Hindrances

The scriptures referred to are Mark 9:38-50.

I was watching one of my all-time favorite Sherlock Holmes movies this week, The Seven Percent Solution. Oddly enough, though, it is not based on a short story or novel written by Holmes' creator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, but it is so good that most Sherlockians would not object were it considered canon. The basic plot is that Dr. Watson lures his friend Holmes to Vienna to get him treated by a specialist in cocaine addiction, Dr. Sigmund Freud. And of course, they become embroiled in a mystery which requires the skills of both the detector of evil and the explorer of the dark corners of the human mind. Everything from the dialog to the actors to the cinematography to the gloriously lush movie score is perfect. I want to focus on the scene where they follow a suspect only to be led into a deadly trap. As they escape, Holmes realizes that they must get back to the woman whose mystery they are investigating. Freud asks if the suspect they had followed was told to lead them astray. Seeing that they were almost killed, Holmes says, “I gather his instructions were somewhat more specific. Nevertheless,'astray' will do.” Sure enough, when they get to their destination, the woman in question has been abducted by the bad guys and Holmes, Watson and Freud must work together to rescue her.

Holmes makes a crucial distinction. He thinks that the henchman was supposed to have them die, but if he could only divert them, that would give his boss the time he needed to pull off the kidnapping. Harming people is, of course, evil but hindering them from doing good can have the same effect. When considering whether to do or not do something we should ask if it is harmful or not. And that is important. God is not against sin and evil because he disapproves of them on personal or aesthetic grounds, the way your maiden aunt dislikes people with pierced ears or flashy clothes. God dislikes evil and sin because they are destructive—to ourselves, to others, to our relationship with him, and to his creation. YHWH is a God of creation and life. He does not want destruction and death.

But things get ethically murkier if you don't actually do harm to someone. What if you just make things harder for them? What if what you do or don't do just hinders them from getting help? How bad is that?

I once read a mystery in which the murderer did not stab or shoot or even poison his victim. He just knew the man was a brittle and non-compliant diabetic. He invited his victim to a private dinner at his home and served him all his favorite foods. The victim overindulged himself as expected and his blood sugar shot up to dangerous levels. Feeling the symptoms of hyperglycemia and knowing he was about to slip into a diabetic coma, the victim asked the man he considered a friend to get his insulin. The murderer does so but very slowly, knowing that simply being too late will do the trick. The man dies. It's chilling.

That's an extreme example of how hindering can prove to be harmful. But we all know that if you can't make certain forms of conduct impossible, making them difficult will reduce such behavior. We use this fact to make laws. We cannot make reckless driving impossible but we create laws that make it difficult and that also make it costly to those who violate such laws. In the same way, raising prices on cigarettes leads to a drop in smoking. Most car thieves will pass up a locked car for an unlocked one. And, sadly, you can hinder good actions by making them more difficult as well. For instance, if you make it illegal for Medicare to negotiate lower drug prices with pharmaceutical companies, that hinders people getting their medicine at affordable rates. If you reduce the number of polling stations, and the hours during which you can vote, and require a photo ID from people who don't drive, you can reduce voting. Unfortunately we have laws that hinder doing the right thing as well as laws that hinder wrongdoing.

Jesus frequently found himself coming up against laws hindering otherwise commendable conduct. Time and again he was confronted about healing on the Sabbath. Mind you, only work was prohibited on the Sabbath and Jesus' healings were not compensated but the Pharisees had elevated the Oral Law, extrapolations based on the written law, to the same level as the Torah. In some cases they went beyond what was needed to apply those centuries old laws to contemporary situations and let stand interpretations that went against the spirit of the law. Such as when they said that one's wealth could be dedicated to God and therefore retained instead of being used to support one's aged parents contrary to what God's word said. Jesus called them on that. (Mark 7:10-13)

In today's gospel, the disciples take it upon themselves to discourage a person who is healing people in Jesus' name because he was not officially one of Jesus' followers. They don't say he was trying to cast out demons; they say he was doing so. Which is interesting because the Twelve were not always able to perform such healings. Just a few verses earlier in the same chapter, in fact, the disciples were not able to heal a boy with a seizure disorder. Jesus had to step in and heal him. Were they, at least in part, jealous of a man who was successful where they were not?

