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Better For You

9.29.24 [Mark 9:43-48] River of Life (19th Sunday after Pentecost)

Last year there were around 40 million surgeries performed in the United States. Around 4 million of those surgeries were considered urgent or emergency surgeries. Guess how many amputations.

The answer is a little more than 460,000 annual amputations in our country. It’s a shocking number for a modern country, isn't it it?

Amputations are a thing most of us associate with the Civil War. While it’s impossible to know precisely how many amputations were carried out in that time period, most experts estimate it was around 60,000. That means each year in our country, there are almost 400,000 more amputations performed than there were during the whole Civil War.

Amputation has always been a last ditch medical intervention. It's the thing you do when there’s nothing else you can do. It’s the last resort when life and limb are at stake. It’s always been that way.

In our Gospel text, Jesus draws on the grisly picture of amputation to drive home his point about the power and ramifications of sin to his disciples.

To quickly summarize, Jesus says if your hand or your foot or your eye is causing you to stumble in such a way that you fall from God’s grace, it would be better for you to choose to be maimed, crippled, or have only one eye than for you to continue to choose to rebel against God and reap what you sow and ultimately be thrown into hell.

These words are surprisingly sharp from Jesus, aren’t they? It’s like biting into what you thought was an apple, only to find out it was really an onion. How could the same person who says let the little children come to me and do not hinder them, also say if your hand or foot or eye is causing you to stumble cut them off or pluck them out? How can he be so sweet one moment and so savage the next?

It’s not as much of a stretch as you might think. Jesus has always had a deep love for people. God wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth. Don’t hinder little children from hearing and learning and trusting in the truth—no matter how messy or challenging it may be. And don’t let your desire to gratify your sinful urges lead you to fall headlong into rebelliousness and unbelief—no matter how messy or challenging that might be. Your merciful Lord says you must have a cut-throat, merciless way of dealing with sin.

Radical surgery in this life is far better for you than eternal suffering. And Jesus means this whole-heartedly. It is better for one part to be cut off and the whole body to be saved than for the whole body to be spared pain and ultimately suffer in unquenchable fire.

This gruesome analogy must have shocked Jesus’ disciples. Does it shock you today? Does the seriousness of sin cause you to shudder?

Over many centuries, perhaps some of the shock has worn off. We hear Jesus, but we tend to dismiss what he says as being dramatic for effect. He’s just being hyperbolic. He’s exaggerating to make his point. Sin is bad. Don’t forget it. Do better to lead a better life.

Part of the reason we come this conclusion is that little word “cause”. We hear Jesus say if your hand or foot or eye causes you to stumble…and we tacitly dismiss what he has to say because we think we know better. In our minds, science has proven that hands and feet and eyes are not independently sentient members. They receive information and then relay it to our brains where we process the information and then make a decision. Hands and feet and eyes don’t cause anything. They are caused to do things.

But maybe we shouldn’t be so quick to think we know better than the One made us fearfully and wonderfully. He might know a thing or two about our bodies, our souls, and our lives. Our hands and feet and eyes may not physiologically cause us to stumble into wickedness and fall from God’s grace, but what we do, where we go, and what we fill our minds with certainly can have that effect.

What we do—how we use our hands, our ability, and our strength—has a way of forming our identity and shaping our priorities. Parents put their kids into all kinds of activities because they believe to be true. The odds of their child being a professional athlete—even a scholarship athlete—are slim. But these activities teach values like teamwork, resiliency, and the value of hard work. These are good goals. But at times, they come at the direct expense of spiritual development. Kindness is more than being charitable to a referee or helping your opponent up from the ground. Christ was kind to those who hated him. That’s real kindness. Sacrifice isn’t just about putting in the work today to see results tomorrow. True sacrifice is giving up your rights for those who have no right to demand it.

Hard work is good, but Christians don’t just work hard when someone is watching or when they think it will ultimately be rewarded. Everything they do is a representation of him. It’s all done to the glory of God. Distinctly Christian character cannot be developed without prioritizing & doing what the Word of God says. If your kids’ activities are causing them or anyone to stumble into apathy toward the Word of God, cut it off.

