Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
To hear the sermon in its fullness click here.
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| Br. Josép Martínez-Cubero, OHC |
I love this gospel lesson! We have exorcists, demons, drowning, amputations, and hell! And I love Jesus in this passage. Talk about fully human! You can tell he is dealing with disciples who are very young, and it appears he has had it with them not getting it!
“Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him because he was not following us.” (One wonders what they were expecting Jesus’ response to be?) This happens almost immediately after Jesus rebuked their earlier arguments about which of them is the greatest.
It seems that all Jesus’ rebuke did was to encourage them to stop competing with each other so that they could compete together against those outside the group.
This particular section of Mark’s Gospel reflects some conflicts between early Christian communities. Mark frames this part of his narrative to address some of the problems his community is having with other Christians. The early Christian church wasn’t all united in their beliefs… (Hmm) Sometimes Christians clashed with each other… (Hmm!) Occasionally, Christians criticized one another very harshly over differences in practice… (Hmmm, sounds familiar?) Mark’s audience would have recognized themselves in the disciples' finger-pointing, and their sense of competition over who can use Jesus' name, who is right, and who has authority.
For Mark, Christian identity is defined, not by finger-pointing other Christians, and not by taking the role of victim when persecuted or criticized in order to excuse payback, and punishment. Instead, Christian community is to be defined by responding to Jesus’ call to care for the vulnerable, to welcome the stranger, and to avoid those things that are destructive to self, neighbor, and community. In this is rooted our identity as Jesus’ disciples, to love God and neighbor. Our identity as people of God is not something we attain, but something we receive as a gift. We are called to live in gratitude as the blessed people of God, and we are to point people toward God through our example.
Calling evil what evil is, is an act of love. Demonizing is not. Judgment belongs not to us but to God. Finger-pointing will not get far with Jesus. While the disciples are eager to bring judgment on the outsider who is acting in Jesus' name, Jesus wants the disciples to pay attention instead to their own behavior and warns them that they are the ones in danger of doing harm. It's as though Jesus says, "The problem is not the folks outside our group. Don't worry about them. Look at yourselves. How are you getting in the way of the gospel? How are you a stumbling block?" It is better to cut off your hand, your foot or pull out your eye if it’s causing you to stumble than to go to hell.
A very important point here is that the Greek term translated as hell is really "Gehenna," the Valley of Hinnom. This is the place where the population of Israel burned its trash. The story is that so much trash was burned there that the fires never seem to go out. But before that, it was the valley where the dead soldiers used to be piled up during war, and where the bodies of executed criminals were disposed of. It was also the place where centuries before Jesus, child sacrifices were performed by the followers of the Canaanite god Moloch. (Jeremiah 7)
So, Jesus here is not talking about Dante’s Inferno. He is referring to the way we shut off ourselves from God’s Reign here on earth when we alienate ourselves from God and one another or when we see nothing but threats from outside our community, threats from people outside our control, threats we want to stop. As many of us saw on Thursday with the Kavanaugh/Ford Hearings, this kind of hell happens in our public discourse. It also happens when we scapegoat Muslims, foreigners, people of color, LGBTQ people, democrats, republicans, and the list goes on. We can hear it in our communities when we blame what’s wrong in our cities and towns on racial or ethnic or religious differences. Every time we draw a line between others and ourselves we will find Jesus on the other side. Jesus is always with the outsiders. The poem by Edwin Markham goes like this:
This particular section of Mark’s Gospel reflects some conflicts between early Christian communities. Mark frames this part of his narrative to address some of the problems his community is having with other Christians. The early Christian church wasn’t all united in their beliefs… (Hmm) Sometimes Christians clashed with each other… (Hmm!) Occasionally, Christians criticized one another very harshly over differences in practice… (Hmmm, sounds familiar?) Mark’s audience would have recognized themselves in the disciples' finger-pointing, and their sense of competition over who can use Jesus' name, who is right, and who has authority.
For Mark, Christian identity is defined, not by finger-pointing other Christians, and not by taking the role of victim when persecuted or criticized in order to excuse payback, and punishment. Instead, Christian community is to be defined by responding to Jesus’ call to care for the vulnerable, to welcome the stranger, and to avoid those things that are destructive to self, neighbor, and community. In this is rooted our identity as Jesus’ disciples, to love God and neighbor. Our identity as people of God is not something we attain, but something we receive as a gift. We are called to live in gratitude as the blessed people of God, and we are to point people toward God through our example.
Calling evil what evil is, is an act of love. Demonizing is not. Judgment belongs not to us but to God. Finger-pointing will not get far with Jesus. While the disciples are eager to bring judgment on the outsider who is acting in Jesus' name, Jesus wants the disciples to pay attention instead to their own behavior and warns them that they are the ones in danger of doing harm. It's as though Jesus says, "The problem is not the folks outside our group. Don't worry about them. Look at yourselves. How are you getting in the way of the gospel? How are you a stumbling block?" It is better to cut off your hand, your foot or pull out your eye if it’s causing you to stumble than to go to hell.
A very important point here is that the Greek term translated as hell is really "Gehenna," the Valley of Hinnom. This is the place where the population of Israel burned its trash. The story is that so much trash was burned there that the fires never seem to go out. But before that, it was the valley where the dead soldiers used to be piled up during war, and where the bodies of executed criminals were disposed of. It was also the place where centuries before Jesus, child sacrifices were performed by the followers of the Canaanite god Moloch. (Jeremiah 7)
So, Jesus here is not talking about Dante’s Inferno. He is referring to the way we shut off ourselves from God’s Reign here on earth when we alienate ourselves from God and one another or when we see nothing but threats from outside our community, threats from people outside our control, threats we want to stop. As many of us saw on Thursday with the Kavanaugh/Ford Hearings, this kind of hell happens in our public discourse. It also happens when we scapegoat Muslims, foreigners, people of color, LGBTQ people, democrats, republicans, and the list goes on. We can hear it in our communities when we blame what’s wrong in our cities and towns on racial or ethnic or religious differences. Every time we draw a line between others and ourselves we will find Jesus on the other side. Jesus is always with the outsiders. The poem by Edwin Markham goes like this:
He drew a circle that shut me out —Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.But Love and I had the wit to win:We drew a circle that took him in!
Jesus warns that the tendency to scapegoat others, and to blame others, and to name the sins of others is the very path the leads to Gehenna- the place where the casualties of our scapegoating pile-up, the place that symbolizes the worst that humans choose to do to one another. I’m not convinced it is a place in the afterlife. If there was really an eternal realm where demons executed grim punishment on people for their sins, hell would be over-flowing with people and heaven would be empty. As Lutheran pastor Nadia Boltz-Weber puts it, “We are all saints and sinners.” The Scriptures make very clear that God loves the whole world and seeks to restore everyone to right relationship. In the fullness of time, instead of condemning us to hell, God will love the hell out of us. Que así sea en el nombre del Padre, del Hijo y del Espíritu Santo. ~Amen+
References:
- David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor (General Editors), Feasting on the Word, Year B Volume 4 (Westminster John Knox Press, Louisville, KY 2011)
- Bruce J. Malina, Richard L. Rohrbaugh, Social-Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels (Fortress Press, Second Edition, 2003
- Edwin Marham, Outwitted (Poem)
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