Mark 9:38-50
I am so honored to bring you a message today. I am grateful to God that our two communities can be engaged in the
same work in our community, sharing the message of God’s love, and the good
news of abundant life in Christ. As a
small congregation, it can be easy to get discouraged about how much we can
really accomplish. But knowing that you
are here and that we have partners and friends everywhere we look, and even
places we never thought to look, is encouraging. Your congregation is an inspiration to me,
faithfully meeting and praying and learning about God’s word, challenging
yourselves in leadership roles, and I especially appreciate the way you hold me
and our congregation in your prayers always.
Because of your example, we remember you every Sunday in our prayers as
well as during the week.
Sometimes, especially in a small congregation, the people
of God forget how expansive God’s love is.
We can get focused on our own congregation or our own trials, our own
lives. We’re not so different from
Jesus’ first disciples. It makes me feel
better to read about their questions and mistakes, because a lot of times I
don’t understand what God is trying to teach me, either. In today’s reading the disciples are
concerned because an outsider was casting out demons and they tried to stop
him. The funny thing is, just a little
earlier in Mark’s Gospel, those same disciples were trying to cast out demons
and they failed. Now they are upset
because someone else is doing the good work they couldn’t do. I don’t know if the disciples were jealous,
or if they thought this outsider was making them look bad. The disciples didn’t like it at all. But
Jesus liked the work of these outsiders.
They weren’t outsiders to Jesus.
Sometimes we Christians can get territorial. We get possessive of our people, our area,
even about the message of God’s love.
But Jesus says, you can’t control God’s Spirit. It is bigger than your ideas of it. God’s Spirit is plentiful and goes out where
it will. You can’t contain it. Every time humankind tries to contain God’s
Spirit, we get a rude awakening. When
the Israelites wanted to build God a temple, God wasn’t too happy about
that. God liked being in a tent, a
moveable tabernacle, so God wouldn’t be seen as only being in one place. When the Israelites were in exile in Babylon,
they thought God was far away, until Ezekiel had a vision of a burning chariot
with eyes all over it, and realized that God was right there with them and
couldn’t be contained far away from the people who were suffering. When people thought they knew God, God came
as the baby Jesus, to walk among the people and experience our life. Every time we think we can contain or control
God, we get surprised by the expansiveness of God’s Spirit. No one group has a monopoly on God’s power
and Spirit. And that is the joy we share
as two congregations doing God’s work in this place. We are part of the same body of Christ.
Jesus says, “Whoever is not against us is for us.” I love this!
People usually say, “Whoever is not for us is against us.” That is human nature. We suspect each other. We don’t trust each other. We put everyone not immediately related in
the category of suspicion. But Jesus
says that’s not God’s view. God knows
the true story and that is that we all are related. We come from the same Creator. We all feel pain, we all bleed, we all have
hopes and dreams, we are of the human family.
God’s view is not of exclusivity.
God says that unless we have good reason to believe that someone is
against us, we must include them in our circle.
And that is because God gives gifts to all God’s children, all God’s
creation, and God doesn’t want us putting out stumbling blocks, barriers to anyone
using their gifts, because that would be trying to put up barriers to God’s
life-giving work. So to you this day,
Church of God of Prophecy, I say, we are with you, King of Kings Lutheran
Church is with you, and we give thanks that we are all doing God’s work and
listening to God’s voice for the good of this neighborhood and for the
advancement of the Kingdom of God.
Now humans are so predictable. We so easily put others on the outside and
question the motives of others, but we give ourselves so much credit! The first Disciples weren’t even able to cast
out the demon, but they guarded their closeness with Jesus. We, too, minimize our shortcomings and make
excuses for ourselves. Sometimes this
reading about cutting out eyes and limbs has been used to banish people who we
see as sinners from our communities, or as ammunition to use against people we
disagree with. However, this reading is
about self-reflection. If it was about
pointing out the sins and shortcomings of others, we wouldn’t have this part
about putting a stumbling block in front of other people, which we do when we
judge them and push them away from us. God is watching out for the ones we often criticize,
the little ones: the children, the women, the widows and orphans, the foreigner,
the sick or imprisoned, or poor, or grieving.
God says instead of tearing people down who are little, who are down
already, take a long look at ourselves and see what might be getting in the way
of our wholehearted commitment to the reign of God. Whenever we do hurt people who are already
suffering, we are cutting at the body of Christ, hurting his little ones, hurting
this beautiful community that God has made of the people, putting out an eye in
the body of Christ, or severing a foot or hand.
I’m happy to say I agree with Pastor Juan that this is not a scripture
about physically injuring ourselves! But
it is pointing out how we injure the body of Christ when we sin and when we put
out barriers and stumbling blocks to God’s people. And when we injure the body of Christ, we are
only going to cause more stumbling. If
your eye causes you to stumble, he says, tear it out. But that will only cause more stumbling. And
the same with a hand or foot.
When we read this Gospel we realize how serious it is
when we sin, when we put up barriers to God’s work among us, when we exclude
little ones, when we hurt each other. I
have to admit that I struggle with the concept of hell. There are several words that get translated
as “hell” in the Bible. One is the
grave, which is more a place of rest. This
one in the Gospel today refers to the garbage heap outside of Jerusalem that
was perpetually burning. Whether hell
refers to a place of eternal torture, or the garbage dump, I think the message
is the same. We should take our sins
seriously, because they hurt especially the little ones, the vulnerable people
around us. Whatever causes us to sin, we
should figure out how it happened and work to find a way so that it doesn’t
happen again. We should look at our
lives and find out what we do that causes us and others to stumble, and root it
out. We don’t want to waste the gift God
gives us, throw it away, because we’re letting something get in the way. We want to use these gifts as God intended
them, to serve the vulnerable ones.
I wish it was as easy as that to root out sin, to cut it
out. But how do we cut out our fears
that cause us to stumble? How do we cut
out our jealousy? I am reminded of the
scripture from Ezekiel. God is speaking
and says, “I will
give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you
your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.” Our hearts are soft toward ourselves, but to
others they can be so hard. God is
trying to give us a heart transplant.
Maybe it is the same with our eyes and hands. If we remove our eye or foot, we will just
stumble more. That is the problem when
humans try to fix it ourselves. But when
we let God lead and heal us, we find God is replacing our eye with God’s. So now we don’t just see the short view or
how something benefits us, but we start to see with God’s eyes. Where we once saw a stranger or foreigner or
a threat, now we see with the eyes of God our brother and sister, a little one
we care about. Where we once reached out
in greed with our own hand, now we reach out with God’s hand in
generosity. Where once we walked on our
feet all the places we wanted to go, now we walk with God’s feet with direction
and purpose to serve the little ones.
Whereas once we were tasteless, now we are salty, a little bit going a
long way, seasoning and influencing those around us. Whereas before we thought we were chosen by
God for privilege and importance and riches, now that Jesus is correcting us,
we see that we have been chosen for service, to be a blessing to others, to usher
in the Kingdom of God.
We
give thanks that God is merciful, because instead of cutting out all the parts
of us that are sinful, Jesus took all those wounds upon his body on the
cross. And he entered hell and conquered
death that we might have eternal life and not be slaves to sin eternally. Instead we are raised with him to eternal
life. So we move boldly forward, in the
confidence of God’s love, not fearing that we might sin or make a misstep, but
knowing that we are redeemed to serve for the flourishing of life.
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