The same must also be said for work & hobbies. Much like youth sports, these are good things. But look at how quickly they consume us! God wants his people to work with their own hands and in this way provide what they need for body and life. How many times has work caused us to neglect the work of God? How many times have our hobbies soaked up the best of our time and energy and monopolized our minds so that all we have for God is a little leftovers here and some promises to do better when things slow down. How we use our hands, what we do, certainly causes us more spiritual trouble than we may think.

Where we go certainly has an impact on our spiritual wellbeing. There are some egregious examples, of course. Walking into a den of some sin—like lust, greed, drunkenness, gossip, or violence—will have a searing and desensitizing effect upon your conscience. But it’s not just the obvious places. When we leave town, do we leave behind Word, worship, and prayer? When we find ourselves surrounded by those who do not share our faith, do we represent ourselves as children of God or do we hide what we believe?

What we fill our minds with has a deep impact on our souls. Jesus warned (Mt. 6:23) If your eyes are spiritually unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness. If the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness. How true this is! How many marriages are doomed by the casual acceptance of pornographic videos and books! But that’s not the only way our eyes cause us to stumble.

There is a profound power in consumeristic media. Maybe it’s home improvement shows. Perhaps it’s that social media influencer who has all the right looks and goes to all the best places. When these fill our feed and our minds it’s hard to be content or generous to others.

Cable news is crafted to have a lasting effect on its viewers. When every talking head is shouting about how the stakes have never been higher, it’s hard to not worry about the future. It’s hard to trust that God has a higher, greater plan and he is really ruling in this world. When a person is inundated with slander and lies about what the other side is doing, it becomes nearly impossible to love my neighbor when I find out that they don’t share my political leanings.

What we do, where we go, and what we view can cause us to stumble into wickedness and rebellion and fall from God’s grace.

If only amputation were a solution! But here’s the rub. You could do what Jesus says literally—you could lop off a limb—and you still would have a sin problem. You could do what Jesus says metaphorically—you could make your own off-the-grid homestead—where there are no distractions and you would still have a sin issue. Amputation and avoidance aren’t actual solutions. Only atonement can prevent us from being thrown into hell. Only the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus can secure real life for us.

Jesus was so devoted to ensuring that you and I would enter life, that it formed everything about him. It changed what he did, where he went, and what he filled his mind with.

The Bible tells us that Jesus was born and raised in a blue-collar household. Joseph, Jesus’ earthly father, was a builder. He worked with wood and stone and made things for people. It would have been typical for Jesus to be raised in this trade, to learn it from his father. Even in this line of work, Jesus remained righteous. He never took advantage of someone’s ignorance or neediness. He never took the Lord’s name in vain or cursed the tools in his hand or slandered the people he worked with or for. He lived righteously.

This skill would have allowed him to scratch out a living. But he left it behind to serve sinners. The Son of God who made the heavens and the earth, the Son of Man who had the skills to make his own house, lived sub-standardly. Birds have nests. Foxes have dens. Jesus had no place that he could call home. He made that sacrifice for us.

His eyes were searching for lost sinners—like the Samaritan woman at the well, like Zacchaeus in the sycamore tree, like thief on the cross next to him—because they were the reason he came. He was thrown into the unquenchable fires of hell so that we might enter life holy.

And we will. One day, we will be given a new body. It will be glorious, imperishable, powerful, immortal and spiritual—just as God designed it. In heaven, our hands will serve the God of all glory. In heaven, our feet will walk upon streets of gold. In heaven, our eyes will behold the Lamb reigning on his throne. Let us never lose sight of that picture.

There may be times when we have to make hard choices. We may have to metaphorically cut it off, or sacrifice things that can be good because they are getting in the way of the God who is always good. We may have to reject temptation and also suffer the consequences of being ostracized by people we like. When those tough choices come your way, keep your eye on the prize. Jesus is watching and he has promised that anyone who gives up these things because they belong to him, will certainly not lose their reward. Amen.