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"SCANDALIZING JESUS" | Mark 9.33-50 | September 28, 2003 |
As it turns out, the church was wrong and in direct opposition to what Jesus was saying in this pericope in Mark’s gospel. Here the disciples complained to Jesus that others were doing good deeds as they had been doing, and they made an assumption that they had exclusive rights. It is an arrogant assumption that comes out of a collective insecurity. It’s the voice of orthodoxy, says Robert Gnuse, that says ‘don’t listen to anyone else; we alone have the truth from god.’ (Lectionary Homiletics, Aug-Sept, 2003, p.63)
Jealousy comes from insecurity. The things that we’re most confident in, we can laugh at and about. The things that we’re most insecure in are the things we take too seriously and over which we get jealous and become defensive. Faith becomes a target for jealousy because everyone wants to think that God is on their side and no one else’s side. And when people think that they, and they alone, speak for God, people die.
Jesus’s response to the disciples is the epitome of his inclusive perspective. “No one who does a work of power in my name will be able soon to speak evil of me. And whoever gives you a cup of water in my name will never lose their reward.” The bible tells us that God is love. Not that God is like love, or God is loving, but that God is love which means that every act of love, whether it is between people you agree with or people you dislike, whether between people of different religions or prison inmates or outlaws or pagans or prostitutes or people of different sexual orientations or people with different value systems...any act of love is an act of God. All love is of God because God IS love. It is impossible to know love outside of God.
Jesus says that whoever trips up one of these little ones would be better off drowned! The Greek word here is to scandalize. Whoever scandalizes one of these little ones would be better off dead. And little ones doesn’t refer only to children; it refers to all who are thought of diminutively, all who are sidelined including the poor, the sick, the outcast, the drug addict. Gnuse reminds us that for four hundred years Catholic and Protestant missionaries have encountered diverse Hindu and Buddhist traditions, which proclaim messages with a wonderful similarity to our own Christian gospel. In certain forms of Hindu piety a great emphasis is placed upon how the god Brahma saves people by drawing them to himself in the process of reincarnation. Followers of the medival philosopher Ramanuja spoke of how Brahma was like a mother cat who carried her kittens to safety and the kittens swung helplessly from her mouth as she carried them. This ‘Cat School’ of Ramanuja stressed the total love and grace of Brahma. Certain schools of Buddhism in Japan proclaim that the Buddha will be gracious and take believers into Nirvana if they pray to him and ask for forgiveness.
Some Christian missionaries have responded by declaring these religious beliefs to be a trick of the devil to deceive people. But what did Jesus say? “Is Satan divided against himself?” Would Satan create a religion that brings a sense of forgiveness and love to people? Matteo Ricci, a 17th century Jesuit missionary in China suggested that perhaps God worked through these Asian religions in ways we cannot understand. Vatican II affirmed this testimony by encouraging Roman Catholics to consider that God may indeed work through other religions and that we can learn about our God from them. (Lectionary Homiletics, Aug/Sept 2003, p.63)
It is why I think it important to read from the traditions of other religious faiths each Sunday. It is imperative that we keep before us the God who is larger than any one tradition and does not limit herself to any one religion. No religious tradition has the corner on the market of truth. No religion can claim to be the exclusive way to God. Whoever does that scandalizes Jesus, for it is not what Jesus taught.
Do you remember the story Jesus told about the wheat and the weeds? If you start pulling out what you think are weeds, you might also pull up some of the good wheat; you can’t always tell the difference, he said. Likewise with people, only God knows what is on the heart and in the soul and how it fits into the larger, universal purposes of evolution.
We scandalize Jesus every time we enter the debate about who is right, who is the best, who is first. Our culture has become obsessed with being the best and having the most and being the first. We go in debt in order to have the best, we gain notoriety with claims of being the first to do this or that. Aurora rightfully proclaims itself as being the first city in the nation to have electric street lights. A point of honest pride and historical fact. But would we kill someone because they don’t believe it?
Jesus turns the prevailing cultural attitudes upside down on its ear by speaking about God’s culture is about including, about everyone having equal access to God; it is counter cultural but truth often is. And to act differently is to scandalize Jesus and prostitute ourselves to the very cheap mindset upon which a pop culture is built. Jesus didn’t give specifics about who was best, or whose gifts were best. He simply said if you’re not against Truth you’re for Truth.
