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18. Sunday after Pentecost, 09/30/2012
Sermon on Mark 9:38-50, by Paula Murray
Mark 9:38-50
38John 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."39But 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.40Whoever is not against us is for us. 41For 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. 43If 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.47And 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, 48where their worm never dies, and the fire is never quenched.
49"For everyone will be salted with fire. 50Salt 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."
A few weeks ago I flew to Estes Park, Colorado for a brief vacation with family in the mountains. It has been a long time since I last went home, and I wondered if the verdant green of the east coast had spoiled me for the browns and grays of the west. Most of the arid west gets but a fraction of the water of the east coast, and to eyes unaccustomed to the difference the west looks a like a dry and unappealing desert, a wilderness, devoid of life. As it happens, my eyes are still the eyes of a westerner despite my long sojourn on the east coast, and as the plane descended into the mountain west my eyes delighted in the gray line of mountains in the distance and even the shades of brown that constitute the plains. The wilderness is still home to me.
The wilderness is home to all of us. The world we inhabit is not the Eden of Genesis or the creation reconciled to its Creator we are taught to anticipate with Christ's return. Vistas of multi-million dollar mountain cabins or cityscapes dominated by that architectural wonder, the skyscraper, do not change the fundamental truth that sin still governs our existence every bit as much as it did the lives of those long ago folk of the Bible. The myth of social progress is busted, as those sky scrapers exist side by side with dying neighborhoods characterized by poverty. No ill known in those ancient times has been fully banished in our own, save smallpox, and even that still exists though now only in vials in heavily fortified labs. Disease, hunger, poverty, homelessness, violence, every evil known to humankind still wrecks ruin upon the lives of the inhabitants of this fair globe. Greater knowledge has not put to rest the baser impulse of our age nor will it for any age yet to come. Greed abounds, as does every other vice, and human life is no more precious in this generation as in past. Green or brown, flat or mountainous, the world we inhabit is every bit as filled with uncertainty as was the world of Egypt's newly freed slaves or the empire oppressed people of first century Israel. And like those long ago peoples, the immediate response to a world that does not cater to our fears and anxieties is to gripe.
To gripe is to complain, though complain is too nice a word for what happens when we start in on the world's failures to live up to our expectations of what is due us. To grumble, in a petulant, whiny sort of way, gets closer to reality. And, of course, we have so much more to gripe about than our ancestors. In spite of the recent recession and anemic, at best, recovery, our expectations of what the world should provide us are greatly inflated. As I write, people are lining up three deep in front of Apple stores bound and determined to be the first in their circle to own the latest version of the iphone. Even people who do not know where the next month's rent money is coming from will stand in those lines and pay hundreds of dollars for the phone and the data plan just to have it.
Unlike ourselves, the newly freed Israelites and the people of the Apostles' day were anxious about life's essentials, not its frills. It was the memory of fresh vegetables and the desire for the meat of the rich that tormented the people Moses' shepherded. Manna was like fine cakes baked in oil, definitely not the kind of food these onetime slaves were accustomed to eating. But they wanted more. If they had cakes they wanted meat with it. And so, beginning with the "rabble," meaning the Gentiles that traveled with them, they began to gripe, to grumble. The wave of complaint grew, and magnified, to the point where Moses began to gripe in turn, not for meat, but for relief from his duties as shepherd. This people, in spite of all God had done for them, would not trust in God to provide for them in a wilderness seemingly devoid of good things to eat. The people griped because they had no faith, in God, or in Moses, the leader God set over them. But Moses himself is no shining example of faith. He himself doubts God's ability to provide meat for so many people, and accuses God of mismanagement. Provide the goods, he says to God, give me with some help, or let me die.
Fear of death is a powerful motivator. The people of first century sought relief from illness and injury, something we can understand readily. This was not a matter of frustrated expectations or unfaith. No one in an age devoid of antibiotics believes they can escape sickness. They sought out Jesus and his disciples for prayer and healing and exorcism. Still there was griping, but the gripe that matters here is not about ill health. As Jesus' fame grew and the crowds seeking him out grew larger, others, not a part of the original band of disciples, began to heal in Jesus' name. The disciples approached Jesus, to gripe about this man who was not a part of their small group yet dared to heal in Jesus' name.
Like Joshua in Moses' day, who griped that two men not chosen to be among the 70 elders who would help Moses lead the Israelites were prophesying, the disciples are concerned about their place in the scheme of things. We remember that just last week, even as Jesus was telling them that he would be crucified, would die, and would be raised, the disciples were arguing about who among them was the greatest. To Joshua, an exasperated Moses responded, "Are you jealous for my sake? Would that all the Lord's people were prophets, and that the Lord would put his spirit on them!" There are echoes of Moses in Jesus' response to his disciples, "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.40Whoever is not against us is for us."
The Church exists to preach Christ crucified to peoples wandering in the wilderness. Concerns for position or place in the corporate church or even our own congregation are a stumbling block to any disciple, even a disciple strong in faith. Such concerns witness to human vanity and not to the cross. Remember last week's distinction between a theology of glory, that seeks self-aggrandizement, and the theology of the cross, that seeks to deny the self to lift up Jesus Christ. These are not the follies of ordained leaders alone; many a committee chair or choir soloist has been guilty of mistaking their ego for Christ's sacrifice. The blossoming of the gifts of the Holy Spirit in new Christians, or Christians who have returned to faith, is smothered when leaders in a congregation or the Church as a whole make it about their gifts and not God's gifts. Such things come with being human, justified sinners, but still sinners.
Common sins are not only easily understood but readily forgiven when acknowledged. To those outside of the arms of the Church, though, the self-absorption of the baptized children of God is toxic to the seeker or the new disciple of Christ. The latter, in particular, wonder why, if the old Adam (or Eve) has been drowned in the waters of baptism, have we let him (or her) return? Hope for a long relationship with the Lord diminishes, and worse yet the power of the Holy Spirit to renew and transform tattered lives can be greatly diminished. Finally, the drip, drip, drip of the gripe robs God's people of joy and steals from us even the willingness to proclaim the Gospel to those lost in the wilderness without a guide. We can gripe, or we can proclaim the Gospel to others who share the wilderness with us.
We cannot escape the wilderness; any attempt to do so will lead to failure, and indeed, increase human suffering. We can, though, treat it as the school of faith it is meant to be. Disciple means student, and it was not only those old slaves of old pharaoh that needed to learn to trust the God of their ancestors and the source of their freedom. Jesus' time with the disciples was one of intense, hands-on study of the way the Lord works for his people for their salvation. We study at Christ's feet even now. We can mature in faith with one another, lending to one another those blessings we have and borrowing those we do not have. We can lift one another up when all we can see is what we lack, and not what we have been given. We can be at peace with what God is doing for us now, and what he will do for us in the future, for when trust fails us it will not fail our brothers and sisters. Their example of faithful living will inspire us to give up the fears that overwhelm our sense of God's compassionate mercy at work in our lives. God is present in the wilderness. So we pray to our Lord and Savior, that he help us help one another to see him in Word, in Sacrament, in the face of the neighbor, that we may learn together his will, and together exult in his love of us.