Removing the Obstacles

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

The most frustrating driving experience has to be where you can see where you want to go but you can't seem to get there because there are obstacles in what should be a straightforward route. My worst experience in this regard was driving in the English city of Bath. We circled our hotel several times before we found the secret entrance to the little loop of road on which it was located. Later I found out that, in an effort to alleviate traffic, the city had changed many of its narrow medieval streets to one-way streets and cut others off completely to create a pedestrian walkway. The map I had did not indicate this. Because of the obstacles, you had to be an insider to navigate from certain parts of the city to get to other parts. It was almost as if the planners were saying to outsiders, “You can't get there from here.”

Today's gospel is best understood as a collection of sayings by Jesus. They were not necessarily all said at one time or in this order. Some commentators see the sayings as grouped by little more than shared words or loosely related thoughts. But I think there is a definite theme here. These verses are all talking about putting up obstacles which keep us from getting to Jesus and the kingdom of God.

For context, let's look at what happens just before this passage. Mark 9:33-37 records the disgraceful episode in which the disciples argue about which of them is the greatest. Achieving personal glory was a high priority in the Roman empire; humility was not. Jesus responds by reversing this popular standard: the greater person is not the one who is served but the one who serves others. And he illustrates his point by holding up a child, the most powerless person in society, as the kind of person we should welcome in Jesus' name. When we offer hospitality to a person who, like a child, needs everything and who can't offer us anything of material or political worth, we are welcoming Jesus and his Father. This overturning of worldly standards is a common theme in Jesus' teaching.

At the beginning of today's gospel the disciple John makes a comment that seems like a non-sequitur. Perhaps he is embarrassed about the whole greatness argument. Later in this gospel, John and his brother James are the main cause of the renewal of that debate about who is greater. (Mark 10:35-45) So to change the subject, John brings up this independent exorcist who is healing people of physical and mental illnesses using Jesus' name. Because he is not formally a member of Jesus' group of students, the disciples take it upon themselves to tell this guy to cut it out. John is obviously telling this to Jesus in the hope that he will at least commend them on this action.

But Jesus surprises them by saying, “Stop hindering him, for no one who does a powerful good deed in my name will be able to immediately afterwards say bad things about me. For whoever is not against us is for us.” I like the way Eugene Peterson translates the last sentence: “If he's not an enemy, he's an ally.”

Officially, 2.4 billion people, about 1/3 of the world's population, call themselves Christians. We do a lot of good. There are innumerable Christian charities and ministries for those who are poor, hungry, in need of a place to stay, in need of education, in need of medical care, and/or in need of psychological support. In many places, Christians, in the words of Proverbs 31:8, “speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves” and act as champions of the oppressed.

So why aren't Christians always seen as a force for good? Well, in part, because we are divided up into approximately 47,000 denominations. And these groups don't always play well with others. Many hold to distinctive doctrines, or interpretations, or rituals, or behaviors, or organizational elements that they feel are more important than having unity with other Christians. The rest of the world doesn't understand all of these distinctions. They just see so-called followers of Jesus fighting with one another. And that's a big obstacle to bringing outsiders to Jesus.

Unlike his disciples, however, Jesus wasn't upset by someone outside his original group doing good in his name. Why not?

The man in question really believed in Jesus. John doesn't say that the man was attempting to cast out demons in Jesus' name; he was succeeding in doing so. In those days, people thought diseases were caused by entities invisible to the eye called demons. Today we think diseases are caused by entities invisible to the eye called microbes. In both cases, the cure lies in expelling the unseen entities. And however you look at it, this unofficial Christian was healing people. Which means he had genuine faith in Jesus.

In the book of Acts we meet some Jewish exorcists who didn't believe in Jesus but tried using his name anyway, with the result that they were beaten up by the possessed man they tried to exorcise. (Acts 19:13-16) They didn't realize that using Jesus' name is not like magic. In magic you use words and rituals to force the universe to obey your will. Christians pray which is asking the Lord of the universe for something, always with the realization that it is up to our heavenly Father to respond in accordance with his will and his wisdom.

