At that time, John said to Jesus, “Teacher, we saw someone driving out demons in your name, and we tried to prevent him because he does not follow us.” Jesus replied, “Do not prevent him. There is no one who performs a mighty deed in my name who can at the same time speak ill of me. For whoever is not against us is for us. Anyone who gives you a cup of water to drink because you belong to Christ, amen, I say to you, will surely not lose his reward. Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him if a great millstone were put around his neck and he were thrown into the sea. If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter into life maimed than with two hands to go into Gehenna, into the unquenchable fire. And if your foot causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter into life crippled than with two feet to be thrown into Gehenna. And if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out. Better for you to enter into the kingdom of God with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into Gehenna, where ‘their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched.’” (Mark 9,36-43, 45, 47-48)
Almost all of us have had the experience of stumbling, suddenly losing our foothold and possibly tumbling onto the ground. If we’re spry enough, we can break the stumble, righting ourselves before any real harm comes our way. If we’re less agile, perhaps age slowing down our reflexes, we can easily end up with something sprained or broken. In other words, stumbling is never a good thing.
At the heart of the long section of Mark’s gospel, a part of Chapter 9, that we hear on this twenty-sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time is the word “stumble.” At first glance, it is nowhere to be found. So, if you didn’t hear it, don’t become alarmed. It’s there. It’s hidden in the word “sin,” another example of a translator’s tough job of converting a Greek word into an English one. So, when our text–better stated, our translation–says, “If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off,” we are just as correct to read it as “If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off.” Many English translations go with the word stumble instead of the word sin.
The problem, if we were to take a moment to investigate, is that the word that is used is “skandalize” which means to cause to stumble, or, as we might say, to fall. It is easy to see how the translator could choose to understand it as to fall into sin, given the context, his task much like playing the children’s game of fishing booth, his fishing line snagging any one of several possible words.
Today, we’ll choose to go with the word stumble because “to stumble” is more graphic, and perhaps more meaningful than the more generic “to sin.” We get it when sinning is understood as stumbling or falling. It connects with our life experience of trying to live upright lives, only to find ourselves stumbling when something is put in our way, something that snags not only our feet, but our souls.
Rabbi Jesus uses the word four times in these verses, the repetition of the same word emphasizing its importance to his teaching. We find the first instance when he cautions his followers against causing “these little ones” to stumble. The first thing to clear up is “little ones.” Our inclination is to read it as children, but that’s not what Jesus says. He says little ones, meaning people who are small in dignity, that is, simple or insignificant, or more likely, people who are new to the way, therefore highly vulnerable to the example of those who have been on the way for a longer length of time.
Naturally, these little ones are easily persuadable or influenced, meaning those with greater influence–the apostles–should never cause those fragile in faith to stumble or to fall into sin, following the bad example given to them by those who should know better.
That Jesus is talking about the example that his disciples give to others, particularly to the little ones who might look up to them, becomes clear when he uses three rather graphic images to get across the point, turning these few verses into a butcher shop, telling his disciples it is better to cut off a hand if it causes them to stumble, or to cut off a foot if it cause them to stumble, or to cut out an eye if it causes them to stumble. Far better to go through life as an amputee or half-blind, he says, than to fall down because of the wrong done by any one of these body parts, in the process giving a bad example to people who watch the disciples stumble.
These are brutal words, but Jesus chooses them to emphasize the importance of his followers not giving a bad example to others who might want to join them on the way. If, on the contrary, they fail to give a good example, their vices causing themselves and others to stumble, then Jesus says it would be better if they were tossed into the sea with a millstone around their necks, a harsh way to go as anyone who has tangled with the Mafiosa knows well, never living to tell about it.
In all probability, Jesus is not intending us to take literally the notion of chopping off body parts or throwing ourselves off a pier with a millstone around our necks. But his hyperbolic imagery is meant to show the crucial importance that he puts on his followers giving to others a good example, all of which makes good sense even on the practical level. We know one of Jesus’ pet peeves is hypocrisy and he wants it rooted out of his followers, even if it takes an ax or a knife to rid oneself of vices.