Over the centuries the church has had to repent for evil perpetrated in the name of the one whose name under which we exist. Modern science has shown Galileo to be right, and the church realized that if science is not against the bible then it is for it. How can science and faith be divided when they are part of the same created order? After hundreds of thousands were slain in the name of Jesus during the Crusades, the church finally came to her senses to discover that it is the same God we worship and in whose image we are created. For Mary Lou and Bob Wallner, they had to reevaluate their position as Christians whose faith traditionally taught that only straight people were part of God’s kingdom. And now they have become missionaries of acceptance and inclusion to educate the church about the consequences of homophobia.
Can a God who hung on a cross as a common criminal actually work through religions outside the Christian faith and through people who don’t fit the mold of what the church labels good? This is a challenge for modern Christians to consider, and as we do so, we hear the haunting words of Jesus once more, If they are not against us, they are for us.”
“In the Kingdom of Love, There is No Competition”
Prayer is the act and presence of sending the light from the bountifulness of our love to other people to heal, free, and bless them. When there is love in your life, you should share it spiritually with those who are pushed to the very edge of life. There is a lovely idea in the Celtic tradition that if you send out goodness from yourself, or if you share that which is happy or good within you, it will all come back to you multiplied ten thousand times. In the kingdom of love there is no competition; there is no possessiveness or control. The more love you give away, the more love you will have. One remembers here Dante’s notion that the secret rhythm of the universe is the rhythm of love, which moves the stars and the planets. Love is the source, center, and destiny of experience. (John O’Donohue From Anam Cara, A Book of Celtic Wisdom)
Amen
–Gary L. McCann
Mark 9.33-50
The disciples had been arguing about who among them was the greatest. Jesus told them “If anyone wants to be first, he must be the very last, and the servant of all.” Then he took a child in his arms and said “Whoever welcomes one of these little children in my name welcomes me.”
“Teacher,” said John, “we saw a man driving out demons in your name and we told him to stop, because he was not one of us.”
“Do not stop him,” said Jesus. “No one who does a miracle in my name can in the next moment say anything bad about me. For whoever is not against us is for us. I tell you the truth, anyone who gives you a cup of cold water in my name will certainly not lose his reward.”
“And if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to be thrown into the sea with a large millstone tied around his neck.”
PASTORAL PRAYER
Source of all love and foundation of all being, empower us with a holy truth as we come today to be nourished in the things that matter. Through another week the world has towered above us with its huge problems and has assailed us with its turbulence, evoking within us the angst and fear that ultimately serve no good purpose. Lead us in mind and heart to green pastures, beside still waters where we may find restoration of soul, not just so we’ll feel good but so we’ll feel like doing good.
Grant us triumph when we face hardship. We dare not ask to be spared life’s difficulties and tragedies, knowing that whatever strength of character we have achieved, whatever fortitude and patience we possess has come from handling hardship. But we pray that we may rise above the things that would trip us up. Give us strength to overpower those things that would keep us from being and doing our best. May we have the courage to build whatever comes our way into the fabric of our lives, weaving it into the texture of our hearts and minds and souls and bodies.
Grant us joy in the daily work that is ours to do. We give thanks for tasks that give worth and meaning to each day. Despite the anxiety which it entails and the fatigue it brings upon us, we are grateful for what you have given us to do. Make us more than adequate for our responsibilities and may our daily work be more than just routine and monotony. May we find in each activity some purpose that would serve a higher Truth and thereby see ourselves as co-creators of a world still in process in living in a holy love.
Grant us power to overcome enticement to evil. May all that is good empower us that we may so conduct ourselves so as not to hurt others. Give us a sense of healthy ego that we may not lash out at others for what we feel is lacking in our own lives. Give us the knowledge that we are connected to all things and all people around us and in the world so that we will not harm that which you have created for everyone.
And what we pray for ourselves we pray for our world and all who are in it. We think of those fighting in wars across the globe, and especially think of those of our own nation who are separated from family to serve the purposes of others, and those of the nation in which the war is fought who are being separated from their family and culture in devastating ways. We pray for peace. We pray for hope. We pray for love for all that this world will reflect the purpose of beauty for which we are created. In the Spirit of the Christ, Amen. (Parts of this prayer was based on Harry Emerson Fosdick’s prayer in A Book of Public Prayer)
| Copyright © 2003 by Gary L. McCann. All rights reserved. |