September 29, 2024, A Matter of Stumbling Blocks, Mark 9:38-50 – Mtr. Kathryn Boswell

saintphilipsnorwood ♦ September 29, 2024 ♦ Leave a comment

To listen to the sermon, click the link above. The text is below.

“If any of you put a stumbling block before one of these little ones who believe in me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea Jesus told his disciples that causing a fellow child of God to stumble and fall in their faith is such a hateful act that it would be worse than having an enormous stone hung around your neck and sinking hopelessly to the bottom of the ocean.

Of course, Jesus wasn't talking about literally sticking out your leg and causing someone to fall to the ground. But there are a lot of ways of knocking people down. Last week we read how the disciples had been trying to knock each other down, by arguing about who was better than who. Today John was all eagerness to tell Jesus about the man who was casting out demons in Jesus' name, when he wasn't properly one of them. We trip each other up to give ourselves a boost. If we can knock somebody else down a peg, then we move up the ladder ourselves. If we push someone out, that means we are in. That's the way of the world; we call it dog-eat-dog, though in this world dogs are frequently a lot kinder to one another than people are.

When we take away hope from people, when we deny them dignity, when we fail to listen to them, we can cause them to lose their footing, to lose their way. We cause people to stumble when we judge them instead of accepting them as fellow sinners saved by grace. 

It's something the church has done all too often. How many people do you know who used to go to church, but their marriage fell apart, or they were struggling with alcoholism, or they went on welfare. They felt judged. And they felt unworthy and unwanted, and they just stopped coming. Of course there are people who choose to reject the church, but how many more people are there who left because they felt rejected by the church? Jesus said that is a dreadful thing, a shocking thing, a shameful thing. Jesus said that was worse than dying a terrible death.

I've heard people say they don't feel like they are good enough to go to church. Sometimes they say it like they're joking; sometimes they say it like they're proud of it. But behind the joking or the pride there is often someone who caused them to stumble, maybe with the very best of intentions, but with the catastrophic result of turning them away from the very one, the only one, who could help them. Only the Spirit can change people's hearts, but for those who are seeking or moving toward God, even to the very slightest degree, we disciples can at least make sure we are not the cause of their stumbling. We can reach out a steadying hand instead of sticking out our leg in condemnation. We can refuse to be shocked. - because who are we to be shocked by someone else's sin anyway? We can refuse to look on people with disapproval – because who are we to disapprove, when Jesus has loved us with all our many imperfections?

So, that’s a good message – a message of grace and love and kindness. Welcoming others. Not judging our brother. Not judging our sister. 

But then Jesus goes on, and he starts talking about cutting off your hand or your foot, and plucking out your eye, and hellfire. All of a sudden the gospel passage seems to get a whole lot harder to understand, not to mention a whole lot more unpleasant. And it’s kind of hard to see how it’s all connected. If we were reading on our own we might decide to call it a day, close our Bible, and move on to the next verses tomorrow. But if we hang in there, we can see that Jesus is still talking about things that trip people up, that cause people to stumble and fall. Only now, he’s saying: “Look at yourself. What are the things that are causing you to stumble and fall?” 

Jesus uses shocking language here, and he does that for a reason. Just like he said causing someone to stumble in their relationship with God is worse than being thrown in the ocean to drown, here he says holding on to things that separate you from God is worse than taking a knife and cutting off your own hand. Jesus means for us to be shocked. He means for us to be disturbed. Because he’s talking about something that is deadly serious. He wants us to pay attention.

First of all, he wants us to realize that this passage is NOT just about setting priorities, or about giving up something good for something better. Instead of going to an art class I could be helping out at the food pantry. Or instead of reading my new Louise Penny mystery I could be studying the Bible. True enough, but Jesus isn’t talking here about making changes in your life to be more spiritual – though we always have to make choices about how we use our time, and that is an important thing to do. But here, Jesus is talking about things that are doing real harm in your life. And he’s talking about things that are really hard to give up: so hard, so painful, that cutting them out of your life is like cutting off your own hand or plucking out your own eye.

And he is saying that if you don’t do that hard giving up, that thing, whatever it is, will become a stumbling block that separates you from God, something that separates you from the real good that God puts into your life. And that’s what hell is: life that goes on and on taking you farther away from God, farther and farther from the source of all light and all health and all goodness.

I belong to a family in which addiction caused a lot of harm. I grew up with a father who was an alcoholic, and I saw firsthand the hell that he lived through – and the hell that he brought his family through – until he finally was able to cut that stumbling block out of his life. It was hard. And it was painful. And even when he stopped drinking, there were so many wounds, so much darkness left behind, before he was able to begin to heal.

It’s pretty easy to identify something like alcohol or drugs as the kind of destructive thing Jesus is talking about. And addiction is destructive, no doubt about it. But Satan is sneaky. Evil comes disguised as something pretty and shiny way more often than as something ugly and scary. And there are a lot of different kinds of hellish stumbling blocks in the world.

Some people find themselves in relationships that threaten to separate them from God. Some people are led into hell by their own success and by the driving need to have more and to do better. Pleasant things or bad things; things you have worked hard to attain, things the world admires in you: anything that holds a place in your heart, anything that is dear to you, that is leading you farther away from God instead of closer: cut it off. Get rid of it. Much, much better to go on living with only one eye or one hand, no matter how painful that might be, Jesus says, than to keep on down that road that is taking you away from God. That way is only darkness and death.

This is a hard teaching for sure. Jesus’ words are so urgent here, so shocking, because he wants us to know beyond the shadow of a doubt that there is absolutely nothing in the world that is good enough to accept as a substitute for God and his life and his light and his love. That shiny, enticing, intoxicating thing that seems so good and so necessary, the thing the world tells us we can’t live without – is it actually a stumbling block that is tripping us up on our walk of faith?

Paul puts it pretty graphically in his letter to the Philippians. He makes a list of all his considerable accomplishments and reputation and qualifications, because he was a very impressive person, and then he says: “For the sake of knowing Jesus I don’t care about any of that stuff. To me, it’s all just garbage. I’ve cut all that stuff out of my life, I’ve let it all go, so that I may gain Christ and be found in him.” Paul wrote those words while he was sitting in a cold dark jail cell. He had literally given up everything but his faith and his life, and yet the letter to the Philippians is full of pure joy.

That’s not to say that it’s an easy thing to give up something you love that is causing you harm. Far from it. Ask our brothers and sisters at AA; they know this. Sometimes making a change in our lives or letting go of something that is separating us from God will be so painful, so hard for us, that it will be like cutting off our own hand, like plucking out our own eye. But our goal, the treasure we seek, is life with Christ, life in his kingdom – not someday, in the sweet by and by, but now, today, the sweet communion of life and love in his Spirit. And there is no greater treasure.