Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost Proper 21
September 27, 2009
Text: Mark 9:38-50
What does one do with such words of Jesus that say: “It is better for you to enter life maimed than to have two hands and to go to hell?”
Our Gospel reading this morning is one of those texts that we wish were not found in the Bible. These hard sayings of Jesus present an image so drastic and judgmental that we want to skip over them. We would rather read the more peaceful, comforting words of Jesus.
The words of our Gospel text, however, are the words of Jesus. To pick and choose that we want to hear from Jesus is not to put our complete trust in him.
So how does one deal with a text like this?
A good method for finding the meaning of any text is to pay close attention to the words or phrases that are repeated. We repeat words and phrases because we want to emphasize the importance of their meaning.
In our text this morning, the phrase “It is better for you” is repeated four times. What is better for us?
To have there be something better for us, there must be two things from which we can choose. Jesus gives us the vivid, gory details of our choices. He says, “It would be better for you if a great millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea than to cause one who believes in me to stumble.” The other three choices Jesus gives us are just as vivid and upsetting. He says, “It is better for you to cut off your hand, to cut off your foot, and to tear out your eye, than to have all your limbs and eyes and be thrown into hell.”
These choices do not sound like good ones to us. Are these choices really better for us?
Also in our Gospel text this morning, a word is repeated four times. The word is “to stumble.” The word is first used in the phrase, “stumbling block.” A stumbling block is that which trips us off stride, causes us to fall off the path that we are on. We can be both the one who stumbles and the one who causes another to stumble.
The four vivid and upsetting choices Jesus gave us earlier are connected with the word “to stumble.” If we cause a little one to stumble, it would be better for us to be drowned in the sea. If our hands cause us to stumble, or our foot, or our eye, it would be better for us to be maimed than to be eaten up by fire-retardant worms in the unquenchable fire of hell. In other words, every one of us can stumble along the path we are on, or make some one else stumble along their paths.
Every one of us has a path on which we are living out our lives. Each of our paths is a mixture of both good and bad. On our path of life, we find success, but also failure. We find fulfillment but also disappointments. We find satisfaction but also frustration. We find joy but also despair.
And our paths are filled with many stumbling blocks. Some of them are illness, the death of loved ones, family problems, bad choices, rejection by peers and friends, addictions, and abuse. Our paths of life are full of temptations. They are full of things not the way we would like them to be.
Whatever path we travel, on it and through its entire length is running another path. It is a path of faith. God gives us this path as a gift of His wondrous love.
This path of faith God gave to us at our baptism. On that day, the Holy Spirit bathed us in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Through this means of grace, God claimed us to be one of His children. In doing so God set us on His path of life – a path that daily leads us to the entire forgiveness of our sins, to the promise that evil and death have no real power over us, and eventually to a life that is everlasting. By the water and Spirit of Holy Baptism, God has declared that this path of faith is that which is best for us. Here is where God wants us to be. However, we can stumble off our path of faith, and we can cause others to stumble as well.
In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus is emphasizing the extreme importance of staying on our baptismal path of faith. It is so important that it would be better for us to have a millstone strapped around our necks and have us drown in the sea than to cause others to stumble off their path of faith. It would be better for us to be maimed than to cause ourselves to stumble and fall off our path of faith. Jesus gives us these stern warnings because he does not want us to stumble off the path on which God has set our life and our future.
Jesus does not want us to drown in the sea, but in the waters of baptism. Jesus does not want us to cut off our hands, feet or tear out our eyes, but to trust in his own suffering and death for the forgiveness of our sin. Jesus’ own path of suffering and death has put us on the path of new life and of a promising future. We walk on the path prepared for us by Jesus Christ, trusting that God has provided what is better for us to do.
On our path of life, we will also meet others like us. Jesus says do not make others to stumble off their path for this is their way of salvation as well.
What is better for us? It is to trust in the way of forgiveness and salvation that God has given us in Jesus Christ; for God knows what is best for His beloved children.