Save Us From Our Dumpster Fires

 Mark 9:38-50

September 29, 2024

 

Two things that I can’t avoid this week.

One: Jesus advises cutting off our limbs 

and taking out our eyes.

Obvious hyperbole, but it’s in there none the less.

And the other is that Jesus talks about hell.

Or at least our translation says hell.

 

Some Christians are very adamant about hell.

That eternal place where God sends people for being bad or

thinking bad or not believing depending on where you come from. 

It’s core to many people’s faith and belief in Jesus.

 

There was a pastor named Carlton Pearson 

who was the head of a huge mega church with 6,000 people a week in Tulsa Oklahoma.

They had a very robust theology of Hell and he preached on it every week. 

And then he had a revelation on day that told him

that God wasn’t sending non-Christian people to hell.

 

He told his staff and his board and he started preaching about it.

And eventually he was declared a heretic by his denomination,

and he lost most of his congregation, and foreclosed

the building all within four years of this epiphany which he

believed and preached about until he died last year.

 

A few decades ago, almost every Christian was comfortable with hell.

It was an unquestioned doctrine,

and the few passages like this that we read today were cited.

 

But more and more people are questioning that doctrine

and with good reason.

The concept of excluding some people for eternity form God’s presence

to a place of eternal fire and pain is not quite in

harmony with the rest of Jesus message.

Especially the first part of the message that we read today

which talks specifically about not excluding people.

Hell is the ultimate exclusion.

When Jesus said ‘hell’ here, I don’t think he had that full blown

doctrine in mind. He said, it’s better than that than to be thrown into hell. 

He doesn’t say, “you will be thrown into Hell”

 

And the fact is that Jesus didn’t even use the word ‘hell’.

The word that they translate as “hell” is actually Gehenna.

 

Gehenna, was an actual place, a valley,

south of Jerusalem which was, at the time of Jesus,

used as a garbage dump. 

 

The folk lore around the time was that in the olden days,

1000 years before Jesus, it was used for human sacrifice,

and that why it was abandoned to burning garbage.

 

So it was a terrible place, abandoned forsaken, cursed even.

A terrible place that was not getting better.

It was possibly a euphemism. A metaphor.

Euphemisms always get lost after just a few decades.

 

An equivalent term that people might use today is “dumpster fire”.

A complete disaster. Something that gets progressively worse

even though you’re sure it can’t possibly go more wrong.

And it’s similar also because it has burning garbage in it.

 

So to summarize, when Jesus said Gehenna,

he was talking about a real place which he used as

a metaphor for a bleak option and future disaster, a place of misery.

But over the last two thousand years we’ve made it

into and elaborate doctrine about where God puts you

if you don’t fulfill some specific requirements.

 

And with all the baggage we hold about it,

It think it’s actually distracting to the message to say “hell”.

So when we talk about this today,

I’m  going to say “dumpster fire”.

 

 

“So it would be better that you pluck out your eye,

then if you landed in that dumpster fire with two eyes.”

Trust me for now. If you like the concept of hell,

you can always return to it after this sermon.

 

But even if we’re  talking about dumpster fires

Jesus reaction is still pretty extreme.

It’s better to have a millstone hung around your neck?

cut off your own hand? cut off your foot?

It’s better to pluck out your own eye?

Than to end up in that dumpster fire?

So what makes Jesus go to this extreme?

 

The disciples were just tattling on someone to Jesus.

A person who was not a part of the official disciples group

was casting out demons in Jesus name.

John tells Jesus that they told that person to stop.

It doesn’t seem too crazy, it might be our inclination

if someone was doing stuff in the name of Christ Lutheran

of Hilton Head, even if it was good stuff.

 

But we read last week, Jesus was just talking to them

just then about not having competitions about who was best

not trying to improve our status by lowering other

people’s status. That it was wrong to try and be best

by making other people out to be worse.

 

He told them to welcome a child, the lowliest among them,

and Jesus was probably still holding the child at that moment,

when John comes over and tells him that they went and put someone

out of the circle for not belonging to the authorized group.

They made another boundary and put someone outside of it.

