Note: You can watch this teaching on CrossWalk’s YouTube channel.
This week’s texts from the Lectionary give us much to chew on and an opportunity to revisit our hermeneutical approach to studying biblical text (fancy speech for how we understand what the original text meant to the original audience in context, and our method of applying it to our present context). Here are some of my thoughts...
Hermeneutic. God didn’t write the Bible. God doesn’t have hands to hold quills, pens, or click keyboards. God does work in cooperation with human beings. The Spirit of God is always present everywhere in everything working toward shalom – wellbeing and harmony for all, including creation itself. The Bible was written by thoughtful, prayerful, faithful people trying to express their experience and beliefs about God. God was surely expressly invited into that process, and the writers were no doubt trying their best to be responsive to the nudges of the Spirit with every jot and tittle. The writers wrote from their context, which included their worldview formed by all the life experience they brought to the table. The fact that what these writers wrote was added to the collection of texts that formed the canon – the standard – means that the collective community believed that the writings were aligned with held beliefs and worthy of study. It doesn’t mean that the writings were perfect. Also, none of the biblical texts were originally written in English. The Old Testament was written in Hebrew. The New Testament in Greek. Jesus spoke Aramaic – a form of Hebrew – which was eventually translated into Greek. Hebrew and Aramaic don’t always translate well into Greek. Greek words sometimes have multiple meanings and don’t easily translate into English, which is why we have so many English translations of the Bible. Sometimes those original words are loaded with meaning that are lost on us unless we study them carefully. Sometimes errant translations become so comfortable that we assume they must be correct even if they are not. The challenge of biblical study is to see all of this as clearly as possible to limit the misinterpretation and misapplication of what the writer is trying to communicate to us. This process is called our hermeneutical approach to the study of biblical text. Simple. ;)
Others. The disciples saw someone who was not a card-carrying member of the Jesus community doing Jesus-related stuff. Oh no! What was their reaction? How dare they! Who do they think they are? We are the only ones authorized to do Jesus-related stuff! I find this so interesting and a bit humiliating as the same dynamics are still in play today. Unfortunately, I have been guilty of the same reaction, especially in my earlier years, when I viewed Christianity and my role as a pastor differently than I do now. I used to be more concerned with who had the “most right” beliefs and therefore who was most right! Interestingly, I somehow always found myself in the “most right” camp! One unfortunate byproduct of this orientation is that it lends itself toward protectionism and even efforts to disenfranchise those who disagree with the “most right” camp, even if they are simply another perspective within Christianity! God help me! God forgive me.
Jesus’ response, of course, was to enlarge their puny vision. Jesus was not really into copyrighting his stuff. He was open to the collective embrace, understanding, and application of the Good News rather than trying to control how it should be done by everyone, everywhere. He recognized the Spirit of God was already at work everywhere in everyone. It wasn’t like he controlled it. He modeled what living and responding to the Spirit looked like. Others saw it, caught it, adopted it, and learned to live in it as well. The Good News is that God loves us, is with us, and is for us forever. The “us” is everyone, not just “us”. How the Spirit flows and is understood depends on who the receiver is, and thus will be expressed somewhat differently. The flow of the Spirit will always look, sound, smell, and feel like love – that’s what we look for and celebrate! How much lovelier would it be if churches and their leaders stopped spending time arguing about who is more right and more time celebrating where the Spirit of God is clearly at work! Even beyond the Church and Christianity! How cruel would God be if God was sitting on such Good News and limited its distribution to only the Church? How many billions of people would be left out today? It takes nothing away from Jesus or Christianity to suggest that the Spirit also speaks through other religious traditions. Our resistance to this idea is rooted in a protectionism born from an understandably narrow rendering of the revelation of God. Two things can be true at once: there can be distinctives taught about the Spirit that are in contradistinction to ways of thinking in the world at large, and there can be more than one source acting as a conduit for those distinctives. I think Jesus was making just this point in this brief story.
