A Sermon Preached at Holy Fellowship Metropolitan Community Church, London, ON

Sunday, October 19, 2003

John said to Jesus, ‘Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us.’ But Jesus said, ‘Do not stop him; for no one who does a deed of power in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me. Whoever is not against us is for us. For truly I tell you, whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you bear the name of Christ will by no means lose the reward. ‘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. If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life maimed than to have two hands and to go to hell, to the unquenchable fire. And if your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life lame than to have two feet and to be thrown into hell. And if your eye causes you to stumble, tear it out; it is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and to be thrown into hell, where their worm never dies, and the fire is never quenched.  Mark 9:38-49

You know, sometimes I wish we could just sit down together and read a whole LOT of the bible, instead of the snippets we generally get. But then, either I’d have to preach for HOURS to cover all the material, or I wouldn’t have time to preach at all, and wouldn’t THAT be a shame?

The reason I was thinking that is that today’s passage from the gospel of Mark, is actually part of a larger story about Jesus’ ministry, and if we looked at the larger story, we’d begin to sense a pattern. Right before the passage was read, Mark records how the disciples had been arguing about who was going to be the greatest after Jesus was gone, and how Jesus taught them "whoever wants to be first, must be last of all, and servant of all." And how Jesus took a little child in his arms, a child who was the least significant person in his time and place and culture, and said, how you treat this child is how you are treating me. How you welcome the least among you is how you welcome God. And the pattern we would begin to sense is of Jesus trying and trying to teach the disciples about how radically inclusive God’s love and God’s reign truly are.

We’d see it in how he fed the thousands by the lakeshore. How he said the healing work we do is more important than the details like washing our hands or what day we work on. How the disciples were to do the same work he was doing, teaching and healing. How he opened his heart to the Canaanite woman, even though his people and hers were ancient enemies, and offered his love and healing to ALL people. So it might seem odd that the next thing Mark tells us about is a disciple coming to Jesus and saying,  "There’s this guy, and he’s healing people, IN YOUR NAME.... He’s not on the approved list of disciples... He didn’t walk with you for the past 2 ½ years... He wasn’t with us when you fed the 5000.... He’s not one of US, so we told him to stop."

Knowing the pugnaciousness of a few of those disciples, the burly fishermen types, for instance, I sometimes wonder if there were some, um, encouragement that accompanied their message. Like the guy who had been healing folks suddenly woke up with a horse’s head in his bed or something. But Mark doesn’t record that.

Now, one thing Mark DOES record, that we might have missed at the time, is that the disciples themselves have had some trouble recently, healing people. Earlier in this chapter, a mother brought her son to the disciples to have them cast out a demon, and they couldn’t do it, so she brought him to Jesus, and he was healed. And Jesus was kind of annoyed at the disciples. And now THEY want to discourage this successful healer simply because he wasn’t one of their group!

The issue is not whether the guy can heal people or not – ‘cause he CAN. The issue isn’t whether he is acting in the name of Jesus – ‘cause he IS. The issue for the disciples is whether he’s part of the in group, the chosen establishment. I think the disciples are a little concerned with their status. We keep hearing, in the Gospel of Mark, about various disciples trying to secure their place with Jesus, trying to get ahead of the others in the coming reign of God. So in light of their natural insecurities, and their earlier inability to heal, could they have perceived this guy’s success as a threat to them? Who knows?

But Jesus doesn’t rebuke them. He answers them with an inclusive word. "Don’t stop him.... Whoever isn’t against us is for us." It’s not as if Jesus doesn’t recognize the potential for problems if someone’s healing in his name. But he says space has to be made for outsiders, and outright mavericks, so long as they are not explicitly opponents of Jesus. The disciples need to nurture the gift of graciousness and generosity. They need to know Jesus isn’t always going to be with them, and the people they meet along the way in their ministry, who show them some kindness, will also receive a reward for THEIR graciousness and generosity.

