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Sermon for the Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost – September 29, 2024
Mark 9:38-50
Dear friends, grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.
Did Jesus just describe a mafia-style hit job in our gospel reading for today? You heard that too, right? Having a millstone tied around your neck and being thrown into the sea sounds an awful lot like wearing a pair of concrete shoes and going for a swim in New York harbor or wearing a “Chicago overcoat” and being tossed into the river!
And did Jesus really just say that if your hand or foot causes you to stumble you should cut them off, and if your eye causes you to stumble you should tear it out? Did Jesus really just suggest self-mutilation as a means of managing sin in our lives?
Yep, he said both of these things – and this isn’t just an isolated incident. Jesus talks like this on other occasions too.
Jesus, of course, is using hyperbole. He is using extreme language and imagery to make a point. The great Catholic writer Flannery O’Connor, who herself was known to use grotesque imagery in her stories, once said, “To the hard of hearing, you shout, and, for the almost blind, you draw large and startling figures.” This is what Jesus is doing here. He shouts because he knows we have selective hearing. We tend to shut our ears to the things he says that we don’t like. Jesus draws large and startling figures here to grab our attention, to keep us from looking away.
So, just to be clear, Jesus doesn’t literally want anyone to be thrown into the sea with a great millstone around their neck. Neither does he literally wish for anyone to start hacking off limbs or gouging out eyes.
However, if your reaction to hearing that this is hyperbole is to wipe your brow and say, “Whew, that’s good!” then you have utterly missed the point! If your response to hearing that these are metaphors and not to be taken literally is to relax and brush it all off, you are still shutting your ears to what he is trying to say to you! You are still averting your eyes from the urgent truth he is trying to show you! The language is extreme because what he is saying is so terribly important! Jesus may not be speaking literally, but he is deadly serious – and so let’s not relax too quickly here. Jesus shouts and draws large and startling figures for a reason. He speaks this way because sin is serious business. Stumbling can have deadly consequences, for us and for others.
The first concern Jesus expresses is for others. Jesus warns his disciples to not put a stumbling block in front the little ones who believe in him. These little ones include the young children Jesus had just pointed to as the ones they are to welcome and serve. These little ones can also be understood to be new Christians, new followers of Jesus who are still growing in their faith. These little ones can also be understood to be the allies across the street who are casting out demons in Jesus’ name, the new-to-them followers of Jesus who are outside of their circle.
Our behavior towards these others matters. Our attitudes and our words and our actions can become obstacles that get in the way of their walk with Jesus. They can become stumbling blocks that trip people up, that prevent these little ones from drawing closer to Christ.
Corruption and abuse in the church are obvious examples of this. There are the grievous public sins and scandals that turn people away from Christianity. But there are also plenty of other stumbling blocks which are more subtle and insidious. There are the ways Christians, both individually and as congregations, can become territorial or elitist or insular or self-righteous, or ethnocentric or politically partisan, or rude, or cold, or unwelcoming. These too can cause people to stub their toe on their way to Christ, and woe to those who are that stumbling block, Jesus says.
Jesus is also concerned about the stumbling of the disciples themselves. He is not only concerned about them putting stumbling blocks in front of others, but also about them tripping over their own two feet! He is concerned about them doing a faceplant due to their own sin! And so, in the strongest terms possible, Jesus tells them that when sin starts to trip them up, to cut it out! When those temptations and triggers begin to lead them astray, get rid of them! They are to cut them out of their lives! “If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off!” “If your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off!” “If your eye causes you to stumble, tear it out!”
The Christian life is a life of spiritual warfare. It is a battle against temptations. It is a struggle against the forces of the world, the devil, and our sinful flesh, which are always trying to trip us up. I was reading an unrelated book this past week and came across a quote from Martin Luther that I’d never seen before which summarizes this struggle nicely. In one of his Table Talk conversations Luther said, “Sin in a man is like his beard, which, though shaved off today so that a man is very smooth around his mouth, yet grows again by tomorrow morning…Just so sin remains in us and bestirs itself as long as we live, but we must resist it and always cut off its hair.”
This gospel reading, as hard as it is to hear, is much-needed reminder of this call to resist sin in our lives, to cut it out and cut it off. It is a much-needed corrective to the all too casual and comfortable mindset of too many Christians who seem to believe that what they do doesn’t really matter. It is a much-needed antidote to what Lutheran pastor Deitrich Bonhoeffer called “cheap grace.” In his book The Cost of Discipleship, Bonhoeffer warns that cheap grace is the mortal enemy of the church. He describes cheap grace as “preaching forgiveness without repentance; it is baptism without the discipline of community…Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without the living, incarnate Jesus Christ.”
Both Luther and Bonhoeffer are describing the pattern of Christian life which St. Paul articulates so succinctly in Galatians 5, where he calls us to “crucify the flesh with its passions and desires.”
This might sound harsh and demanding and deadly serious – because it is! But it all comes from a place of love. Jesus calls us to cut it out and cut it off because he loves us. He does indeed shout and use startling figures of speech, but he explicitly says that the reason behind it all is so that you may enter into life.
Imagine you go to a doctor who examines you and discovers that you have skin cancer, or a diabetic ulcer on your foot, or hand infected with gangrene. Now imagine the doctor saying, “Ah, just leave it. Who cares?” That doctor does not have your best interests in mind. That doctor does not care about you. That doctor does not care about your life.
Jesus is not that kind of doctor. Jesus loves us enough to say, “this needs to be amputated, stat.” Jesus loves us enough to say, “cut it out, cut it off.” Jesus tells us what we need to hear in order to enter life, in order to enter into a life with him that begins now and continues forever.
This gospel reading, of course, is only one snippet of the larger narrative of Mark’s gospel. It is important, to be sure, but it is not the whole story. We dare not dismiss it or brush it off, but we also need to set it into its larger context.
You see, as the story unfolds, there is a major plot twist. The same Jesus who warned about millstones being hung around one’s neck willingly let himself be hung from a cross. The same Jesus who talked about severed hands and severed feet let his own hands and feet be pierced with nails. The same Jesus who warned about the deadly consequences of sin himself endured death. Every consequence Jesus describes in our reading for today he ended up taking upon himself.
And so, you see, in the end, Jesus doesn’t leave it up to you to secure your salvation through self-amputation. In order to ensure your place with him, he has sacrificed himself. In order to ensure that you would enter into life with him, he himself has endured the consequences of our sin for us.
There is still a daily struggle to be had as we seek to avoid stumbling and causing others to stumble. There is still a spiritual battle to be waged as we continue to resist sin, cutting it off as it keeps growing back day after day. We continue to be called to engage in spiritual warfare as we battle the world, the devil, and our sinful selves, striving to crucify the flesh with its passions and desires.
But we take up this daily battle in the good confidence that the war has ultimately already been won by our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who wore a millstone around his own neck so that we would enter into life with him, today and forever.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
Rev. Jeffrey R. Spencer
Oak Harbor Lutheran Church