Hell. The next section jumps into what appears to be an unrelated discourse (because it probably was). The Gospel writers had their collection of stories and sayings and did the best they could to organize them. Sometimes the flow is really good. Sometimes, like in this passage, it isn’t. In these middle six verses, Jesus is telling people to do whatever it takes to stop their destructive behavior, lest they experience worse consequences than they already have. The consequence most English translations say awaits? Hell. Gulp! Teach a child (wittingly or unwittingly) to carry on a sinful pattern? Hell. Do something with your hand that isn’t shalom? You’re toast. Allow your feet to take you somewhere you shouldn’t? Get ready for some heat. Viewing some porn? You’re going to burn. Youth pastors and parents and Jonathon Edwards have kept these verses in their quiver and shot their kids with them whenever errant behavior loomed. Jesus appears to be suggesting that the consequences of a temporal, finite sin is an eternal threat of torture. What do we make of this? Does this make sense?
I have taught on the subject of hell before. I recommend two well researched books that will help you unpack the overview I am about to offer. Rob Bell’s Love Wins woke a lot of people up to what we’re talking about here, and Donald Emmel’s Eliminating Satan and Hell both offer good scholarship and a theology that help makes sense out of this subject. I will be featuring a special class featuring a teaching from Meghan Henning – an expert on the subject. The Jewish people didn’t really write much about life after death until roughly 300 years before Jesus was born, which is after the last book of the Old Testament was written. Let that sink in. They didn’t really give it much thought. And then they did. Why? Scholars believe that their interest and writing were in response to a justice issue. If God was not going to reward Israel for their faithfulness in this life, perhaps God would do so in what lies beyond the grave. Furthermore, if God wasn’t going to mete out justice on those who worked against what God was up to in this life, perhaps God would make them pay after they died. Some folks within ancient Judaism developed a pretty elaborate understanding of where we go after death, with four chambers – two for good folks and two for bad – depending on how you lived your life. The good chambers were either really good and comfortable or really, really, really good and comfortable. Similarly, the bad chambers ranged from awful to horrifying. By the time Jesus was born, popular thought had embraced such notions of rewards and punishments after death, likely borrowing some imagery from other religious traditions. Jesus’ parable of the rich man and Lazarus provide a good example of ancient thought. The word hell is important to exegete in the passage we are looking at today. The Greek word for hell in this passage is Gehenna, which is a translation from the Hebrew word Ben Hinnom. Historically, this was the location of terrible acts of pagan worship including child sacrifice. It was considered a horrible example of a defiled place. Anybody with a basic understanding of Jewish history would know this, and associate it with a place where God’s covenant was violated. An awful, unholy place.
In past teaching, I have taught that these words refer to a valley just outside of ancient Jerusalem which was used as the city dump where trash was burned around the clock, rotting refuse was constantly being eaten by worms and maggots, leftover food and flesh would be fought over by wild dogs that would gnash their teeth at each other, and a place where the poorest of the poor who were not otherwise provided for would be disposed of here upon death, leaving their loved ones to weep tears of sorrow and shame. Never ending fire. Worms and maggots. Gnashing of teeth. Constant weeping and suffering. Sound familiar? Sound like hell? Yep. I had learned and understood this to be an accurate rendering of the first century CE landscape. I have recently learned (from Meghan Henning) that this idea was based on rabbinical writings from the medieval period when the city dump did exist in that valley. However, there is no evidence that such a dump existed at Jesus’ time, and therefore we have to hold on loosely to that view or let it go entirely. This is inconvenient! Being able to explain away that Jesus really didn’t believe in an afterlife experience where some level of punishment existed was super handy. The reality is that he used familiar rhetorical devices related to the subject of the afterlife, and that he may have believed in such a space himself – we simply cannot know. The New Testament writers do not speak with one voice or view on this, and we have to live with it. There is a lot to think about here that goes beyond the scope of this teaching. There are good resources available to help us understand the development of thought on the afterlife. Be warned, however, that being exposed to good research may mess with your view of the Bible and how we engage and interpret it! Expect to be uncomfortable!
What we can be sure of is that whenever Jesus used this rhetorical device, he tied it to ethical living. The point he was trying to make every time was that living in the Way mattered. A lot. Reckless living could lead to an early death, or it could lead to being associated with an unholy space or throwing your life away. He wasn’t trying to make a case for a torturous afterlife, but he did assume everybody already understood the reference and used it to persuade them to live lives aligned with the Spirit of God.
