Offending the Little Ones

By

Reverend Litton Logan

October 1, 1006

Scriptures:

Mark 9:38--50 (NRSV)

³⁸ John said to him, “Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us.” ³⁹ 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. ⁴⁰ Whoever is not against us is for us. ⁴¹ 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. ⁴² “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. ⁴³ 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. ⁴⁵And 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. ⁴⁷ 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, ⁴⁸ where their worm never dies, and the fire is never quenched.

⁴⁹ “For everyone will be salted with fire. ⁵⁰ Salt is good; but if salt has lost its saltiness, how can you season it? Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another.”

Sermon:

Last week we looked at the passages of scriptures in Mark wherein Jesus says that the disciples and by implication, Mark is saying to his audiences that they need to undergo re-parenting, become like little children learning a fresh divine truth from the teachings of Jesus.  Not only this, but the disciples are to be open to God’s novel working in the lives of all people.  The true disciple, must recognize, honor, cherish, and nurture the Christ presence in other people’s lives, even if those people don’t believe just like or act just like them.

Just as Jesus went to the common folk of the land, who by nature of their work and social status were excluded from mainstream Judaism, so are the disciples to go out to all people and to accept all who come in the name of Jesus.  Even the kindest act—giving a glass of water to a follower of Christ will not go unrewarded so imagine what will happen if a person opens their hearts and homes in Christian hospitality to fellow Christians of whatever caste.

          How we treat the least and most vulnerable in our society and in the world, especially those young in the Christian faith, all be they from different walks of life, different cultures, different value references, etc., determines our measure of discipleship. 

          We learned last Sunday that the disciples and by way of example maybe some members of Mark’s church and the church of our time are not ready to become children metaphorically nor were they willing to accept just anyone as a Christian brother of sister if the convert didn’t somehow approximate them in values and beliefs.

          Today we see John, a disciple of Jesus, still not understanding and still not accepting anything or anyone that didn’t conform to his ideas.  This story of John may reflect Mark’s interpretations of Jesus’ teachings more than the facts of the actual historical event. 

Nevertheless, as the story goes, John comes to Jesus and says that there is some guy casting out demons in Jesus’ name and he is not a follower of “us”. That is, this exorcist isn’t a member of the Twelve.  Did you note in the reading of the scriptures that John doesn’t say this other, unknown exorcist was not a follower of Jesus?  He simply said that this unknown exorcist was not a follower of us--the twelve disciples. 

This foreign exorcist isn’t one of the Twelve but he is able to exorcise demons just as the disciples had been empowered to do in Jesus’ name in chapter 6:7.  I also want to mention that Mark may have wanted to portray John as being peeved at this other exorcist because of his injured, apostolic pride.  Earlier in this ninth chapter of Mark, the disciples en mass were unable to exorcist an unclean spirit from a man’s child so Jesus had to do it for them. Yet, here is some guy no one knows just exorcising unclean spirits as if they were going out of style and he isn’t even one of the Twelve. Imagine that.

          Jesus says don’t try to stop him.  My name has power not only over demons but also over any one who uses this power in my name. That person will himself or herself likewise be affected for the good.

          What does accepting this alien exorcist and his works have to do with accepting the least and most vulnerable of people, the little ones, into the Christian fold?  Plenty.  Many of Mark’s audience would have identified with this other exorcist because they were often viewed as the “other Christians”, the unorthodox and foreign Christians, who nonetheless were doing mighty deeds in the name of Jesus without the approval of the apostolic authority of Jerusalem’s Jewish-Christians. They would have seen themselves as the vulnerable, invisible, and marginalized little ones but exercising the power of Christ just the same.  So there. 

If the demons respond, if people are being saved and healed in Jesus name by the so-called unorthodox, gentile Christians, then the rest of you self-important and self-appointed authorities of the Christian faith need to get a life because the power of God is working through our faith in Jesus Christ as well as through yours. Thuuuud!

          There is definitely a lesson here for those who believe that only the approved and mutually accepted Christian denominations of the world have the franchise on God’s truth or power in Jesus Christ. As the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 12:1-11 tells us there are many kinds of astonishing phenomena and experiences of “God” even in the heathen world (vs. 2), but that the possession of the Spirit is shown by the acknowledgement of Jesus as Lord (v.3) and by a willingness to serve others. [i]

          The Gospel of Mark as I have shared several times was most likely written during or shortly after the Jewish rebellion between 66-70 C.E., which ended in the destruction of the Temple at Jerusalem and a major Diaspora of the Jews.  With the destruction of the Temple, Judaism as previously known as well as early, Jewish Christianity all but ceased to exist in any concerted and meaningful way.  Judaism in its scribal and Pharisaical forms would emerge from the Pharisaical academy at Jamnia to evolve into the various forms of Judaism of today.  Jewish Christianity would give way to the dominance of gentile Christianity.

          At the time of Mark’s writing, the political and social upheavals and the evils of the day produced a kind of religious hysteria if you will, which in its turn produced all sorts of apocalyptic prophets and would-be Messiahs. Some of these would-be Messiahs even claimed to be Jesus returned to earth to gather his flock and usher in the kingdom of God.

          Evidently, some of Mark’s audiences had been lead astray by these false prophets and faux Christ and were taking other Christians, little ones, with them.

          For such people, Mark reclaims and adapts teachings of Jesus, which state in an exaggerated form that people who follow these false prophets and false Christs and concomitantly teach others to do likewise, ought to have a large, donkey-driven millstone hung around their necks and thrown into the sea.   