 

Because this person wasn’t in possession

of the proper papers, the certified title, the certificate of completion,

or the special the secret decoder ring,

The “real disciples” went and told this person to stop

doing the work of God. The exact same thing that Jesus

was trying to accomplish, -- casting  out demons,

something that a few verses earlier in this chapter,

the disciples weren’t able to even do themselves.

 

Jesus is ratcheting up his rhetoric, he’s mad because in the disciples’ actions, 

he can see the problem of humanity, and a potential

problem with the future of Jesus mission on earth.

And he was right, it has been a threat to Jesus mission

for the last two thousand years.

 

Ironically, Christians have been the stars of the class of dividing

people between them and us. 

It’s almost become our calling card.

Labeling people good or bad, holy or unholy, saintly or abomination,

Christian, heathen, and -- the ultimate division –

we have said with certainty to some “you’re going to heaven,

you’re going to hell” (even though the reality is, we have no idea)

Even Lutherans, who have this doctrine that says we are all children of God, 

and none of us is better than the other, have done exactly this.

 

When I was in seminary, in our American Religious History class

we had weekly assignments to write one page

summary about different American denominations.

We got to the week to write about Roman Catholics.

After he read them, the professor said that every one of the

essays we wrote talked about Catholicism in a negative light.

We all just wrote about how they didn’t understand theology

and they didn’t get justification, how they faced off with Luther

and how they still don’t really grasp the truth now.

 

A denomination with millions of people, working in hundreds of countries, 

with amazing social services, doing deep justice work,

with hundreds of benevolent hospitals around the world.

And all we could see was how they were not as good as us.

He made us all write that essay again.

 

And when I was doing conflict work in churches in Columbus,

one church we were working with was going crazy,

because they found out that the food pantry that the pastor

had led them to help was run by the Mormon Church.

One woman said “We can’t help Mormons!”

I said, “why not?” she said, “Just cause”.

 

Jesus knew that the biggest threat to Christianity

wasn’t from the outside. It isn’t from atheists, or Muslims,

or Mormons, or nones, or the young people these days

opting not to go to church. It is from ourselves.

Our own back biting, our own in-fighting, our own arguments

tearing each other down.

 

It’s our own body parts that are the real threat to Jesus message

in the world. It is us. We are our own worst enemy.

And if our hand or foot or eye has that tendency,

then cut it out.

It’s a better option than the dumpster fire that it leads us to.

 

Jesus is saying, if something is leading you down the path of

division, rivalry, exclusion,

it’s better that you should cut those things off,

or toss yourself in the sea

rather than end up in that dumpster fire.

Because that path doesn’t lead to anything good for anyone.

 

Jesus message is clear: infighting, elitism, arrogance, and exclusion

are just a big self-destructive dumpster fire.

 

So Jesus says, don’t even start it. Nip it in the bud.

Don’t go that way. That way is the dumpster fire

where the worm never dies and the fire is never quenched.

There is no end to this one upsmanship,

to these ruthless power-plays and bullying.

It’s not as if someone wins and then all finally all is well.

 

It’s Gehenna, it creates a hell on hearth.

Those things lead to no good for anyone.

Even the winners lose in the end.

 

We can see this dumpster fire in the middle East

between Israel and Palestine and now Lebanon.

Everyone is bitter, angry, vengeful

Who hurt who first, who is the worst injured,

whose pain is the worst,

whose injury justifies the injury they inflict on someone else.

Who is the worst offender.

Whose bombs are good and whose are bad.

There will be no winners here.

What a hellscape they’re creating.

 

The only way forward is to get out of the dumpster fire.

Stop going in that direction. Jesus says you need to stop yourself.

And if you can’t stop yourself,

if your hand or foot or eye can’t seem to stop,

Then it would be better to cut them off.

Better you cut it off than to end up in that dumpster fire.

That hellscape.

 

But the good news is that there is another way.

 

Jesus ends up his sermon by telling his followers

to be at peace with one another.

Peace is not just an uncomfortable truce until the next blow up.

It’s not one party pushing the other into quiet submission.

Peace is more than just silence, or quiet, or a lack of fighting.

 

Peace is genuine understanding, tolerance, humility and welcome.

Peace is where everyone recognizes the humanity in the other.

Peace for us is like salt being salty.

Living with integrity and true to what God created us to be.

 

Peace is not an outside thing that we achieve

once the fighting is all done. Peace is the way we act.

