Mark 9:38-50[1]
I wasn’t much of an
athlete when I was growing up. I tried playing football, basketball, and
baseball, but I just wasn’t very good at any of them. My problem was that I had
two “left feet” and I was “all thumbs.” I wasn’t fast, and I didn’t have much
in the way of ball-handling skills. So I didn’t even make the basketball team,
I didn’t try out for baseball, and in football they stuck me on the line. On
the other hand, I was in the marching band, and I did play the trombone, both
of which require a level of coordination. And I loved riding my bicycle even
then. But in most of the sports that were available, I seemed to be constantly
stumbling.
The truth of the
matter is that we all stumble through life in many ways that we’d rather not
admit. As much as we’d like to be able to present to the world an image of
someone who “has it all together,” that’s not really the truth about any of us!
We all fall short of the “perfection” we’d like to be able to achieve. We all
have times in our lives when, despite our best efforts, we stumble. There have
been times in my life when it seemed like all I could do was stumble! I would
say that what’s important is not whether we stumble, but what we do when we
stumble. Picking ourselves up and starting again can be difficult, but that’s
how we learn and grow.
Our gospel lesson for
today presents us with some potential “stumbling blocks.” Part of the problem
is that we who try to take the Bible seriously can find it difficult to handle
it when the Bible uses metaphors, analogies, parables, and other figures of
speech. It’s especially difficult for us because we are working with words on a
page. We can’t see the expression on Jesus’ face to help us understand when
he’s using a figure of speech. We use them all the time, and our language would
be much the poorer if we didn’t! But because we are used to our cultural
metaphors, we understand them. It’s much more difficult when we’re dealing with
the metaphors from a very different time and place.
So, for instance, there
have been some who believe that Jesus meant it literally when he said that it’s
better to cut off your foot or your hand or tear out your eye than to stumble
into sin. But most of us recognize that Jesus didn’t mean it that way. A
one-handed person can still be a thief. As we saw a few weeks ago, sin is
something that comes from the heart, not from any particular body part. John
Calvin observed that Jesus was using “an exaggerated form of speech” to make the
point that we should make every effort to avoid sin.[2] We
might wonder whether Jesus would actually “exaggerate” like this. But if we do
it, why shouldn’t he? The challenge for us is to figure it out. I think the
Bible can help us if we will pay close attention.
Another difficulty
this passage presents us has to do with Jesus’ warning about stumbling. He
begins with the image of being drowned in the sea with a huge stone around your
neck (Mk 9:42). I think in this case it’s pretty obvious that Jesus is
describing a fate that one would do anything to avoid. But we can get confused when
he talks about going to “hell,” “to the unquenchable fire” (Mk 9:43). The word in
the original is actually “Gehenna.” It was a familiar term in that day that
referred to a valley near Jerusalem that was a burning trash dump filled with
decaying bodies and rotting garbage. So I think we should not be surprised that
Jesus would use an image that people of his day would find shocking as a
warning against causing others to stumble or stumbling ourselves.[3] Jesus wasn’t speaking literally about the afterlife, he was painting a word
picture to make a point: do everything you can to avoid this!
Another way to avoid
stumbling here is to pay attention to what Jesus is getting at. His point is
that, just as we would make every effort to avoid either of the “fates” he
describes, so we should do everything possible to avoid either causing someone
else to stumble, or stumbling ourselves. In the first place, he’s talking about
the effects of his disciples’ thoughts of “greatness” on believers who might be
vulnerable to stumbling in their faith. But Jesus also urged his disciples to beware
of all possible temptations to stumble themselves. In both cases, I think Jesus
made such a big deal about it because when we cause another to stumble we
diminish them, and when we stumble we diminish ourselves. That’s something
Jesus wants us to make every effort to avoid.
When I was younger,
thoughts of practicing yoga as a “sport” were the furthest thing from my mind!
Even though I’ve practiced yoga for ten years, I still “stumble” with some of
the balance poses we do. The fact is that I still stumble in life as well, even
though I’ve been working at this Christian thing for over 45 years! While Jesus
uses strong language to warn us against stumbling, I don’t think he was
demanding perfection. I think he was trying to impress upon us how important it
is to avoid diminishing ourselves or someone else by our actions. We all
stumble at times, but thankfully, as the Psalmist says, “though we stumble, we
shall not fall headlong, for the Lord holds us by the hand” (Ps. 37:24).
[1] ©
2021 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm, Ph. D. on 9/26/2021 for
Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.
[2] John
Calvin, Commentary on a Harmony of the Evangelists Matthew, Mark, and Luke,
vol. 1, p. 291.
[3] Cf. Calvin, Commentary on a Harmony, 285-86.
