Mark 9:43-48
Back when I was in high school, there was an article in the Seattle Times that caught a lot of attention--especially in churches and youth groups. A young man--a college student--was found wandering around the University of Washington campus, delirious. He was delirious because of loss of blood. He had a loss of blood because he had cut off his hand. He had cut off his hand because he had read these verses from Mark, and felt like he should do what Jesus said.
If I asked you all to raise both hands, I am pretty sure I would not see any stubs. And the same if I asked you to hold up your feet. And I do not see any pirate eye patches either.
That is OK. I am not going to advocate that you do what Jesus said. Because I am pretty sure Jesus does not want you to do that either. If we all did what Jesus said, none of us would have any hands, feet, or eyeballs. It would be an interesting looking congregation, though, huh? What would be ironic about that is we would have to have our non-Christian friends drive us to church and wheel us into the building--which would have to all be on one level. No drop down screen. No bulletins. No pews--just a large open space for us to park all our motorized wheel chairs. It would be like blind, wheelchair bumper cars once the service was over.
We can kind of chuckle about this. It would be a somewhat funny scene. Maybe Jesus taught this with tongue in cheek, trying to make the consequences of his statement laughable for those who got it. But that is not how Jesus meant it. Jesus wanted his disciples to be terrified. That is what the tone of the Greek words Jesus used is trying to convey. It was Jesus' intent to so horrify the disciples that they would not ever want to go the way of sin anymore.
Jesus is heightening the disciples terror and sense of anxiety about their personal sin, and the consequences of causing your own downfall, that it would be enough of a motivation to keep from living the way of sin.
You have to understand that the inference Jesus is making is there are all kinds of opportunities out there for your hands, your feet, and your eyes that are sinful. Sin is real. Things that can cause your literal downfall are real. They are out there enticing, calling out to you, wooing you. As Paul wrote to the Ephesians Christians, "These are evil times, so make every minute count" (Ephesians 5:16). That is a reality. You have to deal with temptation every single day, or as Paul wrote, "every minute." You can not avoid it.
In American Sign Language, the sign for sin looks like two fishhooks leading a person by the mouth. That is how temptation works. The temptation is the bait, not the hook. The thing is, we can not get hooked unless we bite.
There are opportunities innumerable for your hands, your feet, your eyes to cause your downfall--in other words, to get hooked when we go for the bait. Comedian Flip Wilson used to have a routine where he would say, "The devil made me do it." He would list some messes he would get into, and then, instead of accepting responsibility, he would say, "The devil made me do it."
The truth is, the devil does not make you do anything. The devil only puts the opportunity there--the temptation, the lure. It is up to us as to whether we allow our feet to move closer to the lure, or allow our hands to reach for the lure, or even allow our eyes to look at the lure. The devil presents the opportunity; you provide the action. It is that simple.
Jesus is letting us know that causing our own downfall is a step-by-step process. There is the enticement, whatever it is. There is then catching a glimpse of the enticement with our eyes. Then our movement towards the enticement by feet or hands or both. Then there is the entrapment and eventual downfall.
It is what happened in the Garden of Eden with Adam and Eve. That story says:
The woman looked at the tree: the fruit looked good to eat; it was pleasing to the eye and desirable for the knowledge it could give. So she (reached out and) took some and ate it... (Genesis 3:6)
That is how it works. Seeing the lure. Moving toward the lure. Reaching for the lure. Biting on the lure. I suppose there is another part to all this. That is knowing what you should and should not be looking at. God had already told Adam and Eve not to eat any fruit from that tree. So the prohibition had been given. They knew what the boundary was that they were to keep. I suppose a temptation can not be a temptation if you do not know if it is good or bad, right or wrong for you to grasp at it. In most temptations we know what we are supposed to do and not do, what is good for us and what will bring about our downfall if it is pursued.
I think another inference in what Jesus is saying here is that we are supposed to watch out for ourselves. This is about you, says Jesus, taking stock of your own life under God. We don't get to tell others what they should be cutting out of their lives. This is our own personal "reality check."
The other side of that coin is that we do not get to blame somebody else for the ways we grasp at our temptations. Jesus did not say, "If your hand causes you to sin, chop your parents hand off, because it is their fault for the way they raised you." Or, "If your eye causes you to sin pluck your friends eye out because it is their fault they showed you that porn site on the computer." Or, "If your foot causes you to sin, cut your bosses foot off because you were just following their orders."
Jesus does not let us blame others because we bite at lures we should not be biting at, getting ourselves hooked. It comes down to our personal responsibilities and the choices we are making.
