Last November, a Barry Bonds 1986 rookie card sold for $2,625. At a show this weekend, dealers say they'll be lucky to get a little over $100 for the same cards. Why? Because, as one dealer put it, Barry Bonds has become “the poster child, as it were, for the steroids era.” For better or worse, he is accused of having used artificial enhancements in his quest to become the greatest home run hitter in history.
I don’t know much about baseball, or cricket for that matter. I grew up playing soccer, and not very well at that. But I do know that one way to make enemies on your team is to be “greedy,” to be so concerned with showing off that you end up losing the ball to the opposition.
Whatever the team sport, whenever you start worrying more about your own reputation, your own ego, than you do about the team, you have a problem.
Jesus’ team had
ego problems. “33 They came to
So Jesus takes his team into a huddle and gives them a pep talk. 35 Sitting down, Jesus called the Twelve and said, “If anyone wants to be first, he must be the very last, and the servant of all.”
Usually, in our culture, when we want to teach something with authority, we stand up. Jewish rabbis sat down to teach. Mark tells us that Jesus sat down to impress us with how important his next words are. “If you want to be the greatest, be the servant of all.” The aim of the game is not to get yourself voted Most Valuable Player (or Most Valuable Parishioner for that matter). The aim of the game is to move the kingdom of God forward, whether people notice what you’re doing or not.
To help his team grasp that, Jesus gives them an object lesson. He takes a child, puts him in the middle of the circle and says, 37 “Whoever welcomes one of these little children in my name welcomes me; and whoever welcomes me does not welcome me but the one who sent me.”
This is not a warm fuzzy moment for the disciples. We miss the point if we assume our own culture’s understanding of children as significant and valuable. If you do that, the lesson doesn’t work.
Our culture values children very highly. We also have all kinds of sentimental ideas about them, partly I think because we tend to worship youth. That wasn’t the case in the first century. The goal was to become old and wise. Children were seen as “unformed adults,” “the least of all humans.” While people did love and care for their own children as part of their family, the attitude was that children in general were insignificant and unimportant.
When he takes a child and stands him in the
middle of the circle Jesus is telling his disciples that no-one is
insignificant in the
If Jesus were teaching the same lesson
today, here in
No, this was not a warm fuzzy moment for the disciples.
It gets even less warm and fuzzy when the story continues at verse 42, and we’ll get there in a minute, but first Mark inserts another story to help us understand what Jesus is talking about here. (Some scholars call it a Markan sandwich. He does it 9 or 10 times in his gospel and, like any sandwich, what’s in the middle affects the flavour of the whole thing.)
38 “Teacher,” said John, “we saw a man driving out demons in your name and
we told him to stop, because he was not one of us.”
“Didn’t I do well?” That’s not written here, but John is obviously fishing for a compliment. I think he expected Jesus to say something like, “Well done. We need to keep our distinctiveness. Our team has the copyright on using my name to cast out demons. No-one else should be doing that, at least not without paying royalties.”
After all, who does this guy think he is? He hasn’t gone to the right schools. He doesn’t have the right letters after his name. He’s just some free-lancer out there setting people free in Jesus’ name. So John was probably taken aback when Jesus actually said:
39 “Do not stop him… No one who does a miracle in my name can in the next moment say anything bad about me, 40 for whoever is not against us is for us.
The big question here is “who is “us?”” John told this independent prophet to stop “because he was not one of us.” He wasn’t one of the Twelve. He wasn’t a member of the in-group. He was competition.
[I was talking with another pastor this
week who told me of when he worked in a city of 100,000 in
I was talking with someone else this week,
and he mentioned a pastor in ministry here in
Jesus’ perspective is way broader. “No one who does a miracle in my name can in the next moment say anything bad about me, 40 for whoever is not against us is for us.” Jesus’ definition of “us” is based on relationship to him, not membership of a group based on doctrinal or other boundaries. It’s based on a recognition of Jesus’ authority. This guy obviously recognised Jesus’ authority, however imperfectly. That made him “one of us.” Just as Mother Theresa’s love and service for Jesus makes her “one of us.” Even though she was a Catholic and we would disagree about all kinds of things, everything she did, she did for Jesus.
Note that I’m not saying all roads lead to God, which is how some people take this text. Jesus’ basis for including this man is his relationship to himself.
So we can’t hinder someone else from following Jesus just because they don’t have the right “label.” In fact, when we jump back to the original story, we find that making it difficult for any believer has serious consequences. 42 “And anyone who causes one of the least of these believers to sin, it would be better for him to be thrown into the sea with a large millstone tied around his neck.
I know that most of our English Bibles say, “if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin” but I think this is a better translation. Jesus is not just talking about children, but all believers, including those that we would normally brush off as unimportant. There is no believer so insignificant that we are not responsible, as brothers and sisters, for their welfare. We are responsible for how our walk with God impacts the lives of those around us, especially those who are youngest and weakest in the faith.