If we look closely, we can find tucked into the text another reason that Jesus is so emphatic about his position on giving a good example. It is found in the few verses that precede the severed body-parts sermon, verses in which we find three references to those who follow him as acting in his name. The scene opens with one of the twelve, John, concerned about someone outside the inner circle driving out demons in Jesus’ name. He tells Jesus, “We tried to prevent him because he does not follow us.”
No doubt surprising John, Jesus responds, “There is no one who performs a mighty deed in my name who can at the same time speak ill of me.” So, whereas John wants discipleship to be an exclusive country club, Jesus says otherwise, insisting that there is room in his fellowship for anyone who does good “in his name.” We don’t want to overlook how John wants to exclude the person because he does not follow them, the word “us” making clear that John has included himself as one to be followed, a far cry from Mark’s notion of disciples being those who follow Jesus.
In the next verse, Jesus again refers to discipleship in terms of a person’s proximity to him and to his ways, saying, “Anyone who gives you a cup of water to drink because you belong to Christ will surely not lose his reward.” All of these phrases–”in your name,” “in my name,” “belong to Christ”–define a disciple as someone who acts in the name of Jesus, someone who belongs to him.
Given that understanding of who a disciple is, it makes all the more sense that Jesus would be so exacting in his expectation that those who belong to him do not give a bad example to others by their own missteps or falling on their faces. In other words, Jesus tells the Twelve they need to clean up their act if they are going to carry his name with them, representing him to the world, especially to those who are unsure of what it means to belong to Christ.
Seen in this way, the text today really is not all that difficult to understand. Throughout Mark’s gospel, he has presented the disciples as emissaries of Jesus, his representatives. We find it implied in phrases such as “He who receives you receives me.” Jesus is simply using the custom of the times, kings or leaders sending their emissaries to far away places to do business for their masters, their words and their deeds to be understood as if the king were standing there and speaking himself.
All the more reason, then, that the disciples should not be stumbling messes in their own lives, their failure to live as Jesus lived causing others to disbelieve or to be dissuaded from following him. Like ambassadors or emissaries, they act in the name of Jesus, not on their own behalf or for their own cause, contrary to John’s belief that he, like Jesus, is worthy of being followed.
We don’t need to do a deep dive into the text to see what it is saying to us today. Again, it is all plain to see, put before us by Jesus who uses the word “stumble” to make clear our responsibilities and our duties as his followers, as people who belong to him. He doesn’t want us to stumble or to fall into sin and he doesn’t want us to cause others to stumble or to fall into sin because of our bumbling ways.
Why? Because we are supposed to be acting in his name and acting like we belong to him, and nothing, absolutely nothing is more discrediting to the name of Jesus than to behave contrary to the way he lived his life and asked those who want to be his followers to live their lives. In other words, if people look at us and at our actions, and get a glimpse of Jesus–even a fleeting one–then we are doing an okay job as people who act in his name.
Conversely, if others look at us and see nothing that reminds them of Jesus and his ways, not even a smidgen, then we’re doing a mighty sorry job of acting in his name, bringing scandal–understood as a stumbling block–to the whole business. Better to hang up our hat, or, at least, to hang our head in shame, Jesus says, than to cause others to break away or to fall down because of our own failure to show we belong to him.
So, let’s bring this home. Let’s ask ourselves some questions that go to the heart of the matter. Are we willing to cut up a few of our credit cards so that we can give more to good causes that help people down on their luck? Are we ready to cut away from those exclusive-minded crowds we belong to that want nothing to do with foreigners? Can we cut back on our constant criticism of certain groups that have different values than ours, make different choices than we do, or walk to a different drummer than we do?
These are only a few of the questions that we can and should ask ourselves as we consider the implications of Jesus’ words to his disciples today when he says “cut it off.” Yes, any cut is painful, whether it is a cut to our hand or to our hedonistic ways, whether it is a cut to the leg or to our lethargy to do good, whether it’s a cut to our eyeballs or to our screwball notions about others.
But, Jesus did not say his way was an easy one. In fact, he made clear it was the opposite, calling it a narrow way that required the very best of us if we want to belong to him and if we want to work in his name. Bottom line. If we’re to avoid stumbling–and Jesus surely advises we avoid it–then we may have to pay closer attention to the way we’re walking.
–Jeremy Myers
Sunday Brunch 