They had been arguing with one another who was the greatest, when Jesus took a little child and put it among them, and taking it in his arms, he said to them, “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.” There hasn’t been a generation of disciples who didn’t have that argument about greatness, and across the ages, disciples have been confounded and confused by Jesus’ declaration that it’s the little ones, the ones without any power or status, in whom we welcome Christ himself and the Holy One who sent him.
I wonder if Jesus was still holding the child in his arms when John interjected, “Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us.” It’s profoundly ironic that John, a disciple belonging to the inner circle among the Twelve, wasn’t paying attention to what Jesus was saying, but rather to what someone else was doing in Jesus’ name. “Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us.” Yes, you heard that right. “We tried to stop him,” he said, not “because he was not following you” or “because he was not following with us.” Someone was liberating people from demonic possession, and was doing so in Jesus’ name, and John said, “we tried to stop him, because he was not following us.” The apostolic circle was worried about ministry in Jesus’ name that hadn’t been authorized by them. And their worries had taken up so much of their mental and emotional bandwidth that they casually equated following Jesus with following them.
The big question was, who holds the copyright on Jesus’ name? Who determines what is legitimate ministry and what is not? John clearly was thinking about some kind of restraining orders in order to maintain the boundaries of legitimate, apostolic ministry.
Mark has told us that, at the beginning of his ministry, Jesus went up the mountain and called to him those whom he wanted, and … he appointed twelve, whom he also named apostles, to be with him, and to be sent out to proclaim the message, and to have authority to cast out demons.[1] Now Jesus hasn’t withdrawn his commission of the Twelve, but he also shows no interest in issuing restraining orders. “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. Whoever is not against us is for us.” John is worried, perhaps suffering from a little status anxiety, but Jesus opens the horizon of kingdom ministry as wide as can be imagined, and once again redirects our attention from what others may be doing in Jesus’ name to who we are called to be and what we are called to do. Our eyes need to be on the One who is going ahead of us and on the little ones he puts among us. Our feet need to be following in his footsteps, so we don’t stumble over our attitudes, our distractions, ourselves. Our hands need to be serving the neighbors he has given us, and just like John couldn’t see the child in Jesus’ arms because his attention was elsewhere, we will be blind to the presence of God in those of little or no status, unless we have our vision adjusted by the living Christ.
Our eyes must become eyes of compassionate attention. Our feet, the feet of peacemakers. Our lips, the lips of truthtellers. Our hands, hands of service and comfort. Our minds, minds of Christ-inspired thinking. Our whole selves conduits of God’s grace and mercy for the life of the world.
But then Jesus says, 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 go to hell, to the unquenchable fire.
And he’s not done. 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 still he’s not done. 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.
I hear the words and they terrify me. I don’t know what to make of them. The images are so vivid, it’s difficult to remember that Jesus isn’t promoting self-mutilation. The brutality of the actions shocks me, the violence disturbs me. My immediate reaction is to look away and keep silent—and then I’m inclined to joke: Now if your other hand causes you to stumble, you’ll find it difficult to cut it off since you have only that one hand left. I’m desperate to find a reason to laugh to release at least some of the tight tension, yet at the same time I know that these words are no laughing matter. These words have a history; people have been scapegoated and cut off from their communities for allegedly causing others to stumble. Heretics were cut off and burnt at the stake lest they cause the body of Christ to stumble. Dissenters were cut off and disappeared lest they cause unrest in the body politic.
No, these words are no laughing matter. I wonder if they are meant to shock—because so much is at stake, and we don’t get it when Jesus tells us to stop obsessing about status and start paying attention to each other. Could it be that he speaks of decisive, violent action, because our lives are at stake and nothing else gets our attention?
I am reminded of a wolf who stepped into a trap and it snapped shut. For an entire day, she tried unsuccessfully to free herself, pulling and biting the chain, trying to pry open the steel jaws with her snout, her entire ordeal caught on a trail camera. The next day she bit off her own leg, leaving her foot in the trap. She was limping, but she was no longer caught in a deadly trap.
You know it’s not your foot that’s causing you to get off the path, literally or metaphorically. It’s not somebody’s hand that’s causing them to lash out and hurt their spouse or a child. It’s not my eye that’s causing me to overlook the needs of others and to see only what I want to see. It is my lack of attention to the will of God that’s causing me to stumble. It’s my fear, my apathy, my impatience. It is my being absorbed with myself, my status, and my needs that’s pulling me astray.
Jesus says that this path of self-centeredness can only end in hell, and I believe him. I don’t believe in hell, though, I believe in God. “Hell,” writes Daniel Migliore,
is best understood as wanting to be oneself apart from God’s grace and in isolation from others. Hell is that self-chosen condition in which, in opposition to God’s self-expending love and the call to a life of mutual friendship and service, individuals barricade themselves from God and others. It is the hellish weariness and boredom of life focused entirely on itself. Hell is not the vengeful divine punishment at the end of history depicted by religious imagination. It is not the final retaliation of a vindictive deity. Hell is self-destructive resistance to the eternal love of God. It symbolizes the truth that the meaning and intention of life can be missed. Repentance is urgent. Our choices and actions are important. God ever seeks to lead us out of our hell of self-glorification and lovelessness, but neither in time nor in eternity is God’s love coercive.[2]
The meaning and intention of life can be missed. We are made in the image of God to love as God loves. We are made for communion with God, with each other, and with all of creation. We bear the name of Christ in order that we might be conduits of God’s grace and mercy, and anything that blocks their flow must go.
The imagery of cutting limbs and gouging eyes is disturbing, but it reminds us that repentance and real change are needed, including the removal of any obstacles that hinder the flow of grace—the walls of fear and suspicion come to mind, the traps of pride, the dams of greed. Our formation as disciples of Jesus Christ involves our whole selves, from the soles of our feet to the crowns of our heads, and from our relationships across space and time to the depths of our soul. And the work of transformation occurs in prayer and in practice, in our gathering with the community believers, in silence and in praise, in our obedient attention to God’s work among us. In the end, it is not our willingness to go to violent extremes with ourselves or with others that allows us to enter life; it is God’s unwavering commitment to us and our redemption, and our willingness to allow God to do this work with us.
Just moments before he was betrayed, Jesus said to the disciples at the Mount of Olives, “You will all become deserters.” The word “deserters” is the same word translated “to stumble” in our passage and “to fall away” earlier in the gospel.[3] We will all stumble. We will all abandon Jesus, even Peter who was so very certain that he would never do that.
But it’s never our willingness to go to violent extremes with ourselves or with others that allows us to enter life. It is always God’s loyal, non-coercive love. It is always and forever God.
[1] Mark 3:14
[2] Daniel Migliore, Faith Seeking Understanding: An Introduction to Christian Theology, Third Ed., (Eerdmans Publishing, 2014), 366.
[3] Mark 14:27; see also Mark 4:17