Mark 9: 38-43, 45, 47-48
The world was a different place when I
was growing up. Republicans and Democrats got along and generally
worked together. The place you found conflict was among Christian
churches. Of course that was not nearly as bad as it had been in the
past where people were put to death, often in extremely unpleasant
ways, because they chose to believe differently than the more
powerful majority. In the 1940's and early 50's at least in Montana
we tolerated each other. But still … we were told that it was a
grave sin if you sent your kids to a public school assuming there was
a Catholic school nearby. Mixed marriages were frowned upon and my
grandmother, who married a Mormon, was married in the Church rectory
because you couldn't get married in the church proper. And although
my teachers, members of the Sisters of Charity, allowed that it was
possible for non Catholics to get to heaven, the -- analogy was that
for them, it was like finding their way through a jungle whereas for
good Catholics, it was like driving down a superhighway.
Things have gotten better. In much of
the world we have learned to tolerate each other. Live and let live,
we say. But Jesus has something even more radical to tell us today.
First, a language lesson. Skandalon
is a Greek word which originally referred to a stone which you had
stumbled over and now cursed. Can you picture it in your mind?
Someone who is walking down the road, stumbles, turns around and
yells at the stone. Another Greek word we encounter is sin. The
Greek word means “to miss the mark” or to not get the point.
Finally, Gehenna, which we often think means “hell” refers to a
place outside of Jerusalem where people burned their garbage. What
you threw in Gehenna was less than useless.
Now we can look at our gospel. John
says, “we met a man casting out demons in your name, so we tried to
stop him”. Jesus says, “why did you try to stop him? Isn't it a
good thing to cast out demons? Isn't that what we are doing?” And
then Jesus sits everyone down and says in a very earnest voice, “When
you tried to stop him you put an obstacle in front of someone who was
doing a good thing, and it would be better to be cast into the sea
with a millstone around your neck than to do that to someone. And
then Jesus goes on to say, “If your hand causes you to miss the
mark, to lose sight of what you are supposed to be doing, to be
distracted from what really matters, cut it off. It's better to live
maimed than to be tossed into the garbage pit with both hands. And
the same with the feet and the eye.
So Jesus has the same thing in mind as
Moses in our first reading. Two elders were prophesying and Joshua
was alarmed and asked Moses to do something. And Moses wished that
all of God's people would have God's spirit.
So what does that mean to us today?
We have a lot of people in our world who are trying to change the
world for the better. When we watch what is happening with the
supreme court nomination we see what should be a thoughtful
deliberative process turned into an irrational hate fest and
character assassination. And that seems to be the level of political
discourse today. And we see the homeless, the drug addicts, the
mentally ill, the children living on the streets, and the newspapers
tell us that all these groups are getting larger. And though we all
know better, there seems to be no solution to the ongoing pollution
of our planet, which really means to leave the next generations, our
children and grandchildren, impoverished. And of course I could go
on, you could go on.
We mean well, and so do the people
down the street at Saint Andrews or First Church. All of us
Christians want to change the world for the better, that's what Jesus
means by entering into life. If we are Christians we want to be like
Jesus and do all in our power to make sure all of our brothers and
sisters who have a spark of God's life in them, who are made in his
image, are healed, have their demons cast out, and are raised from
the dead. But we all like to be where we are comfortable. So we do
our thing, the Christians at Saint Andrews do their thing, the
Christians at First Church do their thing – when maybe what Jesus
is saying is that we should be working together to solve the problems
he wants us to solve. Oh, there are real differences in the way we
worship, in the theology we embrace, and those things are important –
but you know, we aren't going to change that until the time the Lord
comes again. When I was very young I was told that someday everyone
would be Catholic, and all those other people who belonged to other
denominations or other religions would see the error of their ways.
Maybe so, but not in my lifetime or yours.
John was upset because a few passages
ago we heard how Jesus had given the apostles the power to cast out
demons. John is upset because being able to cast out demons makes
him special, and someone who hasn't got the license, the training,
the special power from Jesus just has no business in the field of
demon casting.
I believe we Catholics have the truth.
Vatican II says that Christ's Church subsists in the Catholic
Church. But it goes on to say “...it is possible, according to
Catholic doctrine, to affirm correctly that the Church of Christ is
present and operative in the churches and ecclesial communities not
yet fully in communion with the Catholic Church, on account of the
elements of sanctification and truth that are present in them.”
Jesus told his disciples to teach all
nations, baptizing them, even to the ends of the earth. Maybe to
actually achieve what Jesus wants, to transform the world, requires
that we work closely with other Christians, even when we disagree
about fundamentals. Jesus wants us to see the absurdity of the man
who is walking down a road, stumbles, and turns around and curses the
rock he stumbled on, and thus loses sight of his original goal. You
and I always have to keep our eye on the road and not the stumbling
blocks.
