Sermon — September 29, 2024
Michael Fenn, Seminarian
Admittedly, there are many paths a sermon on this gospel reading could take. Off the dome there are four different, very intense, moments that could each be their own sermon. There is the stranger performing exorcisms, there is the drowning oneself, there is the cutting off of various limbs, and the business about salt and fire. When this is the case in preaching, I actually find it helpful to “zoom out” and get a better sense of how we got to such an intense place.
Intrepid observers may have already realized that today’s gospel actually picks up right where last week’s left off. John’s piece of dialogue picks up right after Jesus’ remark about welcoming the children from last week. Which is not actually that easy to catch if you are not paying close attention to the verse numbers–our reading starts with what is arguably an interruption of a longer speech from Jesus. This seems particularly true because his speech that spans last week’s and this week’s readings appears in the Gospel of Matthew without John’s interruption about the exorcist.
Here I will say that throughout my Biblical studies, I have developed a favorite group of characters. The disciples of Jesus across all the gospels are by far my favorite characters. For many reasons, but one stands head and shoulders above the rest: they are almost constantly wrong. In so many instances, at least one disciple is misunderstanding, misinterpreting, or acting out of turn in the gospels.
We have a prime example of this in John’s interruption in today’s reading. To me, it appears almost comical for John to stop Jesus in the middle of this speech about welcoming children, not overlooking them, and helping them in their faith. To tell him about something that probably could have just waited until after he was done.
Not only is John acting out of turn in his interruption of Jesus, but his acting out of turn is compounded by what he interrupts to tell Jesus. The disciples have stopped a strange man from performing excorsisms in the name of Jesus. To which Jesus informs them that they have actually missed the point entirely. Stopping someone in doing good works is not a part of the plan– and creating both a divide (the man is not one of us) and a hierarchy (we get to decide who gets to do what), is also not part of the plan.
Getting back to Jesus’s speech, after that annoying interruption (or introduction, depending on how you look at it). We get to the good stuff where Jesus gets to finish his speech with the millstone, the drowning, the limb cutting, and the salt and fire business. Welcome the children, do not cause them to stumble, do not let yourselves stumble, and be at peace with one another. All easy enough, cut and dry.
But what does stumbling actually mean? And really, why keep the interruption in this Gospel when they got rid of it in Matthew? There are, in fact, about seven other times in the gospel of Mark where demons are cast out, and such a remark would have been more natural. The gospel writers could have taken this into account when writing it down, made a minor editorial choice to make things flow better.
I suspect that the interruption is not, actually, an interruption in the end. The actions of John, I would say, are a pretty clear cut example of “causing one to stumble”, in the way that he stops the man from performing exorcisms, which is a good deed (it is also important to bear in mind that exorcisms in the ancient world were life-restoring acts, not the “Emily Rose” situations we might think of today). Also, I think John’s actions are even what it means to “stumble” for oneself. In stopping this man from performing his exorcisms, John has set himself up as someone with the power to decide what should happen, and who should get to do it–and he has created an exclusive group of Christ followers.
To return to my question–to stumble, then, is not to do something “bad” or something that is against a “law”–though maybe those are included, and I would not say Jesus wants us to do bad things. Rather, stumbling seems to have a few different definitions depending on the person and situation: to stumble might be to be stopped in your faith, or to create division in the community, or to think so highly of yourself as to stop someone else in their faith.
The aftereffects of stumbling should not be taken lightly either. And I suspect the warning from Jesus is so grave not because God looks for our self mutilation or our pain, but because these kinds of things are so easy to fall into–or to stumble into, to use a different phrasing. By thinking highly of ourselves, and by creating divisions where there should be unity, and by creating hierarchy– we reject the need for our togetherness. We reject the command that Jesus gives at the end of this week’s gospel lesson: to have peace among ourselves. I think the warning is stark because the presumption that we are right, that we know better; the pride that we should be able to handle things ourselves; and the assumption that we should tell that strange guy to stop doing exorcisms, are all such incredibly easy things to do.
As Christians, it seems that this story would call us to get off of whatever high horse we may be on, and to stay off it. It is a call to seek out a way to end divisions, to include those who we might otherwise exclude, and to rid ourselves of the assumptions that we are the ones who know best. One example that comes to mind as a huge church nerd, is the fact that the Episcopal Church and Methodist Church have finally decided that unity is more important than our own sense of self importance. This past summer, the United Methodist Church voted to enter into full communion with the Episcopal Church, our vote to affirm this is expected the next time we convene. What this does, in short terms, is recognizes the validity of the other denomination, and allows adherents of both denominations to work together without fear of reprisal from their respective denominational authorities.
As people, the call of this story would seem to be into a sense of unity and togetherness; to think that we actually do want the stranger performing exorcisms to keep doing exactly that; to think that we actually should not endeavor to do our lives, work, and ministry by ourselves or in our exclusive groups. This is echoed in our readings outside the Gospel for today. God’s solution when Moses complains about the burdens of leadership, and the hardship of the desert, is not to give Moses more power; nor is it to tell Moses to “buck up”. God’s solution and God’s involvement in the life of Moses is to give him more people to do the good work with him. In James’s letter, he does not tell the people to anoint themselves, or to pray for themselves, or to help themselves out of their own sinful ways. The solution James understands for the problems of his community is the unity of people in their faith.
My friends it seems that stumbling is not such an easy act to define, and is clearly seen only in what seems to be an interruption. When we exclude those who are doing good work–we stumble; when we think ourselves to proud to include the exorcist we do not know–we stumble, when we overlook the children and little ones in our midst–we stumble; when we act out of our own sense of importance and impede others–we stumble. The solution is never to divide and exclude, nor to assume that we will make it on our own (without the exorcist, without the additional prophets, without each other). God’s solution to Moses is togetheness, and God’s desire in Mark is for unity. Nowhere is the final blessing we hear in our services more needed than in these moments of stumbling–be swift to love and make haste to be kind: to the strange exorcist be swift to love, to the little ones who beleive in Jesus be kind, and “have salt in yourselves and be at peace with one another”. In the name of the one who loved us first.