Scandal! Mark 9:38-50

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Jesus is heading to the cross. Don’t forget that. Mark told us that last week, that Jesus was making the teaching plain for his disciples. They were so worried, though, about who was going to be the greatest that they missed the greatness of what Jesus was describing: “that He must be delivered over to the hands of men, and they would kill him. And when He is killed, after three days He will rise” (9:31). Jesus wasn’t worried about who is the greatest of all; He was the least of all so He could be the servant of all, and in His least-ness He would be the Savior of the World.

The disciples don’t understand. They are still concerned about who’s the best. IF they can’t be individually the best, then at least they can collectively be the greatest. They were Jesus disciples, after all. If they were in modern America, they would have tried to market themselves to make sure everyone knew: there’s Jesus, then them. There was only room for a dozen in this carton of eggs, so if you’re not one of the Buzzin’ Dozen, you’re nothing.

That’s the attitude they had towards this exorcist who was driving out demons in Jesus’ name. He wasn’t one of the Twelve. The disciples run to Jesus, tattling on the man like grade school hall monitors who catch a kid going to the restroom without a valid hall pass: “He wasn’t one of us,” they said, “so we told him to knock it off. He didn’t have our stamp of approval.” Frankly, I suspect that the disciples are actually a little jealous – you may remember reading a few weeks ago, from earlier in the chapter (9:14ff), that someone brought a demon-possessed man to the disciples so they could drive the demon out, but they couldn’t do it. Now, here is this exorcist who is doing what they couldn’t do, and in Jesus’ name on top of things!

You can almost hear Jesus sigh echo through the centuries. The disciples are looking at themselves and seeing this man as an outsider: He’s not following us, they said. Did you hear that? Us – the disciples. He doesn’t have the membership card, the secret handshake, the bumper sticker, the right lapel pin. He’s not one of us. I wonder if Jesus smiled with wry irony: “us, indeed.” After all, He is the one going to the cross, He is the one who is becoming least, He is the one who will suffer and die, and the disciples are worried about the fact that this man isn’t one of “us.”  

Jesus tells the disciples to stop making this man stop. “No one who does a mighty work in my name will be able toon afterward to speak evil of me,” He says. The exorcist understands what the disciples keep missing: this work, this ministry, this kingdom is all about Jesus. Even if you get a cup of water from someone in my name, Jesus says, even something this simple and seemingly insignificant is a good and faithful work in my name.

Last week, to answer the disciples’ question about who was the greatest, Jesus brought a little child in the middle of the group and said, “Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me.” The point, you remember, isn’t that a child is innocent or more Christ-like than an adult, but that someone who society considers to be a throw-away person is hugely important in the kingdom. Jesus returns to the child image again: “Whoever causes one of these little ones who believes in me to sin,” He says.

Jesus returns to last week’s image of the little child. The idea isn’t that a child has an innocence about them, or that a toddler is Christ-like. The idea is that a child is the neediest of all because the child cannot care for him or herself. A child is totally reliant on someone else for love, care, and nurture. Jesus plays with that idea again: the little ones are the young in faith, whose faith is not strong and mature, able to resist temptation and discern false teaching about Christ. In short, the little one is the one at greatest risk for losing faith in Jesus.

The Greek text doesn’t actually say “sin,” but “scandalized.” We know what a scandal is. It’s something that causes you to stumble in your perception of someone or in your ideas. A scandal changes how you see something; it alters your opinion. Jesus says that anyone who causes another Christian – especially a young, or immature, or weak Christian – to stumble in faith, it would be better for him to be drowned in the sea.

Of course, He speaks figuratively but Jesus is making the point: nothing is more important than faith in Him, therefore there is nothing more serious than causing someone to lose faith in Jesus as Lord and Savior. Don’t mess with someone’s trust in Jesus. Don’t do anything that might cause someone to doubt their salvation in Christ.

I suspect that we – and by “we” I mean Christians, in general – don’t tend to treat faith a little loosely and blasé. To be more specific, the Old Adam loves to abuse the cross of Christ. The Old Adam loves to treat Jesus’ death cheaply as if it’s not the life-changing, life-giving gift that it is. So, we are tempted to think that we can do whatever we want – after all, Jesus died to forgive sinners, so we might as well take full advantage of that, right? The Old Adam tells us to treat our Baptisms like James Bond: it’s a license to sin.

Now, it is true, that we have great freedom in Christ. In fact, Luther once wrote a book called, “The Freedom of the Christian,” where he coined the phrase, “A Christian is an utterly free man, lord of all, subject to none.” In our Christian freedom, we can do what we want. But, Luther than immediately counters with a wonderful paradox, “A Christian is an utterly dutiful man, servant of all, subject to all.” It’s a delightful tension: on the one hand, we are free to do whatever we want, but in love, we will refrain from doing whatever we want so as to not cause a brother or sister in Christ to stumble. It’s Luther expanding on what St. Paul says, “While all things are permissible, not all things are beneficial,” (1 Cor. 10:23).

Again, Jesus loves hyperbole – an over-exaggeration to prove the point. No one is supposed to chop off a hand, or gouge out an eye, or lop off a foot. Rather, in Christian love, out of concern for my brother and sister in Christ – especially those at greatest risk of being scandalized - and to be a good and faithful neighbor, we avoid letting our hands, our eyes, or our feet do those things that might cause another to stumble in faith or fall away from Jesus. For that matter, we avoid letting our hands, eyes and feet do things that might cause our own stumbling.

The irony, of course, is that the hand, or eye, or foot – they are controlled by the heart and the mind. Amputation doesn’t change what comes from within. This is why faith in Christ is such a radical thing. Faith enables us to see the condition of our heart outside of Christ and it allows us to see what our hands, eyes, and feet do when we lose sight of Jesus. And with our mouths, we confess our sins of selfishness, or arrogance, and of failing to follow Christ with all humility. In faith, our cry of “Lord, have mercy,” carries to the cross.

To the cross…that’s where Jesus is heading, remember? There's the scandal: the Innocent One is going to suffer for the world’s sin. He’s going to have His hands and His feet pierced. His eyes will sting and burn with His own sweat and blood and He will be blinded by the darkness that covers the land. He’s doing this to prepare a place for you, to guide that stumbling carcass of yours through death to life, to win for you a salvation that your hands and your feet and your eyes could never accomplish in and of themselves. 

Your life, your forgiveness, your salvation, your faith - it all cost Jesus His life on the cross. That's why He's so protective against anyone who would cause another to stumble. That's why He's so radical about the faith of the little ones - including you.