And the man's success shows that he really did believe in Jesus, even though he did not join the group following him. Jesus realizes this and says, “Whoever is not against us is for us.” Which has significance in a time where there are a great many Christian denominations. The history of churches treating other churches as full members of the body of Christ is poor, to say the least. Besides branding other Christians as heretics and even punishing them as such, wars were started over such differences. (Although politics always entered in. All the peace settlements after such wars were political and not theological. ) And I still meet people who identify themselves as "Christians, not Catholics!" Even if they mean Protestants, the truth is that Catholic, Protestant, and Eastern Orthodox doctrine all agree that the Bible is God's word; they all affirm the articles of the Apostles Creed and as well as a commitment to the the 10 and 2 Great Commandments. We have a lot more in common than people think.

Fortunately a lot of Christians realize this and have been working on lessening our divisions. Our two denominations are in full communion, which means we are partners who recognize and can share each other's ministries, clergy and sacraments. The Episcopal Church is also in full communion with the Moravian Church, and various non-Anglican churches in Europe, the Philippines and India. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America is in full communion with the Moravian Church, too, plus the Presbyterian Church (USA), the Reformed Church in America, the United Church of Christ, and the United Methodist Church. And just last year the Episcopal Church and the United Methodist Church proposed full communion and are seeking approval at their next nationwide conventions.

But our divisions have hindered people from coming to Jesus, largely because some folks see the contradiction in people who say that God is loving and forgiving but who cannot seem to put those principles into practice, especially with other Christians. And most of the people rejecting Christianity because of this don't even know that on the night before he died Jesus explicitly said, “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” (John 13:35) This is not optional. Jesus commanded us to do this.

Next in our gospel reading, Jesus moves from the partisanship that hinders people from following him to the personal issues that hinder us from following him. Jesus says that if a hand or foot or eye caused you to sin you should cut it off or pluck it out. This is one passage that even fundamentalists do not take literally or else we would have a denomination of people who have amputated parts of themselves because they caused them to sin. Besides, just 2 chapters earlier in Mark Jesus says that sin is not external but arises from within. So why is he now saying that feet and hands and eyes can cause us to sin?

Jesus is using hyperbole here. It's a common rhetorical device that emphasizes the seriousness of the point being made. So what is Jesus really getting at?

There are things in our life—a job, an activity, a relationship, even an addiction—that we feel so strongly about that we feel they are a part of us, of who we are. In Amy Winehouse's prophetic song “Rehab,” she says she will not give up the bottle even if it means losing her lover who tells her to get help. Many artists have felt that they would lose their creativity if they gave up their addictions or got treatment for their mental illnesses. Other people continue to do things that are definitely dangerous because they are apparently adrenaline junkies. Some folks identify themselves primarily by their career or position even if they hate their job. And in one of the most painful instances, some people will not give up relationships that are toxic. It may be that the relationship is violent or it may be that the relationship brings out the worst in one or both people. Sadly sometimes the relationship is a familial one, with a parent or a sibling. Giving up the harmful addiction or job or activity or relationship may feel like losing a hand or some other part of you. But those rare individuals who do manage to make the sacrifice come to the realization that it was well worth it. Robert Downey Jr. struggled with drug abuse for decades. His problems escalated from 1996 to 2001. He underwent multiple arrests, incarcerations and stints in rehab. He lost TV and movie roles and his marriage. Since attaining sobriety, he has remarried, rebuilt his career and become not only a popular star but a respected actor. He has not lost the talent that had made him an award winner even before his rehabilitation. His addiction did not help but hindered him.

Jesus is not one to sugarcoat the truth. If there is anything in our lives that is hindering us in following him, in becoming a more loving, more faithful, more forgiving, more Christlike follower, we must sacrifice it. Whatever hinders us from becoming the person God wants us to be and created us to become is ultimately harmful.