Peace begins in our hearts and minds.

 

As St. Francis of Assisi said:

As you announce peace with your mouth, make sure that greater peace is in your hearts. Let no one be provoked to anger or scandal through you, but may everyone be drawn to peace, kindness, and harmony through your gentleness. For we have been called to this: to heal the wounded, bind up the broken, and recall the erring.

 

Even when the world is going out of control,

and bullying, contempt, and division,

we can work towards peace with ourselves and others.

Real Peace is difficult and time consuming,  

but it is the alternative to losing limbs

or living in a continual dumpster fire.

 

May we and our religions, and our country, and our world

learn from our own mistakes and follow the right paths.

May we always work for peace with one another.

 

May Jesus words and teachings show us the way.

 

And may God who is gracious  and just

save us from our dumpster fires.

Last of All and Servant of All

 Mark 9:30-37   September 22, 2024

Blessing of the Children
Jorge Cocco Santangelo

 

The disciples are arguing about who is the greatest.

We don’t know exactly the content of the argument,

maybe it was about who cured the most evil spirits,

who did Jesus like the best, who did he pick first.

We don’t know.

 

We do know that in the Gospel of Mark, especially,

the disciples have nothing to brag about.

They’re not models of courage or wisdom.

Even here it says they didn’t understand what Jesus

was talking about and they were afraid to ask.

Even after Jesus spells it out plainly

and tells them that he’s going to be rejected,

tortured, and killed, and that his followers

should deny themselves and follow,  

the disciples feel the need to compete with one another

about who was the greatest.

 

And to that Jesus tells his competitive disciples that for God,

if you want to be first, you should be last of all.

Servant of all. The way to win is to lose. To come in last.

 

It’s a call to humility and humbleness.

Church people have heard this call

and somehow we’ve made humility into a  competition in itself.

 

There was a story that was told around my home church,

Communion was only once a quarter and people were told they

had to be right with God before they took communion.

So on that one Sunday every three months,

church ladies would go up to the rail and

make a big show about refusing communion.

To show people that they didn’t think they were good enough.

They were competing to see who could be first at being humble.

That is certainly not what Jesus meant.

 

So what does Jesus mean?

 

Jesus gives a little clarifier when he takes a child

and he says “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me”

 

It almost seems unrelated in a way.

But that’s because of the way that we understand children now.

We love children, we value children just because they’re children.

Of course some people don’t, but the prevalent view of society today

is that children should be honored and protected just because

they’re vulnerable and innocent and can’t take care of themselves.

 

But in the first century, children weren’t valued.

They were actually treated with annoyance, disdain, even hatred,

And often by their own parents.

 

Producing children was, of course, encouraged.

They represented the future—they would carry on the family name,

provide for their aging parents, they would work for the family,

and produce the next generation.

 

But actually having children and taking care of them was a liability.

Especially small children.

For the first 4 or 5 years, they couldn’t help out much

and they were another mouth to feed.

And if they got sick, like children tend do, then forget it.

And if the family fell on hard times, then the decision was

often made to get rid of the children.

 

Abandoning children,

giving them away, or even killing them

was a fairly common practice.

This was actually true up until the 1800’s

Think of how fairy tales like Snow White and Hansel and Gretel start out.

  

I mean, even in the 1920’s,

when her family fell on hard times,

my grandmother, at 15,

was sent to live at another family’s house to

basically be their live-in servant.

 

And in ancient Rome, they estimate that

20-40% of children were abandoned.

Many were actually killed by their

parents without many repercussions.

And many died as a result of accidents because they were

basically left unsupervised.

 

Children were seen as a burden and

treating children nicely was seen as a weakness, especially for men.

And if you “welcomed a child”

you could end up being responsible for them.

At least for a while: Feeding them, clothing them, caring for them.

 

And what they could give back couldn’t be counted.

What children give couldn’t be counted as an advancement

to anyone’s status or lot or station in life.

Especially if it wasn’t your child.

Welcoming a child was a burden, a liability.

Welcoming a child, cost the welcomer.

 

So when Jesus said,

“Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me”

it meant something very different than we would understand it now.

 

And what Jesus meant was that

following God’s way comes at a cost.

But that cost is a gain in God’s eyes.

