Letting Go and Letting God

In our gospel reading this morning Jesus says in part: “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..” I have said this before, and I’m not sure if I said it here in a sermon, but this is one of those readings that we come across from time to time that makes me really glad I’m not a strict fundamentalist.

Some of you might remember the film “Little Big Man” which came out in 1970. It told the life story of Jack Crabb, who was a white man raised by Native Americans and who led General Custer into the Battle of the Little Big Horn. There’s a character in the film, a sort of huckster type snake oil salesman who appears from time to time throughout the film. He is always managing to anger the town-folk wherever it is he goes, so that each time he shows up in the film, he seems to be missing another body part. Perhaps those town people did take that passage literally, except that they didn’t leave it up to Mr. Merriweather to do the cutting.

What can we learn from the passage? What do these words of Jesus tell us about the Christian life as we live it now; how do they guide us to be closer to God in the 21^st century. I believe that scripture is the living word of God and with the help of the Holy Spirit we can find meaning in all of what our Holy writings have to say. There are a couple of things that come to mind as I have been reading this passage from Mark.

One is what I’ve already alluded to. We needn’t struggle to find a way to take these admonitions by Jesus literally. Although I can’t say for certain, I feel strongly that Jesus isn’t calling us to this kind of physically self-destructive behavior in response to our sinfulness. There is a deeper message beneath these words. And that’s the thing. This is true with all of scripture.

Many I fear tend to look to scripture too much as a rule book, a safe haven if you will that tempts us to compartmentalize our behavior, to follow the rules rather seek a deeper understanding about what Jesus or any other part of scripture is telling us about true holy relationship with God and with each other. The Bible is a collection of all sorts of different kinds of writings including poetry, storytelling, history, lament literature, and yes, law. Jesus himself speaks in various ways at various times. He tells parables, he shows anger, sadness, joy. And, in this instance, he speaks in hyperbole. If your eye offends you, pluck it out! Jesus is not asking us to blind ourselves. I believe Jesus wants us to see. There is, after all, a lot to see in the wonder of our lives.

I believe also that there is a broader interpretation of what this passage is saying. In a way that you all may find a little convoluted, I think it’s possible that we are being asked to ponder some fairly important questions about human nature and sin.

Sin is always a good thing to talk about. There’s the story of the farm woman who asked her husband if he had been to church. He said that he had. She wasn’t so sure, so she asked him, “Well what did the preacher talk about?” He said, “Sin.” Folding her arms and tapping her foot she asked, “Well what did he say about it?” He replied, “He was against it.” For the record, so am I.

But how helpful is being against sin? Aren’t we all? Why do we sin anyway? Before we can ponder these questions let me say a little about what sin actually is. I could speak a long time on that subject and we could wind up right where we started, so I’ll just say a little. The origin of the word we translate as “sin” is a Greek word that was often used in the context of archery which meant “missing the mark”. Our sin is not the committing of bad acts so much as it is more like our inability to live up to the potential that God has given us. We miss the mark, we live too much in our brokenness and not enough in our grace. I sometimes think that almost all sin can be described in terms of idolatry; we give godlike qualities to things we can possess instead of letting God be God and letting us be God’s children. It’s in our nature. We’re not so much sinful because we walk around committing bad acts. It’s more like we try to find fullness in things that are not God, not because we are evil, but because we are broken and desperate. We have a God sized hole in our hearts and we haven’t figured out how to fill it.

So what does this have to do with body parts? Again, I’m not at all sure that body parts is the main point here. Instead I believe it has something to do with letting Go and letting God. The reading today is about staying out of God’s way. The part about the person casting out demons has to do with staying out of God’s way as God acts through the good works of others. The part about the little ones has to do with not being a stumbling block to God’s innocents. And the last part, the part about stumbling ourselves, has to do with getting in our own way as we walk and work towards letting God be God.

We are geniuses in doing that. We have a remarkable ability to miss the mark, to forget that we are God’s blessed children. We turn possessions into gods, we turn rules into idols, substituting blind obedience to our safe harbors for open and loving relationship with our fellows and with God. But it certainly doesn’t have to be so. By not becoming stumbling blocks, by not holding on to those things that separate us from each other, we can begin to break our patterns of sin. Let love be our motivation to accept the grace God has given us. Let our prayer be to ask God to help us live lives free of missing the mark, not by following the rules but by doing the next right thing in a response of gratitude and honor to God for God’s good gifts to us.