The Gospel of Mark has Jesus go on to say, "For truly I tell you, whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you bear the name of Christ will by no means lose the reward." That’s the example he wants them to emulate. God’s work, done in God’s name, is to be honored and embraced, not scrutinized for credentials.

You know, when I write a sermon, I usually sit down and try to find some contemporary example of what’s being taught in the Scriptures. Like the disciples, some of us need to hear things and see things in different ways, to get the message. And I had trouble coming up with one, but after I thought about it for a long time, I recalled something I saw a long, long time ago. I went to college out in California, in a time, in the 70's, when it seemed like there was a demonstration or march every week, and some protestor on their soapbox on every other corner. And the little college I went to at the time, the College of Marin, in Kentfield, had a plaza with a flower box that was just right for standing on if you wanted to make a speech, and people would sometimes just show up there and start speechifying, and see if anyone would stop and listen. I wonder what would happen if I tried preaching that way, say, at Galleria Mall sometime.... NAH!!!....

Anyhow, there was this old guy who used to come about once a month. He was an old lefty. A genuine Red. Used to speak... preach, really... on the joys of the communist system. Now, the kids who went to that college, myself included, prided themselves on their, I dunno, our consciousness?... Our willingness to protest against the government... our willingness to embrace views that took pot shots at the establishment, the status quo. It was a kind of supercilious cynicism. Because we were, after all, fairly privileged, middle-class college kids, with a lot more invested in the status quo than we wanted to admit. So the old lefty often didn’t get a very warm welcome. Usually people ignored him, but once in a while, he drew a few hecklers. That’s probably something I should keep in mind when I think I might like to try a little street preaching. Especially since I get heckled right here in church!

Anyhow, one day, the old guy had drawn a crowd, and it wasn’t a very friendly crowd. People were arguing with him, yelling at him, but he didn’t stop with his message. I watched this, and the more they heckled, the louder he ranted, to the point where he was getting really hoarse. I kind of felt sorry for him, but I didn’t stand up for him. It was just him against the crowd, and he sounded so tired and hoarse, but he went on speaking about, I think it was about the rights of the proletariat.

And then, a girl went into the student center, and came back out carrying a cup of water, and walked through the crowd, and gave it to him, and just walked on. He smiled, and I guess he figured he had finally converted someone, and he called after her, "Thank you, Comrade!" Well, one of the hecklers took a look at that and laughed and said, "Yeah, a drink courtesy of the Proletariat!" And with that, the girl stopped, and turned around, and said, loud and clear, to everyone, "No... courtesy of Jesus Christ." And the old lefty just grinned, and drank deeply, and went right on preaching. God’s work, done in God’s name.

Jesus’ principle is to include everyone, not exclude anyone. To embrace those who are doing God’s work. And God’s work is love and healing and liberation. And no one doing that work is to be scorned. If they’re not part of our church, if they have a little different theology, maybe even if they’re not what we think of as followers of Christ.... Worse still, if they’re the folks who get on our last nerve.... We’re to embrace them.

This isn’t about theology or church membership folks. It’s about relationships. Our relationships with one another as disciples, our relationships with the people to whom we minister – note I say WE minister.... because y’all are ministers – and most especially, our relationship with God.

So how do we square this inclusive message of love and redemption, with these harsh words about cutting off your hand if it causes you to sin, or plucking out your eye if what you see causes you to sin? Didn’t Jesus just get through saying that legalistic niceties are irrelevant, when someone’s doing God’s work? It’s like he’s just told the disciples "Don’t sweat the small stuff."

Have you seen the t-shirt that says on the front, "Don’t sweat the small stuff," and on the back "It’s ALL small stuff." Well, now we have this rather harsh language about all the details of the law, and it’s like Jesus turned around and his t-shirt said "There’s NO small stuff!" We look at these words and see, rather understandably, given the language about the fires of hell, damnation, rather than grace.

OK... first of all... we should be able to recognize that this is metaphorical language. I sometimes get puzzled when I reflect on the fact that the people who were actually listening to Jesus would have CLEARLY understood he was speaking metaphorically. THEY could see Jesus was employing striking, poetic images that exaggerate in order to communicate in an effective and memorable way, and not REALLY suggesting that we cut off our hands... and yet people reading it NOW, sometimes aren’t so sure.