So this was a real Christian, doing what Jesus was doing. He was healing and helping others and spreading word of Jesus. And the Lord is basically saying, “Don't put up an obstacle for him. Let him continue to do my work and my will.” That's a lesson we still need to heed. If people really put their trust in Jesus and are doing powerful deeds for him, their official affiliation is not important. What they do for Jesus is.

It works the other way as well. Jesus goes on to say that anyone who simply gives you a cup of water because you are his follower will be rewarded. In other words, don't reject or despise the smallest gesture of hospitality or friendship. Sometimes we interpret anything less than 100% agreement with us, or anything other than total support, as unacceptable. We don't want half-measures. But in the Middle East, where hospitality is a major virtue, a cup of water was sometimes all a poor person could offer a visitor. Jesus says we should appreciate the thought behind the gesture. Because God does.

In the next verse we shift to the subject of causing little ones to stumble. It may mean that Jesus is talking about children here but he could also mean new Christians no matter what their age. In Greek the word for “put up a stumbling block” is the same word from which we get the English word “scandalize.” Jesus is saying if you cause a new believer to stumble in their faith, you are the one in real trouble with God. Taking advantage of someone's naivete by misleading them, or exploiting them, or bullying them, or giving them a hard time is wrong. Sometimes we engage in low-level blasphemy, acting a little too familiar or jokey about God and other sacred matters. This can eat away at a young Christian's faith, just as our culture's automatic contempt for all authority has made our children and young people unable to see any reason to obey rules or their teachers or the government.

Next Jesus moves from us being an obstacle for someone else following him to the ways in which we sabotage ourselves when it comes to being a Christian. Since Jesus says that evil comes from the heart, not from anything external, (Mark 7:20-23) he doesn't mean here that your hand, foot or eye is the actual cause of sin. Nor is he really saying amputation is a ticket to heaven. What he is saying is that we need to keep our priorities straight. Sometimes we get so attached to things that we feel that they are a part of us. Our possessions, our positions on certain issues, or the positions that we hold in society can come to feel like extensions of who we are. They become part of our self-image and so giving them up might be almost as hard to do as lopping off a limb.

We see this in how people modify what kind of Christians they are—conservative, progressive, Anglican, Evangelical, gay, charismatic, feminist or fundamentalist. And I wonder what would happen if Jesus came to them and said, “You must make a choice between simply being a Christian and the issue you have attached to my movement. You must give up one or the other.” How would you choose? In other words, what's more important: God's kingdom or our pet causes? Can't we have both? Sometimes, if the pet cause is neutral or totally in line with the gospel. But often it skews our work for Jesus. There are those who say that all true Christians must also belong to a particular political party. And we have seen how many people have been turned off to the gospel before they actually heard it because we associated it with something earthly and temporal. A lot of our modern issues don't appear in the Bible. Remember: the Bible contains everything necessary for salvation. We cannot add other conditions to it or we are adding to God's word. If we start off by saying, “Hi! I'm a pro-life, pro-choice, pro-death penalty, anti-gay marriage, anti-gun Christian. Would you like to hear the good news?” we will turn people off before they have a chance to hear the gospel and we will have rendered ourselves useless as ambassadors for Jesus.

And you know where useless things end up? In the garbage dump. The word translated “hell” in this passage is “Gehenna,” the valley of Hinnom. It runs along the southwest side of Jerusalem. In the past it had been the site for the worship of the pagan god Moloch. During a period of widespread apostasy, ancient Israelites sacrificed their children to Moloch by fire. (2 Kings 16:2-3; 17:17; 21:6) They did this in defiance of God's command as well as the lesson learned when God stopped Abraham from sacrificing his son Isaac. (Deuteronomy 12:31; Genesis 22:10-13) King Josiah desecrated this valley so it could no longer be used for pagan worship and it became the city garbage dump. (2 Kings 23:10) In addition, Jeremiah prophesied that it would become a mass grave (Jeremiah 7:30-34) It also sounds like the place that Isaiah described where the corpses of God's enemies lie and “their worm will not die, nor will their fire be quenched, and they will be loathsome to all mankind.” (Isaiah 66:24) Recognize that language? Jesus uses this as an image of hell: the garbage dump, where worms feed and fire burns the things that are rotten, useless and irreparably broken.

