Consequences and stumbling blocks

As we get into fall and move towards the end of the green season, the tone of our Gospel readings becomes more challenging. These weekly pieces of Jesus’ teaching begin to confront us with the stakes of whether or not we rise to Jesus’ challenges. The stakes of our living or not living as disciples, the cost to us and others, the impact on God’s mission.
 
That’s the perspective today’s Gospel reading is coming from, and I want us to simply go through the first big section of it and think it over together this morning. Whenever we study a text in this way, remember that you’ll always get more out of the process if you look at it on your insert as well as listen.
 
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." Here is someone who is out in the world doing Kingdom stuff, but the church is not happy because it doesn’t have their trademark on it. Did you notice how John put it? His problem with the man isn’t that he’s not following Jesus, but that he’s not following who? Us. He’s not in our group. Whoever this man is, he is making a positive contribution to God’s Kingdom, and he’s giving Jesus the credit. But rather than applaud those good effects, John is stuck on official authorization. Is his name on the rolls? Has there been a vestry vote?

Last weekend 8 of us from this parish went to a workshop with Carrie Headington, the lay Missioner for Evangelism in the Episcopal Diocese of Dallas, and she gave a number of examples of ordinary Episcopalians doing kingdom stuff in their own homes: meals for international students, professional support gatherings, spa days, cooking classes, but all done in the name of Jesus and for the love of Jesus. Their parishes probably coached them first on how to think and live missionally, but nobody was functioning as an authorized subsidiary of the Episcopal Diocese of Dallas. It was just Episcopalians acting in Jesus’ name to benefit others, not acting in the name of an institution to benefit the institution.
                                   
So what does Jesus think of that kind of thing?  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.”
 
Now this is very subtle and interesting. Jesus’ assumption here is that when people experiment with acting in faith, the result is likely to be positive. The step this man is taking will have spiritual consequences for him, because acting in Christ’s name brings growth. So Jesus says, don’t stop him; don’t prioritize the authorization piece by putting it up front. The attitude we see here is that doing ministry for Jesus is likely to shape you into someone who appreciates and knows Jesus. Does that work unfailingly? No, because we’re all human; but it works a lot of the time.
 
Jesus goes on: 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. So now he goes a step farther on the same issue of consequences of actions. He said in the previous verse that the consequences of someone taking a Kingdom action in his name are likely to be positive, but here he looks at the consequences of someone’s simply appreciating such an action. Who’s the “you” here? It’s the disciples, right?
 
Someone is giving water to them because they follow Christ, and Jesus says even the consequences of that will be positive. Kingdom stuff that small, that non-threatening, still has consequences. If you’ve followed at all any of the research on acts of kindness that’s been in the press recently, you will know that not just receiving or giving kindness, but even observing an act of kindness can benefit your serotonin levels. Small actions matter, and Jesus makes that point over and over in his teaching.
 
Next continues on this topic of consequences, but in a way that’s very challenging. The first issue Jesus mentions is how serious it is that our actions can have the consequence of blocking other people’s way to him: "If any of you put a stumbling block before one of these little ones who believe in me,” he says,“it would be better for you if a great millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea.” Jesus often teaches with hyperbole, overstatement, and he is doing that here: making a point by being verbally outrageous.
 
The most immediate reference, I would guess, is probably the disciples trying to block the way of the man who was acting in Jesus’ name without their OK. However, the reference is ultimately to all of us: but there are so many ways each of us can make, and I’m sure has made, it likely that someone else will stumble on their way to God. If we say that we follow Jesus, people take our behavior and our words as evidence for what he’s like and what he cares about. Are you demonstrating his heart to others, or not? Once we identify as Christians, we can’t opt out of the sobering reality that we will be seen as evidence for or against Christ.  
 
But there’s a second serious issue: We don’t just cause other people to trip up on their way to Christ, we trip ourselves up too. That’s the final part of the reading I want us to focus on this morning. Again, this intense language to make a point: 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.”

People who have not really read the Bible but have picked up ideas about Christianity here and there will sometimes claim that Jesus is opposed to any kind of judgment; he accepts everything and is really nice and non-threatening and just wants you to feel good about yourself. In a society where – we were talking about this at vestry on Monday – where fewer and fewer people, including church attenders, know what is actually in the Old and New Testaments, you can make up a cartoon version of Jesus like that without anybody calling you on it.
But if you want to deal with actual Christianity and use your intellect, you have to take the whole range of things Jesus says into account. How do you integrate these words into what you know about God and judgment and mercy from the rest of the Bible? Why does Jesus take this issue of blocking people’s way to God so incredibly seriously?
It is horrible, he says, for any obstacle to come between a person and God. Whether we do something that breaks the connection for someone else, or we break our own connection ourselves, it’s nightmarishly bad and has nightmarishly bad consequences which could go on forever. That kind of rupture – sin is the classical word for it – with those kind of potential consequences: in Jesus’ eyes, that is the worst thing that could ever happen to you. It is worse than any injury, any tragedy, any loss. There is no cost too high to pay to repair that rupture, to heal sin before its consequences go too far.

The scholar William Placher has a take on this, in his commentary on Mark in the Theological Commentary on the Bible series, that I find very thoughtful. He says that if – IF, and the whole point of his remark is that this IF is impossible and ridiculous – IF one hand or foot really was all that was causing us to sin, if all we had to do to repair the tragic rupture between us and God was to surgically remove one lone body part that was our only problem, then we should remove it. As Placher writes, “Anyone who says no to that [hypothetical] has failed to grasp the horror of sin.”

But of course, it’s an absurd hypothetical. Our hands and feet and eyes aren’t what separates us from God. A simple literal body part isn’t what trips us and others up, what breaks our connection to God. That rupture comes from our wills, our misplaced loves, our addictions, our broken hearts. You can’t just snip away one little problem piece and magically fix yourself; the problem is everywhere. We have all put obstacles in the way of others. We have all put obstacles in our own way. We have all failed at appreciating the Kingdom acts of other people. We have all failed at taking action for the Kingdom ourselves. As the Psalm says today: Who can even “tell how often he offends”?
The nightmare of rupture between us and God is shot through everything. And the cost to pay to repair that rupture is unimaginably high. So high, Christianity teaches, that only God himself could pay it. God’s action to remove the stumbling block of sin, to heal the rupture in Jesus is the only thing that can reconcile, ultimately, the seeming paradox we see in this passage – God in Christ expressing both profound horror at our sin and deep affirmation of even our tiniest steps for good.

To people who haven’t wrestled with Scripture, it might seem odd that the same person can say both "If any of you put a stumbling block before one of these little ones, it would be better for you if a millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea” and “Do not stop him; no one who does a deed of power in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me.” But Jesus said both. So wait, is God absurdly generous, or absurdly demanding? Are God’s requirements surprisingly low, or impossibly high? Both. Both. In Christianity it’s always both. We can’t reconcile those opposites ourselves, any more than we can repair our rupture with God ourselves, but God can. And the Christian claim is not just that he can, but that in Jesus, he did.