Mark 9:42-50 ‘But anyone who is the downfall of one of these little ones who have faith, would be better thrown into the sea with a great millstone hung round his neck. And if your hand should be your downfall, cut it off; it is better for you to enter into life crippled, than to have two hands and go to hell, into the fire thatnever be put out. And if your foot should be your downfall, cut it off; it is better for you enter into life lame, than to have two feet and be thrown into hell. And if your eye should be your downfall, tear it out; it is better for you to enter into the kingdom of God with one eye, than to have two eyes and be thrown into hell where their worm will never die nor their fire be put out. For everyone will be salted with fire. Salt is a good thing, but if salt has become insipid, how can you make it salty again? Have salt in yourselves and be at peace with one another.’
A Study The one resource that I do not [yet] have electronically is Barclay's Daily Study Bible. It is, of course, the one I wish I had more than all the rest, save the Bibles. Barclay is the only commenter who makes sense of the last three sentences in this selection.
Everyone will be salted with fire. Before an offering could be made on the Temple Altar, salt had to be added before the sacrifice was burned. In a pithy turn of the phrase, Jesus reminds us that we must be cleansed by spiritual fire of the impurities within us, and perhaps even face a fiery death as we may be persecuted for our beliefs, before we are worthy to offer ourselves to God.
If salt has lost its flavor, how can it be made salty again? The world into which Jesus and his Christians came had lost its flavor and become putrified. Salt, as the ancients knew, brought food's flavor to life and had the characteristic of keeping food from going bad. Hence, Christians added to the world are for the benefit of the world.
Salt comes from two pure sources: the sea, and sunlight. To have salt in ourselves is to remind us of the pure source of life from which we all derive our being.
A Reflection I remember as a youngster picking up the Bible and starting to read it. Several times. After all, many people whom I loved and respected thought quite a lot of it, both as literature and as life-guide. Genesis is not the best place to start, I found. Hard to believe Adam and/or Eve could be so stupid as to throw away that great, free and fantastic situation based on the word of a talking snake. And having watched several things get built or torn down, thinking that the whole earth could just get "spoken into being" came with some skepticism.
Later, I picked it up again in adolescence. I had been suffering through Sunday School, of course, with the sweet little old lady trying to keep order in the room while all of us were trying to figure out how the flannel characters stuck to the board, and what any of that stuff had to do with church. About two pages into one of the prophets, I decided that I still wasn't ready.
As a middle-aged adult, I tried a whack again, but using Barclay's Daily Study Bible. Much better way to do it. In fact, I think you ought to have to have a license to buy a Bible. The Message you could get with a learner's permit and two years of careful instruction. But the King James Version would require that you have a Ph.D. in Comparative Theology before you would be allowed to enter the store selling it. Winston Churchill described an unexplained bible best, although he was talking about Russia at the time: "It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma."
Mark 9:30-41 After leaving that place they made their way through Galilee; and he did not want anyone to know, because he was instructing his disciples; he was telling them, ‘The Son of man will be delivered into the power of men; they will put him to death; and three days after he has been put to death he will rise again.’ But they did not understand what he said and were afraid to ask him. They came to Capernaum, and when he got into the house he asked them, ‘What were you arguing about on the road?’ They said nothing, because on the road they had been arguing which of them was the greatest. So he sat down, called the Twelve to him and said, ‘If anyone wants to be first, he must make himself last of all and servant of all.’ He then took a little child whom he set among them and embraced, and he said to them, ‘Anyone who welcomes a little child such as this in my name, welcomes me; and anyone who welcomes me, welcomes not me but the one who sent me.’ John said to him, ‘Master, we saw someone who is not one of us driving out devils in your name, and because he was not one of us we tried to stop him.’ But Jesus said, ‘You must not stop him; no one who works a miracle in my name could soon afterwards speak evil of me. Anyone who is not against us is for us. ‘If anyone gives you a cup of water to drink because you belong to Christ, then in truth I tell you, he will most certainly not lose his reward. -- The New Jerusalem Bible. 1995, c1985. Doubleday: Garden City, N.Y.
A Study Jesus walked in a world where children were troublesome possessions until they reached the physical maturity to be useful as labor. They sapped the energy of the mother unless a slave-woman wet nurse could be found. Jesus' embracing the little child was truly Jesus holding close to him "the least of them." Except perhaps for some royal progeny, children were slightly behind working slaves in the pecking order.
So if a disciple welcomes a child in Jesus' name, he accepts a person with no benefit attached, and from whom no reward can be forthcoming. It is servanthood taken to the full practical extreme, just where Jesus intented for it to be.
A Reflection My mother once ducked into a drugstore in our small south Alabama town with my brother in tow. This would have been in the late thirties. She asked the proprietor behind the counter for a glass of water for my brother. For whatever reason, he declined. It was probably the most expensive single act of his entire life, as my mother would have nothing to do with either him or anyone who did business with him thereafter -- continually badmouthing him until her dying day seventy some years later.
A glass of water is such a small token, such common coinage in the commerce of life. I cannot imagine declining someone a drink of water, having been truly very thirsty only a few times in my life. It was certainly a feeling that I never want to have again, and I would never want to be the cause of such discomfort for someone else.
But Jesus surely had more in mind than physical thirst and physical water, here. The juxtaposition of the non-follower driving out devils "in your name," seems pertinent. I don't think Jesus meant to trivialize driving out demons, equating that act to the gift of a cup of water -- or it may be that he did. The prototype of alliance philosophy, that is, whoever "is not against us is for us," seems to have galvanized in this brief period.
I had reason to discuss a finer point of "Church Stuff" with someone the other day, and referred to "Section IX of the Articles of Religion." It occurred to me that our taking up that time to talk about such finely-divided matters must be either comical or insulting to God. I fervently pray that it is the former.
Consider, please, that our religious institutions regularly tortured, maimed, and killed people whose crime was ignorance of some man-made creed never expressly stated in Scriptures (which were themselves locked away from the ignorant masses).
Today we have millions of dollars being stolen from the mouths of starving children, to fund hate messages against sexual orientation. I am pretty sure that the chuckle/frown decision does not come down on our side on that one. I cannot pretend to understand the tons of "theological" hair-splitting study developed over centuries. But I do claim to have a pretty strong handle on the Gospels.
Our actions should be able to pass the God/man test: "Is what I'm about to do showing my love for God or for my fellow man? If not, why am I doing it?"