Salty BBQ. The final saying seems tacked on because it probably was. In the first line, Jesus is giving a word of comfort: everyone will be tested with fire. How is that comforting? We’re not singled out – everybody goes through hell at various points in their lives. The last verse dealing with salt teaches something a bit different but is sort of related. Salt, as an element, doesn’t lose its saltiness. It can’t. What can happen, however, is dilution. Gypsum looks like salt but isn’t. Gypsum is the material that gives us sheetrock used in construction. You may not be able to tell with a casual glance which is which – but you surely can tell the difference in taste! I think what Jesus is teaching here – and why Mark put these verses together – is that we need to be careful with our lives. What we allow in and what we keep out of our lives makes a massive difference for ourselves as well as the world. Let too much gypsum in? It’s like throwing your life away. From bad ideas to unaddressed emotions to terrible choices, it all matters. The consequences are real in this life, affect our individual life, impact the lives immediately around us and in some ways also alter all of creation. Your life matters to more than just you. Given the impact your life has, what are you doing with it?
Questions to journal through...
1. Why do you suppose the disciples – and human beings in general – wanted to be the only ones with the authority to carry out the ministry of Jesus? How have we seen this pattern repeated throughout history in various forms? How has this been true of you? What has helped you recognize this ego need and manage it better?
2. What is it about humanity that wants hell to exist? What kind of God would cause people to suffer a torturous eternity for committing temporal egregious acts? Where is justice in that? If hell is off the table, why in the world would anybody want to follow in the footsteps of Jesus? If hell is off the table, what was Jesus trying to communicate with his life and teaching?
3. What is it about humanity that allows salt to be diluted with gypsum, that which is born of the Spirit with that which is not? When have you recognized such behavior in your own life? What helped you see the gypsum for what it was? What gypsum are you allowing into the mix now that will diminish the good work of the Spirit – and your very experience of life?
4. What is the Good News Jesus was trying to proclaim? How is that similar to the Good News that captured our hearts? How might we make this Good News known in ways like Jesus?
Mark 9:38-50 (NLT)
38 John said to Jesus, “Teacher, we saw someone using your name to cast out demons, but we told him to stop because he wasn’t in our group.”
39 “Don’t stop him!” Jesus said. “No one who performs a miracle in my name will soon be able to speak evil of me. 40 Anyone who is not against us is for us. 41 If anyone gives you even a cup of water because you belong to the Messiah, I tell you the truth, that person will surely be rewarded.
42 “But if you cause one of these little ones who trusts in me to fall into sin, it would be better for you to be thrown into the sea with a large millstone hung around your neck. 43 If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It’s better to enter eternal life with only one hand than to go into the unquenchable fires of hell with two hands. 45 If your foot causes you to sin, cut it off. It’s better to enter eternal life with only one foot than to be thrown into hell with two feet. 47 And if your eye causes you to sin, gouge it out. It’s better to enter the Kingdom of God with only one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into hell, 48 ‘where the maggots never die and the fire never goes out.’
49 “For everyone will be tested with fire. 50 Salt is good for seasoning. But if it loses its flavor, how do you make it salty again? You must have the qualities of salt among yourselves and live in peace with each other.”
James 5:13-20 (NLT)
13 Are any of you suffering hardships? You should pray. Are any of you happy? You should sing praises. 14 Are any of you sick? You should call for the elders of the church to come and pray over you, anointing you with oil in the name of the Lord. 15 Such a prayer offered in faith will heal the sick, and the Lord will make you well. And if you have committed any sins, you will be forgiven.
16 Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The earnest prayer of a righteous person has great power and produces wonderful results. 17 Elijah was as human as we are, and yet when he prayed earnestly that no rain would fall, none fell for three and a half years! 18 Then, when he prayed again, the sky sent down rain and the earth began to yield its crops.
19 My dear brothers and sisters, if someone among you wanders away from the truth and is brought back, 20 you can be sure that whoever brings the sinner back from wandering will save that person from death and bring about the forgiveness of many sins.