Unlike garbage we have a choice in where we end up. Just as those who don't give up unhealthy behaviors like smoking, drinking and abusing drugs are on one level choosing a lifestyle that will inevitably lead to illness, those who end up in the cosmic garbage pile are self-selected. If they can't let go of the things that are obstacles to being with God, such as idolizing things like money, power, lust, or themselves, or such as hating other people and neglecting people in need (Mark 12:29-31), then they are choosing an existence apart from God, the source of all goodness. By resisting the healing he offers, they render themselves rotten, useless and irreparably broken.

The next three verses in our passage are among the most difficult in the Bible to interpret. To many, they seem to have been grouped together simply because of shared words like “salt.” Was Mark such a poor editor that he just lumped a bunch of miscellaneous quotes by Jesus together for such superficial reasons? I don't think so.

From talking about a fire that is never quenched, he goes to “everyone will be salted by fire.” This verse may be a reference to Leviticus 2:13 where we are told that sacrifices are to be salted. But why does this verse say “salted with fire”? The best interpretation is that Jesus is contrasting his previous use of fire as a destructive force with that of fire as a purifying one. The fiery trials of this life can destroy us if we let them or we can see them as experiences that are only able to burn up things in our lives that are neither essential nor eternal.

Disasters can bring people together or drive them apart. They can do the same with people's relationships with God. Some find meaning in the events through which they suffer and come away with a strengthened faith in God. Some reject God for allowing any suffering of pain and loss. Ironically, when they do, they are still left with their suffering. It's just that without God it will remain random and meaningless. What they have actually eliminated is any possibility that an objective meaning for their suffering can exist or that there is hope for justice or for restoration in this life or the next.

The way we perceive our trials can be an obstacle to our relationship with Jesus. We can either see them as events through which God can turn evil into good or we can see them as reasons to doubt that God is good. No event is so horrible that some good cannot come out of it. Corrie ten Boom and her family were good Christians who hid Jews during the Holocaust. They were discovered and Corrie, her sister and their aged father were sent to a concentration camp. The Jews they hid were safe but only Corrie survived the camp. She could have railed at God for punishing her, her father and sister for doing the right thing. But instead Corrie went around the world, telling people how God triumphed even in such a dark time. (In her 80s she spoke at my college and when at the end of her talk we applauded for her, she stopped us. “Not Corrie,” she said, “Only Jesus.”)

Jesus next says, “Salt is good but if it loses its saltiness, how can you make it salty again?” Salt was used as a seasoning to make things better and as a preservative to keep things from going bad. Either use suits Jesus' purpose here. His point is how can you restore something that has lost its essential nature? Things in our life tend to lose what was once essential to what they were. The internet, which was originally created for the sharing of knowledge, has now become a tool for entertaining us and spreading misinformation. Our government has ceased to be a body of representatives working for the common good and is now a gladiatorial arena, where each side is simply trying to score points off the other without regard for whether their activity helps or harms the nation. Some churches seem to be acting in a similar manner. Changing the nature of the church definitely can be an obstacle to bringing people to Jesus.

Finally, Jesus says, “Have salt in yourselves...” Now what could that mean? What is the essential element that Christians must have to preserve us and make things better? Many will say “righteousness” or “orthodoxy” or “socially aware policies.” But Jesus concludes, “...and be at peace with one another.” Christians who are at peace with one another will preserve us and make things better. And Christian peace is not passive but active. We don't promote peace by simply saying “Don't rock the boat!” but by listening to one another, submitting to one another, making sacrifices for one another, bearing one another's burdens, forgiving one another, loving one another. (James 1:19; Ephesians 5:21; 1 John 3:16; Galatians 6:2; Ephesians 4:32; John 13:34)

One of the biggest obstacles to having people come to Jesus is us not seeing Jesus in one another, not serving Jesus in one another, not reflecting Jesus to one another. (Mark 9:35-37; Matthew 25:40) The object is not simply to be near Christ but to be in Christ, to push past the surface and live in him and to draw others in, so that we may all be one in Christ. (Galatians 3:26-28)

First preached on September 27, 2009. It has been revised and updated.