Jesus contrasts the consequences of making these sacrifices with not doing so. Not being able to give up the self-destructive things in our life means entering hell. The word for “hell” which Jesus uses is Gehenna, the valley of Hinnom, southwest of Jerusalem. It is the site where in the past people sacrificed their children as burnt offerings to the pagan god Molech and which in Jesus' day had become the town dump. The refuse of the city continually burned and maggots consumed the carcasses of dead animals discarded there. We still use this imagery. We describe a chaotic, unmanageable, disastrous situation as being a “dumpster fire.” People who find themselves in a horrible place in life speak of their life being hell. We talk of a person who is tormented by certain issues in their life as “fighting their own demons.”

The first step in dealing with this is to take out the garbage in our life and remove the stumbling blocks from our walk with Christ. Jesus says if you cut out the thing that hinders you, then you will enter life. Being alive means being able to move and respond to the world and to the people around us and being able to grow. In verse 47 Jesus parallels "life" with "the kingdom of God" so he means eternal life as well. And the kingdom of God is not a future thing only. The kingdom starts now. Jesus said “the kingdom of God is within you.” (Luke 17:21) It begins in this life and carries on into the next. It doesn't manifest itself in its fullness right away, though. It grows. Jesus said, “This is what the kingdom of God is like. A man scatters seed on the ground. Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how. All by itself the soil produces grain—first the stalk, then the head, then the full kernel in the head.” (Mark 4:26-29) In the future we will see the full extent of the kingdom but that doesn't mean it isn't growing right now, within and among us. We don't want to harm or hinder it; we want to help it.

Then Jesus switches metaphors and says something all commentators find confusing: “For everyone will be salted with fire.” To me the significant words are “everyone,” “salted,” and “fire.” By saying this happens to everyone, Jesus cannot mean the fires of hell. Some, he just said, enter life. And “salted” recalls how salt was used in Jesus' day: not merely to season but to preserve. There was no refrigeration. Salt was used to keep meat from going bad. As such it was commonly used as a symbol of the covenant. (Leviticus 2:13) Not only that but newborn babies were rubbed with salt. (Ezekiel 6:14) Salt, Jesus says, is good.

So how is fire similarly good for those subjected to it? Fire is used in purifying metals. The Bible speaks of the refiner's fire, used to melt gold and silver so their impurities may be skimmed off. (Isaiah 1:25; Malachi 3:2-3) And indeed sometimes experiences we perceive as negative at the time can have a positive effect. Exposure to germs helps your body build up your immunity. Simply having a dog helps children's immune systems. And of course vaccines, dead or weakened pathogens, protect us against stronger diseases. 

In addition, we tend to empathize more with people who have suffered the same afflictions we have. We can help such people in ways that otherwise might not have occurred to us. That is the basis for 12-step programs and support groups. By contrast people who have encountered relatively few obstacles in life rarely can understand, much less empathize with those whose life has been hard. Instead they tend to give clueless, useless advice.

Purifying fire is a frequent image used in the Bible. John the Baptist said that Jesus would baptize us with the Holy Spirit and with fire. (Matthew 3:11; Luke 3:16) Paul speaks of our works being tested by fire (1 Corinthians 3:12-15). 1 Peter 4:12 tells us not to be surprised by fiery trials as that we encounter in following Jesus. But as Danish poet Piet Hein wrote, “Here is a fact that should help you fight a bit longer: Things that don't actually kill you outright make you stronger.” Just as surviving germs helps your immunity, surviving trials can help make you resilient.

As Christians we are not to harm people or to hinder them in finding spiritual and physical health and wellbeing, but to help them. And to do that we must remove anything that harms or hinders us in our life in Christ. How can we help others find peace if we are not at peace with ourselves, with each other and with God? How are we to show love to those who do not follow Jesus if we cannot love other Christians? The kingdom of God is growing within and among us. We want to encourage that. We want to plant seeds and water and nurture them until one day they sprout and bloom and cover the earth with the knowledge of God and the goodness and love and grace to be found in his son, our Savior and Lord Jesus Christ.