You know, I think it must be kind of like chatting online. You don’t get things like tone of voice, or facial expression, or body language when you chat online, so people have developed what they call "emoticons." You know, those little sideways smiley faces they type, using a colon and a parentheses? You can make it "wink" if you use a semi-colon. Maybe what we needed was for Mark to have put in a little "wink" here.

See, what we have here is the typical, exaggerated language of the Middle East. We call it hyperbole. Actually, we call it "drama queen." People of Jesus’ time and culture didn’t go in for concise, moderated, (and often dull) language such as the Greeks and Romans favoured. They expressed truth in vivid word pictures; exaggerated images. And Jesus often used that kind of dramatic language to make his point. When we try to read the Bible with academic, Western eyes, we get into trouble. For our culture, especially when we’re writing or giving a formal lecture, or dare I say, a sermon, the bigger the truth the more careful and concise and logical the language. And that just wasn’t the case for the people of the Middle East. Jesus wasn’t a theology Professor at Oxford. Nor was he speaking to academics. For Jesus and his people, the bigger the truth the more exaggerated the language might be. When we understand this, his teaching packs a punch. When we don’t understand it, we can end up with a literalism that leads to grave religious excesses.

OK? It’s metaphorical and it’s hyperbole. That’s the first thing. And the second thing is.... Someone reminded me recently how much this passage has been used against many of us. People who, perhaps, see this LESS metaphorically have told us that we need to, in essence, cut off a part of ourselves, cut off who we are at the very core of our being, because we are Lesbian, or Gay, or Bi, or Trans. That, rather than do what THEY consider sin, we need to relinquish our very selves. And I’m here to tell you that this is not what that means.

NEVERTHELESS.... it is also true that these sayings DO challenge us to examine the quality of our discipleship, and the quality of our relationship with God. Because what I think this passage is trying to say to us is that a radical concern with God and with God’s own concerns is the key to closeness with God, and that relationship is so important that nothing should hinder it. Any hindrance is to be eliminated.

There is NO human relationship that can match a relationship with God, and yet, we human creatures are made in God’s image, and the human-divine relationship will, necessarily, sometimes resemble the human relationships we have with each other. That can be both good and bad. At its best, we can learn a transcendent, unconditional love from God, and bring some semblance of it to our human relationships.

You know Anne and I are getting married next week. Over the course of the nearly 5 years we’ve been together, we’ve had to work hard, at times, just to BE together. For a long time, she was living in Canada, while I was living in the States, and that just wasn’t the best way for us to be. Now, I’m not holding up our relationship as any kind of a model, especially the long distance part, but Anne did something that was really instructive to me in my reflection on this passage. At one point, Anne just pulled up her roots, and moved down to be with me in Washington. And she went down there without any guarantees for the future. She had my promises, for whatever they were worth, but she had a visa that was only good for six months, and no job, and she couldn’t even get one on a visitor’s visa. And neither of us had any idea where we’d go next. And yet, she was willing to do anything... ANYTHING... so that we wouldn’t be apart any longer.

It was kind of humbling. You have no idea.... or actually, you CAN have some idea.... how humbling it is to be loved like that.

And THAT... that and more.... that’s what we’re supposed to do to be in relationship with God and God’s people. It’s to be our primary source and primary need. Nothing.... NOTHING.... is supposed to come between us and God. Nothing we do with our hands... no place our feet can take us... nothing that passes before our eyes... is supposed to come between us and that vital relationship. But that relationship is not cemented by threats of having our limbs amputated. Our relationship with God is far better acted out in loving our neighbor and our selves, and in embracing all of the loving, healing work of God.

That’s the lesson the disciples needed to learn, and the one we so often need. And you know the amazing thing?.... The reward is that incredible, overwhelming, humbling love.

Resources gratefully acknowledged: Bruce Pewer, the Uniting Church in Australia.