Numbers 11: 4-6,10-16,24-29
James 5:13-20
Mark 9:38-50
“After Jesus had
finished teaching the disciples”, so begins our gospel reading today. To
understand what we heard today, we need to remind ourselves what Jesus has been
teaching the disciples just before this scene, in the passage we read last
week. There were two main points.
Firstly, the
Messiah is going to be rejected and killed. Secondly, who is the greatest? You
will remember that the disciples were arguing among themselves who was the
greatest, and Jesus took a little child – a non-person in the culture of the
time, someone of no significance, and said that the greatest in the kingdom of
God were those who made themselves least of all.
But these
disciples are really very slow on the uptake. How patient Jesus must have been
with them, because as we hear today they 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 of needing to protect their own position and status. Thinking that way has
been a problem for the people of God from the beginning, as Moses discovered in
our Old Testament reading today.
But Jesus says,
simply, don’t worry about the other people, and 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 God’s superabundant
generosity and love breaking in to a world which is deeply resistant to love.
It is about love being made known in the excluded, the powerless, in the victim
of human rivalry and fear and control. And it is ultimately about love made
known in the Man on a cross, Jesus who so completely trusted the Father’s
generous love that he gave himself up even to death, knowing he would not be
abandoned.
But to the
disciples in today’s reading that is a contradiction and a scandal. And scandal
is the key to unlocking today’s Gospel reading, in particular the very hard and
startling things that Jesus says at the end.
Scandal crops up
all the time in the New Testament, though we aren’t always aware of it because the
Greek word skandalon is 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 both
attracts and repels, and 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 very shocking. And it is meant to be. But it is not
so much about hands and feet and eyes 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, and learn instead that God’s
kingdom is quite other from what they had thought. God’s kingdom is founded on
God’s generous love alone, not on power and control. This is a kingdom that
will become real through 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. It will only be once they have lost everything that they will
discover the Kingdom of generosity, the kingdom only given to those who know
that they have nothing.
We too are called to own our poverty and so discover God’s generosity. Like
the disciples, we too need to be alert for the scandal we are trying to avoid. That
may be the desire to possess and control, because we don’t really quite trust
God’s generosity enough.
That’s something to be alert for in the community of the Church, as the
disciples show us. I was reminded of this when reading some of the election
addresses from people standing for General Synod. The new synod, which will be
elected next month, will have to deal with some controversial issues. There’s
nothing new in that: arguments and disagreements have been part of the church’s
life from the beginning, as we can see by reading the Acts of the Apostles.
Indeed in God’s providence this is part of the way in which the church grows
and develops.
But in the midst of disagreement we must not lose sight of God’s
generosity. God has called all of us to be part of his holy people, and that is
his gift. God has given us to each other, and we must not therefore be
scandalized by one another, whatever our differences. And that applies not only
to the Church of England, but to all Christians whatever church or community
they may belong to.
But we need to look within ourselves as well. Scandal can mean many things:
stumbling-block, obstacle, offence, sin. What is there in our own lives which
is an obstacle to Jesus coming to us, or to us giving ourselves totally to him?
What is it that provokes offence? Where are we still following the way the
world thinks, the way of power, control and fear? Where is it that we are still
not trusting God’s generous love?
Jesus calls us as we are, whatever our stumbling blocks,
our scandals and our sins. Jesus calls us to the embrace of God’s generous
love, the love that forgives all sins, the love that raises the dead. In the
embrace of God’s love our minds will be transformed as we leave behind the way
the world thinks, trapped in power and control and fear, and are set free into
the unlimited, generous, and utterly vivacious love of God.
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