 

So welcoming children does not

have the same stigma that it did then,

But there are plenty of other people

who’s welcome could cost us.

And I guess who or what would cost you

depends on the people that you find yourself around,

your peer group.

 

Would it cost you to welcome an immigrant?

maybe more if it were a Haitian immigrant?

Maybe a person of a different race,

or maybe a poor person, or a homeless person, or a rich person,

or a democrat, or a republican,

a transgender person, or a gay person,

or an atheist, or a fundamentalist Christian?

 

Would that cost you some friends, some honor,

some clout in your circle of friends?

What would cost you some time, or money, or

and invitation to the next social outing?

That’s who we should be welcoming.

 

Basically, if our relationship

with Jesus isn’t bringing us around people who

we’re uncomfortable with,

our who our friends and family are uncomfortable with,

then we probably have work to do.

 

Jesus says, if you want to be great in God’s Kingdom.

don’t worry about your own status,

worry about the status of someone else.

Give your status away to them.

 

When it comes to God’s kingdom,

Having all the money in the world is no good

unless it can go to help someone else.

Having all the power in the world is of no use

unless it can be used to give someone else power.

Having all the food in the world can’t fill you

as long as someone else is hungry.

No use getting to the top of the ladder

unless everyone is up the ladder before you.

Gandhi, who often understood Christianity

better than Christians, said,

"A nation's greatness is measured by how it treats its weakest members."

 

In this world, serving God comes at a loss.

Whoever wants to be first of all must be last of all and servant of all.

 

Serving and caring for others costs.

It costs us our money and our time and our hearts.

Welcoming those that are unwelcome by the rest of the world

can cost us too: our status, our friends,

and it can even challenge our own values.

When we think of other people before ourselves

even our own stubborn ideologies can be lost.

 

When our compassion overwhelms our sense of

competition and our need for status,

that is a win for God.

 

I’m going to tell you a story.

I think I’ve told it before, but I like it and

good stories are meant to be retold.

And it’s basically the only story I have with a sports

reference, so some of you will appreciate it.

 

There was high school softball game

in Indianapolis about 15 years ago.

Roncalli Catholic School played Marshall Community.

Roncalli was an established private, upper-class Catholic School.

Marshall Community was a new alternative school that

only had two grades at the time.

 

Roncalli was a great team. They had a perfect record.

They had won every game for two and half years.

Their goal was a three-year perfect record.

  

Marshall Community didn’t have any girls sports yet

so they started a softball team.

This was Marshall’s first game.

They had never played a game of softball against anyone else before.

They showed up to the game with only two bats,

and no players who’d ever played together before,

and a coach who had never coached a team before.

 

After an inning and a half, Roncalli was destroying Marshall.

Marshall pitchers had already walked nine batters.

It was obvious they didn’t know what they were doing.

Roncalli could've won that game with no problem

gone home with a victory had a pizza party,

put another game under their belts

and kept their perfect record.

 

That's when Roncalli did something crazy.

It offered to forfeit the game.

They counted this game as a loss for themselves.

And then they spent the  hours they would have played

teaching the Marshall girls how to play softball.

They showed them how to put their gear on,

how to hit, how to catch, how to run the bases,

and the coach taught the coach about coaching.

And they obviously didn’t condescend to, or insult the other team.

And in response, the Marshall girls were eager to learn.

 

The Roncalli team lost their perfect three year record.

But those girls got something else in return.

What it was is hard to put a value on,

it’s hard to count as a benefit to their status.

It’s even hard to put into words.

But their loss was a gain for Marshall as much as for them.

 

It’s like a high school softball team touched

this mystery of God.

In order to be first, be last.

 
 

In this world, serving God comes at a loss.

But there are also great gains that can’t be easily counted.

 

The paradox is: We get more when we give away more.

And I’m not talking about how the prosperity preachers tell

you it will happen, that if you give some of your money

to the church, more money will suddenly come to you.

It doesn’t work that way I’m sorry to say,

and nothing in the bible says that it does.

 

But when we trust God,

when our compassion overcomes our need to win,

then we get something that’s more valuable

and priceless than all the riches of the world.

The last will be first.

 

May all of us here know that experience.

May all of us get to touch that

mystery of God’s kingdom in our lifetimes.

May all of us here know the joy of being last.