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Mark 9:38-50

Writer's picture: Chris NafisChris Nafis

The two images of eternal consequence in this passage are likely to overshadow anything else our congregants hear, so let’s begin with them.


The first image warns of having a giant millstone strung around your neck and being thrown into the sea. Literally, the phrase is “donkey millstone,” which is what it sounds like – a millstone large enough that it needs to be pulled by a donkey walking in circles around the mill.

          

Sinking to the depths of the sea is a horrifying image for most of us. Most ancients could not swim and had a terrible fear of the ocean because of the mysterious and giant creatures that were known to live there. We hear of Leviathan, and we can only imagine what the ancients would have thought of seeing whales and other enormous creatures play alongside boats that are out at sea. Our increased knowledge of the depths has only made them more terrifying. In addition to the enormity of orcas, giant squid, great white sharks, and other marine creatures, there are all sorts of terrifying and innovative weapons, harpoons, poisons, teeth, spikes, and traps out there in the ocean. The depths are to be feared. The deep sea is a place of unmaking and chaos. They are a place where bodies sink and disappear into the darkness. And the depths are not passive – the seas rise and fall in swells. They move with great power, and they may swallow us whole if we aren’t careful (or, if we happen to have a donkey millstone tied around our necks).


The second image is probably more deeply embedded in most of us as an image of hell: unquenchable fire. Most of our translations also use the word “hell” here. The literal word is Gehenna, which is a physical location not far from Jerusalem that was considered to be condemned. It was a place where some of the kings of Judah had notoriously made their children “pass through the fire,” which means that they performed child sacrifices there. It was also a trash heap, which was always burning to destroy the trash that was brought there. Sort of like the Olympic torch but, you know, trash.


It was a place filled with the worst stuff of humanity. Remember, before the advent of things like rubber and plastic, almost nothing needed to be thrown into this sort of trash heap because almost everything would decompose. Living in a big city, it’s often frustrating to see so much trash all over the place, but there used to be a sort of magic microbial hoard that would appear to turn discarded items back into soil. It’s natural for us to throw things on the ground. But we found a way to subvert that system, so now we have do something with all of the waste we create. As a consequence, we throw things “away” all the time.[1] For us, it’s usually as simple as finding the nearest trash can and then occasionally bringing all of our collected trash to the curb. In this case, someone would have to actually haul their most unwanted items - items that they wanted destroyed permanently for some reason, never to return to the soil - all the way to this valley where there was a fire burning all the time to ensure that the disease or curse or whatever it may have been would not come back to the good land. In other words, the things in Gehenna were things that people had gone to great lengths to be rid of permanently, to take out of the natural patterns of repair, re-use, re-purpose, or compost. They were items that were corrupted in some way and needed to be removed from circulation.


In some parts of the Jewish tradition, this place became an image of afterlife for those people who were irredeemable. It was a place of unmaking, disappearing, and unremembering. Gehenna was where a person could be pulled out of the community permanently, never to return. Today we often think of Gehenna or hell primarily as punishment, and there is absolutely a strong whiff of that in this passage, but more than that, it is a place for the cleansing of the land.


Both of these images are terrifying. And our contemporary sensibilities would, perhaps, prefer that we let them go. But, they are important. When the gospel of Mark was written, many Christians faced severe persecution, both at the hands of the state and the general public. Some of them faced complete rejection from regular society, and some of them faced horrendous deaths. If you have watched someone you love publicly and mercilessly tortured as entertainment to a cheering crowd, maybe consumed by wild animals or boiled alive or burned, you might take some solace in knowing that the ones who are responsible for this will have some sort of consequence. You may find some hope in the idea that they will not simply remain, but that God will deal with them in a way that removes them from the community of creation. If you have experienced moral injury, a promise that God will bring the world back into order may be what you need to fend off despair.


Sadly, one of the ways that the church tends to make headlines today is through clergy abuse scandals. We hear about priests who have preyed on young kids and pastors who have prayed on young or spiritually desperate people. We read of people who have used their spiritual authority, their power and influence to exploit people. If you or someone you love has experienced his kind of horror and pain, it would be good news to hear that the perpetrator doesn’t just get cycled back through the system. You may want to know they haven’t been moved somewhere new where they have a fresh start, but that the world has been cleansed of their presence.  


This is not to say that we should encourage vengeful thoughts or harbor unforgiveness. But there is great darkness in this world, and there are people who have a lot of power and influence who have been lost to that darkness. They haven’t just dipped a finger or a toe in it, and they aren’t just arm-deep. Some of them have been consumed by darkness. Victims must have some hope that their victimization will come to an end. There must be some way for God to ensure that the “little ones,” the vulnerable, the powerless will be remembered by God, and that the cycles of evil will be broken. These images give us hope of that kind of consequence. They present us with an unmaking, a removal from the cycles of the world. They tell us that God will deal with it, which also gives us the ability to release it – we do not have to bear the responsibility of overcoming tremendous evil alone.


The frightening part, of course, is in realizing that we are all infected by sin in one way or another. We have all hurt people in our lives, and we all bear some responsibility for the suffering of others. We may not have given ourselves over entirely to darkness, but we have probably touched the darkness in some ways.


Knowing that, these images can haunt us. But, there is good news there as well. First, there is opportunity for us to cut off the part of us that has been taken by darkness. Jesus is not speaking literally here. We do not know of any disciples that had gauged out their eyes or cut off their own limbs. But we are not powerless against sin’s hold on us. We can cut it off. And in this passage, we find a call to recognize the gravity of sin’s hold on us, and to indeed cut it. We may need to go to great lengths to be freed from its hold.


Has something grabbed onto you in a way that leads you to sin? Maybe an addiction or a desire or a life pursuit or a pleasure. Sometimes, we need to cut it off to avoid losing the whole of ourselves. This is part of our discipleship – discipline! We need to make hard choices, sometimes, so that we can be faithful.


The even deeper gospel truth is that even those who have been condemned. Even those lost to Gehenna or the depths of the sea, who have been given over to an unmaking process, have some hope of new life in Jesus. The whole trajectory of Jesus in the gospel is toward crucifixion, especially in the gospel of Mark. He is heading toward the death of one condemned, and our tradition tells us that he descended to the place of unmaking to bring the presence, hope, and redemption of God even there.


The calling of disciples is to enter into this process willingly. We are to submit ourselves to the waters of baptism, to the fires of unmaking. We are not to fear the condemnation of the world, even where it is deserved, because Jesus has made God’s presence known even in the depths, and there is hope of forgiveness, new life, and new creation in God. There is no longer any place we can go or be sent that is out of reach for God, our deliverer. So even when that millstone is attached to our necks, and we are dropped into the seas of chaos and unmaking, we can cling to hope that God will make us again in Christ.


[1] Where is “away”? Some friends of mine made an entire blog about this about 10 years ago.

1 comment

1 Comment


charleshayes5
Sep 23, 2024

Thank you. Nicely done.

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