As I started out this message, one response is to start chopping. I think Jesus' tongue-in-cheek here has to do with the fact that if you choose that route, if you start chopping and yanking at your appendages, you are only dealing with the symptoms, not the cure.
Let us say you start chopping, like the University of Washington student did. Cut off a foot. Cut off a hand. Cut off another foot. Cut off your other hand. Pull out an eyeball. Gouge the other one out. Do all this in response to the temptations you are having and the sin you are succumbing to.
But once you have all that chopped off, what is left? The trunk of your body and your head. In the trunk of the body is the heart. And in the head is your mind. You have gotten down to what you should have been dealing with in the first place--your mind and your heart. Your feet are not going to lead you anywhere your heart and mind do not tell you to go. Your hands will not reach for that which your mind and heart is not directing you to reach for. You will not look at that which your mind is not already turning your head to look at.
There is the problem. And the humor and severity of Jesus' warning. The problem is not in your feet, hands and eyes. We are great at evading the real problem of head and heart by focusing on symptoms and trivialities. We do severe damage to ourselves and others thinking we have taken care of the problem. But after cutting everything else off, we finally get to where we should have started in the first place: our minds and hearts.
So, if it is a matter of mind and heart, then the best way to look at what Jesus is saying is to keep your boundaries. In order to stop sinning, in order to resist your own particular temptations is to set and keep Godly boundaries.
That is what God was trying to do with Adam and Eve. "Look," God was saying to them. "You have all these other trees and plants. Enjoy! Go get them! I made them all for you! Just do not eat off this one tree. That is my boundary for you. No to this one, single tree. Yes to all these other trees, bushes and plants. That is it. Please, keep the boundaries I have set for you." That is it. It is simple, really.
Stop sinning. Hold to your boundaries. We all know what our temptations are. Am I right? Come on. You each know what catches your eye, like the fruit did for Eve and Adam. You each know what is calling your name, what it is that is exerting the power to try and make you take a step in its direction--lift our hand in its direction. Right? We all know what that is for us.
Set your boundaries. Close your eyes. Put your hands in your pockets. Tie your shoe laces together. Do what you need to do, with God's help, to resist that temptation. Cutting stuff off could work. But it still does not help you, under God, to deal with your mind and heart.
And the final inference of Jesus' words is that there is an eternal reality to the consequences of succumbing to or holding our boundaries against our temptations. There are two eternal options here, according to Jesus. If you hold your boundaries and resist your temptations you will "enter into life." If you constantly succumb to your temptations you will "go to hell." I am sorry, but there are not any other options that Jesus gives us.
How does Jesus describe hell here? Jesus used the word Gehenna. Gehenna was an actual place. It is the valley of Hinnom, just below the mount upon which Jerusalem is built. It was in this valley that King Ahaz, one of the ancient kings of Israel, committed the atrocity of burning children alive as living sacrifices to idols. The valley later became the garbage dump for Jerusalem. It would constantly smolder and burn--the fire, literally, never went out.
So hell, in Jesus' description is first a place where things are thrown out. And, where things burn and keep on burning.
Also, because a lot of the carcasses of the animal sacrifices from the temple were thrown on that dump site, the place was full of maggots and other flesh eating insects. Jesus used that image to add to his description of hell along with the burning image.
Jesus is using these powerful images, again, to bring home the idea that sin and dealing with temptation is serious stuff. There are consequences you have to consider, and some of those consequences, if you don't hold to your Godly boundaries against sin and temptation, are disastrous--equal to being thrown out on to a garbage heap where you will be eaten by maggots, smolder and burn. It kind of gets our attention, does it not?
The upside to Jesus' mention of consequences is that there can be some good ones. To hold our boundaries against sin--to make sure our hands and feet and eyes are not being led astray by a weak mind and heart--if we do that, Jesus said we will "enter into life." Jesus equates entering into life with the kingdom of God.
To understand this we can go to the Lord's Prayer that we say every Sunday. There is the phrase, "Thy kingdom come; Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." To enter into life, to enter into the kingdom is to enter into a life now that is just like life in heaven. To enter into life and the kingdom is to begin living in heaven on earth.
The kingdom, the way Jesus saw it, is not something that is outside of this life. The kingdom is both now and later. We can enter the kingdom life now, while we are alive, now, simply by making sure we hold to Godly boundaries, and not allow ourselves to become distracted and detoured--allowing our eyes to look at that which they should not be focusing on, by letting our hands reach for that which is not of the kingdom, and by allowing our feet to take us places that have nothing to do with life.
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