What needs to change?

Mark 9.41-end

The gospel of Jesus Christ is challenging. There is much that is encouraging, affirming, and inspiring. It would hardly be good news if that were not true. However, the teaching of Jesus is also meant to disturb us; to shake us out of our apathy; to enable us to see things differently.

This gospel reading does just that, as Jesus draws attention to the danger of giving in to temptations that lead us away from God, and away from the sort of life God wants us to lead. Jesus uses a list of extreme responses to drive home the urgency of what he is saying.

Whatever causes a person to live a sinful life must be dealt with ruthlessly. If it’s your hand, cut it off; if it’s your foot cut it off; if it’s your eye, pluck it out. Scary stuff that jolts us awake and makes us think hard about the importance of what Jesus is saying.

Clearly it is not teaching that is meant to be taken literally. If it were so then the world, including the church, would be full of people with deliberately severed limbs and purposely self-blinded. Such practice would be so far away from the heart of the gospel there is no serious defence to make for it.

Instead, what Jesus highlights is the responsibility of his followers to ensure that nothing they do or say becomes a barrier, or harmful to those who are weaker, poorer, and less powerful. That includes children as well as all who are pushed to the margins of society. It also includes people who are, perhaps, new in faith or exploring what Christian faith means in practice.

What we say and do matters. Our words and actions can have far reaching consequences for good or ill in a person’s life. We can, through the lives we live, draw others into a knowledge of the love and mercy of God that we know through Jesus Christ. We can also, by the same token, push them away from God.

This teaching of Jesus is, then, not an endorsement or encouragement to punish ourselves by mutilating our bodies when we do something wrong; and not even to beat ourselves up metaphorically. Rather, Jesus is emphasising the responsibility we have as his followers, to live our lives in a way which honours him, and which builds up the ‘little ones’, and not in a way that causes them any harm.

Perhaps a thought to take away is simply this: Is there anything in your life that hinders or harms the little ones about whom Jesus speaks and, if so, what might you do to change that? We cannot, we must not, ignore the obligations that our faith places upon us.