Numbers 11:25-29
James 5:1-6
Mark 9:38-48
I wonder how many people here like solving sudoku puzzles. I don’t do them very often, but on a long journey they are a useful way of passing the time whilst keeping the brain cells stimulated.
If you’re as good at sudoku as me, you’ll be familiar with that sinking feeling, usually when you’ve filled in most of the grid, that it just isn’t going to work out. Somewhere back along the line you’ve put one wrong number in a cell, and that makes everything else wrong, too. There’s nothing for it but to undo the whole thing, go back to the beginning and start again.
In today’s gospel reading the disciples are trying to solve the puzzle of Jesus. Who is he? What is he about? They think they’ve got the answer, but actually somewhere back along the line they’ve got something basically wrong, and that makes the whole of their understanding of Jesus wrong. There is nothing for it but to go back and undo the first mistake, and start again.
They think they’ve got the answer, because about a chapter back in Mark - two Sundays ago in our readings - Jesus had asked them who they thought he was, and Peter had said, “you are the Messiah”. And he was right, but he didn’t understand what that meant. He thought the Messiah was about power and control and imposing God’s kingdom by force.
But Jesus tried to teach him that instead the Messiah must be rejected and suffer, and be put to death, and rise again. None of which Peter understood. And when he tried to talk sense into Jesus he earned the stinging rebuke, “get behind me, Satan!”. Peter, he said, had to stop thinking in a human way and start thinking in God’s way.
But as they carried on their journey up to Jerusalem, it didn’t get any better. They saw the glory of Jesus revealed on the Mount of Transfiguration, but then Jesus had told them a second time that he was going to be betrayed, and killed, and would rise again. And they had no idea what he was talking about. Blank. Not a clue.
So then the disciples started arguing which of them was the greatest. They were still inside that mindset of power and control and imposition. So Jesus took a little child, someone without any power or control, no position in society, unable to impose anything. And Jesus said, if you welcome this little child, you welcome me. This is what I’m about. This is the imagination you need to get inside to understand the Messiah.
But, as we heard today, still they don’t get it. “Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us.” They’re still thinking in terms of power and control, and therefore rivalry and fear. They think that when Jesus imposes his Kingdom, they are going to be his inner circle, his right hand men. So they can’t have anyone else threatening that position.
But Jesus says, simply, don’t stop them. “Whoever is not against us is for us.” There simply is no need, no place, for rivalry and fear in God’s kingdom. Because God’s kingdom is about love being made known in a world which is deeply resistant to love. It is therefore about love being made known in the excluded, the powerless, in the victim of human rivalry and fear and control. It is about love made known in a Man on a cross.
Now to the disciples, and to anyone who is still thinking the way the world thinks, that is a contradiction and a scandal. And scandal is the big theme that runs through today’s Gospel reading, and indeed through most of the New Testament.
Scandal, skandalon in Greek, crops up all the time, though we aren’t always aware of it because it’s translated in a number of ways: scandal, stumbling-block, offence, obstacle, and sometimes as “sin”. The image is of a block of stone in your path that you fall over or can’t get round, but at the same time that you can’t leave alone. It worries away at you. And the big scandal of the New Testament is the crucified Messiah, a seeming contradiction which is an obstacle to faith for those who can’t understand it. St Paul says in 1 Corinthians “We proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling-block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.”
Jesus does not want the disciples to avoid the approaching scandal. The scandal that the Messiah, the saviour of Israel, is going to end up on a Roman cross. But they still want to think that there isn’t a scandal. So he confronts them directly with what seems to be very scandalous teaching:
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... And if your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off... And if your eye causes you to stumble, tear it out...
This saying of Jesus is really quite shocking. And it is meant to be. But it is not really about hands and feet and eyes so much as about the scandal itself, the stumbling block. And there’s irony in it, because if your foot or your eye caused you to stumble, you wouldn’t exactly cure the problem by cutting it off or tearing it out.
Jesus is trying to focus the eyes of the disciples on the scandal, the stumbling block, that they are trying to avoid. They are still thinking of the Messiah in earthly terms, of power and control and fear, and that is an obstacle for them. They need to unlearn that, to go back to the beginning of the puzzle and start again, and learn that God’s kingdom is quite other from what they had thought. They need to learn that God’s kingdom will be brought in by a Messiah who will be rejected, and killed, and will rise from the dead.
In the end, they still don’t get it, and they still won’t understand, right up to Good Friday itself, when the betrayal and crucifixion of Jesus will finally completely shatter their whole conception of what God and his Kingdom are about. And it was only once everything they thought they believed had been taken away from them, that they could start from the beginning again.
And they began again when the risen Christ came to them, forgiveness and love triumphant beyond the worst that the world could do. They began again, this time with the new imagination of God transforming their minds, their lives, and, through them, beginning the transformation of the world.
We too are called to that path of radical transformation, of beginning again in God’s Kingdom. Like the disciples, we too need to be alert for the scandal we are trying to avoid. Scandal can mean many things: stumbling-block, obstacle, offence, sin. What is there in our own lives which is an obstacle to our coming to Jesus, to us giving ourselves totally to him? Where are we still following the way the world thinks, the way of power, control and fear? Where is it that we still need to be liberated by the fearless, deathless love of God?
This affects not only ourselves but others too. Sin has an effect in the community. “Take care that you do not cause one of these little ones to stumble.” What we do can become an obstacle preventing others from coming to Jesus. Greed keeps others poor, deprives them of the necessities of life. Anger leads to violence, both physical and emotional. Lust erodes faithfulness in families and relationships.
Jesus calls us to turn to him, whatever our stumbling blocks, our scandals and sins. Jesus calls us to repent and be forgiven. And in that forgiveness, that embrace of God’s love, to find our minds transformed as we leave behind the way the world thinks, trapped in power and control and fear, and are set free into the unlimited, deathless, utterly vivacious love of God.
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