Our actions as believers have consequences. In verse 41 Jesus says, “if anyone gives you a cup of water in my name because you belong to Christ, they will certainly not lose their reward.” And in verse 42 he says, “if anyone causes one of these believers to sin” life will not be pleasant. Getting thrown into the sea to drown would feel better. Our choices now, have eternal consequences. So choose well.
So, we’re to include and value those that our society says are insignificant or worthless. And we’re to avoid hindering others who are serving Jesus in their own ways and avoid causing any believer, even the least, to sin.
In order to do that we have to be aware of our own lives and committed to living wholeheartedly for Jesus ourselves. That’s what the last part of this passage is about.
There’s a lot of figurative language in this passage. The child is symbolic of “the least of these.” Giving a cup of water is symbolic of being hospitable and helpful to strangers. Being cast into the sea with a millstone round your neck is a great picture of drowning in the consequences of your own selfishness. And now we come to the most graphic section, with people’s hands and feet and eyes being removed.
43 If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to
enter life maimed than with two hands to go into hell, where the fire never
goes out.45 And if your foot causes you to sin, cut it off.
It is better for you to enter life crippled than to have two feet and be thrown
into hell. 47 And if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out. It is
better for you to enter the
As we look at this there are a couple of things that we need to remember. First. This is hyperbole. Hyperbole is when you deliberately overstate your case to make a point.
I found a website where schoolchildren had
sent in examples of hyperboles for a competition. Here are a few. “I think of
you a million times a day.” "The test was so hard, by the time I finished
it I was 100 years old!" "
Jesus is not joking here, but he is
overstating his case to make a point. And the point is that nothing is more
important than being included in the
The second thing to remember is that this is figurative language. Jesus is not suggesting that we all indulge in self mutilation. What he is pointing out is that we are responsible for our own walk with him and we need to take appropriate steps to safeguard that. Instead of sitting in judgement on who’s in or who’s out, or deciding who’s important enough to warrant our attention, we need to be concerned for things that hinder our own walk with God. We can’t exclude or include others in the Kingdom, that’s God’s call, but we do have the ability to exclude ourselves. Jesus points out three areas that we need to be aware of as temptations to sin.
The first danger zone is things we do. 43 If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. What does your hand find to do that would cause you to sin? Perhaps you use it to inflict pain. Or perhaps it’s more subtle. We all have to eat, but for some of us our hand just goes back to the dish more than necessary and it becomes gluttony. Others of us hurt our bodies by eating too little. If food is an occasion for you to sin, one way or the other, you need to develop an appropriate diet and stick to it. Ask God to help you with that, and be sensitive to his promptings one way or the other.
The second danger zone is places we go. If your foot causes you to sin, cut it off. If you’re a recovering alcoholic, don’t go to a bar. If you have a problem with gambling, don’t go to the casino.
This includes virtual locations. If your computer mouse causes you to sin, cut it off. You wouldn’t believe the number of pastors who let their ministries be destroyed by an addiction to internet porn. And it’s not just pastors. It’s a problem for lots of guys. In my office, my desk is against the far wall as you come in. The main reason for that is so that I have to turn around and look at people when they come into my office. I hate the power dynamics of talking to people over a desk, as if I were some sort of CEO. But I also work with my door open, so anybody walking past my office door can see what’s on my computer screen. That’s an important discipline for me. I don’t want to fall into any internet traps.
The third danger zone Jesus points out is things we desire. If your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out. 1 John 2.16 calls this, “the lust of the eyes.” In many ways it’s what makes our economy run. The advertisements keep telling us that we need, no we deserve, to have everything and have it now. Every month at least 2 or 3 credit card offers come through my mail box, encouraging me to buy that “whatever” I’ve been longing for.
What is it you desire? For the last couple of months I’ve been dreaming about getting a new car. (Not new, new; just newer, nicer, you know.) It was becoming an obsession with me, but I think God has shown me how to deal with it. I’ve actually moved down market. Jason and I have swapped cars. He’s now driving what was my Honda, and I’m driving the Escort wagon that he had been driving to work. He saves a tank of gas a week on his commute and I have a vehicle I can haul stuff with, and that isn’t pretty. I still have a car, but it’s just a means of transportation, not an obsession.
I can’t leave this passage without talking briefly about hell. It’s mentioned three times in three verses and Jesus clearly teaches that our choices in the here and now have consequences on into eternity. He talks about a reward for faithfulness and, for unfaithfulness, the consequence is being thrown into Gehenna, which we translate as hell.
Gehenna was a valley just outside
Jesus is warning his disciples that even they could end up on God’s cosmic garbage dump, if they’re not careful to live their lives with integrity.
Like I said, this was not a warm fuzzy experience for the disciples. They started off arguing about who was the greatest amongst them, and Jesus saw that he had to stop that kind of thinking quickly. So he turned everything upside down for them. The least is the most important. They shouldn’t think they’re any better than the next guy. And they had better watch out for their own lives lest they fall.
If we’re to be effective in serving Jesus,
helping others to do the same and seeing the
1. Check your egos at the door
2. Look for ways to encourage those others would call “insignificant”
3. Spend more effort on your own lives than judging the lives of others
4. Remember that your actions have consequences beyond the here and now