Fully Alive or a Living Hell
Mark 9:38-50
If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life maimed than to have two hands and to go to hell, to the unquenchable fire. And if your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life lame than to have two feet and to be thrown into hell. And if your eye causes you to stumble, tear it out; it is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and to be thrown into hell (9:43-45)
It is so easy to understand this passage in a heaven and Hell framework. It was better to go into the Kingdom of heaven without an eye, without a hand, and without a foot than into Hell with all of our limbs and faculties. It was the Kingdom of God or Hell – take your choice. When you perceive it in this way it sounds like you can scare people into a relationship with God, instead of having a relationship with God because you realize that God loves you.
When I looked at this passage in a Heaven and Hell framework I had to ask myself “Am I looking at this passage in the right way?” I was intrigued with one preacher who lifted up a sign at the beginning of his sermon one Sunday. The Sign read: GODISNOWHERE. He asked the congregation what the sign said. Most people answered, “God is no where” . The preacher went on to say that if you look at it one way, it does say that, but if you look at it another way, it says “God is now here” . The meaning is quite different depending on how you look at the passage.
When I first looked at this passage I was thinking that it referred to what would happen to us after death. That coloured the way I looked at the passage. It seemed to say to me: If you reject Christ’s way now, when you die, you go to Hell. I’m certain that a lot of people believe that.
The more I studied this passage I began to see it in another way. I began to see that Jesus was talking about a present reality not what happens after death.
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If we look at the present reality we see that many people’s lives are a living hell right now. They live meaningless lives, rushing from one thing to another, not even stopping long enough to know themselves leave alone other people. There is a desire by so many people to gather as much money and possessions around themselves that they will be happy but no matter how much you gather you always need more and are left disappointed with life rather than happy. We reach the stage as one person put it. “We took what we wanted until we no longer wanted what we took. Their life remains empty . They live out the maxim “Life is a bitch and then you die.”
When you live like this you don’t see life as worth much. Some may even think that their lives are garbage fit to be thrown into a dump. Actually that is what the word that is translated “hell” means in this passage. The real word is Gehenna which was a garbage dump outside of Jerusalem. It was desecrated land, used at one time for the sacrifice of children, and later designated as a garbage dump. Like most garbage dumps, the fires never go out, and the worms continue for ever. The restlessness of the spirit, the unfulfilled dreams, the pain of regret, are most surely the worms that never die and the fire in our bellies that never go out.
The harsh reality of this passage is a present reality.
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However, there is another way of living. It is the way that Jesus show us throughout his life – the way of compassion. This compassionate lifestyle is what gives us meaning. This is what brings us greater satisfaction. It is what gives the sense of being fully alive. It is to be alive to the activity of God – the God of love that we see in Christ all around us in the muck, marvel and mystery of the world. It is to know that love and to be moved by that love. It is to be fully present to the people who are around us, to their crying needs. It is being aware of what they are saying, and their silences, and the meaning behind the words they say. My goodness, when a person says to you, “Looks like it might rain” they may be really saying, “Speak to me. Know me. Love me. I’m living in some kind of hell – even a cup of cold water will be enough, even the smallest cup of human kindness.” It can be costly because loving is costly. It’s better to pay the price of that costly love than live like you are living now. It is love that gives the meaning to your life.
The story is told by M. Scott Peck, the famous psychologist and author, of a woman patient who was suffering from extreme depression. One day, when she was due for an appointment with him, she called on the telephone and told him that her car had broken down. Dr. Peck offered to pick her up on his way into work, but he explained to her that he had to make a hospital call before he got to the office. If she was willing to wait in the car while he made the call, they could have their appointment. She agreed.
When they got to the hospital, he had another suggestion. He gave her the names of two of his patients who were convalescing there, and told her thane each of them would enjoy a visit from her. When they met again, an hour and a half later, the woman was on an emotional high. She told Dr. Peck that making. the visits and trying to cheer up those patients had lifted her spirits, and that she was feeling absolutely wonderful.
Dr. Peck responded by saying, “Well, now we know how to get you out, of your depression. Now we know the cure for your problem.”
The woman answered, “You don’t expect me to do that every day, do you?”
That’s the tragedy of our lives. Doing what Jesus would do lifts us out of our doldrums into a higher quality of life. And yet, we often think, that imitating Jesus is something burdensome. It’s not! Doing what Jesus would do feeds us emotionally and lifts our spirits. One experiences the flow of the Spirit in the context of ministry. (Tony Campolo Let Me Tell You a Story Word Publishing, Nasville, 2000 p.91)
There are so many people in need of our care and concern. There are so many who are hungering for the Love that we can give. Also, we need to give it. There is a need of the giver to give.
I hear an echo from the words of Martin Luther King Jr:
An individual has not started living until they can rise above the narrow confines of their individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of humanity.
Everyone must decide whether they will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness. This is the judgment. Life’s most persistent and urgent question is “what are you going to do for others?”
When it comes to the reality of our faith, it is not a question of what doctrines we accept, what rituals we participate in, what devotions we do, what road we take, or what group we belong to. The question is: “Are we a people who live out our discipleship through acts of kindness and true compassion to others?”
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No wonder Jesus was so adamant in his refusal to let the disciples stop any acts of compassion and in his opposition to anything that would stand in the way of their compassion. In today’s Gospel, the disciple were disturbed by some one who was not “one of them” casting out demons in Jesus name, “Name” often referred to a person’s chief characteristic or nature. Compassion was the nature of Jesus life and if this person was acting in compassion he was not against him or his followers. The disciples tried to stop this person but Jesus said “Don’t try to stop him!
It is here that the disciples should have perceived the unity between this other persons action and their calling to follow in the footsteps of Jesus. Compassion was to be the nature of the disciples lives and in fact nothing was to stand in the way of their acts of compassion. Jesus uses very colorful imagery when he points out that nothing must stand in the way of their discipleship. He said that if their hand causes them to stumble, cut it off, or their foot does the same, cut it off. If it is their eye that causes them to stumble, tear it out. You can apply his saying to anything that stands in the way of our servant hood in the world. We might say that if an attitude of exclusiveness causes you to stumble get rid of if. If selfishness drives your lives and hinders you from empathy toward others, cut it off. If you are led by the judgmental view of others who are different than you, pluck it out. We cannot let anything stand in the way of our call to servant hood. It must have priority in our lives.
This is what Karen Armstrong calls the ethic of restraint in her book The Spiral Staircase, My climb Out of Darkness (Alfred A. Knopf, New York * Toronto 2004 p.296) She talks of the need to cultivate a strong habit of restraint against all of the afflictive emotions such as hatred, anger, pride, lust, greed, envy and so on. These negative emotions undermine our call as human beings to be compassionate, loving, generous, forgiving, tolerant and patient. By allowing the afflictive emotions to take over our lives we deprive ourselves of where our true happiness lies and the inner peace that comes from reaching out with empathy to others.
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What is this to us? After all is said and done are we to live the compassionate life and be fully human and fully alive or to exist in the living hell of destructive selfishness?
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