The word used in the Greek which are frequently translated as stumble or stumbling block, offense or offend, or cause to sin is actual the Greek word from which we derive the  words scandal and scandalize.   Therefore, to cause a little one in Christ to stumble, to miss the mark in his or her faith, is to scandalize them—offend or injure them by some outrageous or improper behavior. 

Jesus says that those who scandalize the faith of the little ones, that is cause them to stumble, miss the mark in their beliefs that it would be better for them if they died an ignominious and outrageous mode of death.  Better to die an ignominious death than to live a scandalizing life with its awful, eternal consequences.

Jesus emphasizes the seriousness of offending the little ones by listing a series of hyperbolic self-mutilations to drive home his point that his disciples must excise anything or anyone from their lives and the life of the congregation of little ones, which contradicts, perverts, or scandalizes the truth of Jesus Christ and his teachings.  It is better to enter the kingdom of God maimed, that is minus certain aspects of one’s personality, one’s ego, one’s cultural or educational insights, or human relationships, including family members, than to offend the Christ in one’s self and in others and thereby be excluded from God’s kingdom altogether.  To be excluded from the kingdom of God is to be in hell. 

          What does the alien exorcist and scandalizing the faith of ancient Christians have to do with modern-day Christians?  Well, first off, it tells us we had better have a solid understanding of who and what Jesus is or isn’t before we start trying to teach others because we may be headed for trouble.

Secondly, it means that anytime we teach or proclaim who is acceptable or not acceptable before God in Jesus Christ, we may be offending, placing stumbling blocks in the pathways of other people’s faith and beliefs in Christ. In so doing, we risk the judgment listed in our scriptures today.  If the beliefs and practices of others are healing and bring wholesomeness into the lives of people and are done in the Spirit of God’s love and in the name of Jesus Christ, take caution before condemning or cutting these folks out of the Christian fold. The validity of any Christian’s belief is the supremacy of Jesus Christ as the latest and greatest, fullest manifestation possible in human flesh of God’s loving will and ways for all humankind.

          Beyond that, most of our differences are either academic, cultural, simple ignorance, or willful stupidity.

          I would also issue a caution and warning as Mark does later in chapter 13 to those people who run around crying the “sky is about to fall, the sky is about to fall” and selling books, making personal appearances on TV, radio, and the lecture circuit proclaiming here comes the Christ or their comes the Christ in such-and-such an hour or on such-and-such day, week, month, or year.  Many such people have led the little ones to stumble.  Folks, we can go back nearly 3,500 years and find indications that people were expecting the end of time and the end of the world because things were changing radically, politically, and socially and evil seemed to be winning the day.  The end of time hasn’t come; the end of the world hasn’t come.  Different and various generations and ways of life have ended and out of their ashes God has raised up hope in ever-increasing degrees for humanity.  The latest and greatest possibility God has presented to us is found in the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

          This business of being a disciple of Christ is a serious and joyful business.  The power of Christ in each of us can be a beacon of hope, wholeness, and love to those who are awash on the seas of moral and spiritual uncertainty and hopelessness.  When we see people desperately floundering in life, we are to reach out a helping, encouraging, and empathetic human hand by the power of the Christ with in us.  We are not to help others in order to convert them, or like the Twelve in our story today be overly concerned  with our own numbers, or affirm our religious beliefs and postures through numerical increases. In summary of our Christian service, we are to help others because it is the right thing to do as Christian people.  Ulterior church growth motives in helping others makes our service before God nothing more than human empathy with its own rewards.

          Doest this mean we stop evangelizing until we have a Ph.D. in Christian theology?  No, of course not.  It simply means that we hold to and proclaim only one qualification for a true disciple of Christ.  That truth being that God, the Creator and Sustainer of All Existence, was in Jesus of Nazareth mysteriously reconciling or harmonizing an egocentric humanity to the Divine Self. God took this extra ordinary action in Jesus because God loves creation, creature, and humankind and desires a mutually beneficial relationship with all humanity. Moreover, Jesus teaches us that the right, the highest, the most holy way to respond to God’s love is to love our neighbor, both near and far, as we love our selves.

          The nuisances of how people express and live out the Great Law of Love made known in Jesus may have cultural differences or reflect a lack of metaphysical sophistication by our standards.  However, if they claim Jesus Christ as Lord, the supreme manifestation of God’s love in human flesh, then receive them, welcome them, honor them, respect them, and don’t offend them with our cultural expressions of Christianity and our so-called superior metaphysics of religion. Causing a person to doubt the paradigms in which they learned the truth of God’s love is not only to scandalize them but also to scandalize ourselves by revealing how tenuous our faith is anchored in our religious doctrines and not in God.  

          In the closing verses of chapter 9, Jesus may have referred to an Old Testament reference to salting animal sacrifices before offering them to God, with a further reference to salt loosing its savory-ness as well as its preservative qualities. 

          No, this doesn’t mean that Christians are to become any more salty that many of us already are.  What it means is that we are to hold tight to our faith during hard times for it is our faith in God that will make our sacrifices acceptable and will preserve our souls.

          On this World Communion Sunday, I close by paraphrasing the words of Jesus, “Have salt—a preserving and effective faith--within yourselves, and don’t offended each other with your differences, rather be at peace with other Christians no matter how different they are from you. If they claim me Lord of their lives, I claim them as my disciples.