spend the rest of my life trying to work it out and in trying to work it out then living life a little better and fuller. The struggle reaps a reward.
And so who is Jesus to you and what will you do to understand him?
Amen.