WTH? - 9-26-21
Numbers 11:4-6, 10-16, 24-29; Mark 9:38=50
Numbers 11:4-6,10-16, 24-29
The rabble among them had a strong craving; and the Israelites also wept again, and said, “If only we had meat to eat! We remember the fish we used to eat in Egypt for nothing, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic; but now our strength is dried up, and there is nothing at all but this manna to look at.” So Moses said to the Lord, “Why have you treated your servant so badly? Why have I not found favor in your sight, that you lay the burden of all this people on me? Did I conceive all this people? Did I give birth to them, that you should say to me, ‘Carry them in your bosom, as a nurse carries a sucking child,’ to the land that you promised on oath to their ancestors? Where am I to get meat to give to all this people? For they come weeping to me and say, ‘Give us meat to eat!’ I am not able to carry all this people alone, for they are too heavy for me. If this is the way you are going to treat me, put me to death at once—if I have found favor in your sight—and do not let me see my misery.” So the Lord said to Moses, “Gather for me seventy of the elders of Israel, whom you know to be the elders of the people and officers over them; bring them to the tent of meeting, and have them take their place there with you. So Moses went out and told the people the words of the Lord; and he gathered seventy elders of the people, and placed them all around the tent. Then the Lord came down in the cloud and spoke to him, and took some of the spirit that was on him and put it on the seventy elders; and when the spirit rested upon them, they prophesied. But they did not do so again. Two men remained in the camp, one named Eldad, and the other named Medad, and the spirit rested on them; they were among those registered, but they had not gone out to the tent, and so they prophesied in the camp. And a young man ran and told Moses, “Eldad and Medad are prophesying in the camp.” And Joshua son of Nun, the assistant of Moses, one of his chosen men, said, “My lord Moses, stop them!” But Moses said to him, “Are you jealous for my sake? Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets, and that the Lord would put his spirit on them!”
Mark 9:38-50
John said to him, “Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us.” But Jesus said, “Do not stop him; for no one who does a deed of power in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me. Whoever is not against us is for us. For truly I tell you, whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you bear the name of Christ will by no means lose the reward. “If any of you put a stumbling block before one of these little ones who believe in me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea. 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, where their worm never dies, and the fire is never quenched.“ For everyone will be salted with fire. Salt is good; but if salt has lost its saltiness, how can you season it? Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another.”
Prayer - Lord Jesus, we pray for all those who have wandered, or who have been cast, into situations of bleak despair. We pray for those who have been so frustrated in their hopes and dreams that they have lost hope. We pray for those who have encountered so much prejudice and hate that they no longer are able to love. We pray for those who lie on beds of pain, spend their nights in agony, and have no relief from their suffering. We pray for those who have stopped believing in themselves, who have lost sight of their God-given gifts. O great Savior of the world, great seeker of the lost, seek and save, we pray, all those who dwell in the land of thick darkness and deep despair. Stir up in us compassion and concern for those among us who think that they are beyond hope and help. Protect and keep each of us from the snares of hell and restore in us a sense of the value and potential of our lives lived in gratitude for your good gifts and in service to your Kingdom - Amen.
Jesus visits Peter at the Pearly Gates and asks how things are going. “Well,” says St. Peter, “I have a complaint. You know, Lord, I’m scrupulous about my job here. I interview each soul arriving at the Gate of Heaven, and I check to see if his or her name is written in the Book of Life. I turn away the people not worthy to enter heaven, but a little while later I turn around and I see those very people wandering around on the inside! I don’t get it! What’s going on?” “Oh. That’s my mother for you,” replied Jesus. “Those people you turn away - she keeps letting them in through the back door.”
This Sunday’s Gospel is one of those rare moments when Jesus mentions hell. The best known biblical image for hell relates to a deep, narrow gorge southeast of Jerusalem called ge ben hinnom, “the Valley of Ben Hinnom,” in which it was said that rebellious and unfaithful Israelites once offered up child sacrifices to the pagan gods Molech and Baal. Thus, this place is forever condemned by Josiah as an eternally unholy place.
Later the valley was used as a garbage dump by the inhabitants of Jerusalem. Thus, the Valley of Ben Hinnom became known as the dump, a place where discarded trash was tossed, the place of destruction by fire in Jewish tradition. The Greek word gehenna, “hell,” commonly used in the New Testament for the place of final punishment, is derived from the Hebrew name for this valley.
This valley was also an image of hell due to its association with the place to deposit the bodies of those slain in battle by God’s judgment. Jeremiah prophesied that the valley would be used as a mass grave for the corpses of the people of Judah killed by an invading army.
Hell is thus a place of rot, of mutilated bodies and revulsion. To this the Old Testament adds the image of burning, of smoke and unquenchable fire. Perhaps the burning became associated with purgation, of sacrificial, purifying fire that burns away the impurities that are an offense to God.
In the New Testament, evangelism is defined as “snatching others from the fire”. Jesus speaks often of the “fire of hell” and depicts himself as a rescuer from hell. We ought to note, especially, that Jesus is never depicted as condemning people to hell, but rather as one sent to urge people to avoid hell. His urgings are nowhere more emphatic and dramatic than in this Sunday’s gospel. Hell is less the destination for those who reject Jesus than that sad condition from which Jesus seeks to rescue people.
Hell is a dump, an ash heap, a place to discard trash, Gehenna. Jesus is the one who seeks to save the lost, to retrieve those who have been tossed aside, to rescue from the tragedy that is hell, that place that is clearly at odds with God’s intentions. Jesus says it is far better to go into God’s kingdom mangled—without an eye, without an arm—than to find one’s whole body thrown into the fires of hell. A whole, healthy body is a great asset. But Jesus says that it’s an asset worth sacrificing if the choice is between God’s kingdom and hell.
In our church, we don’t talk much about hell. Jesus himself did not talk much about hell either. Hell is not one of the more uplifting biblical themes. But here in today’s gospel, Jesus undeniably speaks about hell. He doesn’t really call it “hell,” but rather he uses the Aramaic name of a place, “Gehenna.” This was an actual place, just outside the walls of Jerusalem. He is not speaking of the place of the Italian poet Dante wrote about in The Inferno. (And we owe most of our concepts of hell to Dante rather than to scripture.) Jesus is talking about Gehenna. This is a place in the Hinnom Valley somewhat South of Jerusalem. Centuries before the time of Jesus, it had been a place of pagan idolatry and thus got a bad name. Maybe that is why, by the time of Jesus, Gehenna had become the town dump. Rubbish, bones, decaying carcasses, filled this desolate valley. Refuse was burned with fires and smoke that never was put out. Thus, Jesus says it would be better to pluck out your eye and go into God’s kingdom missing some part of your body than to have your whole body thrown on the rubbish heap of Gehenna.
Thus, Jesus says, “Take care. Make your choices wisely. Decide this day where you are headed. It would be better for you to let go of some aspect of your body or soul than to have both body and soul thrown into the garbage dump of eternity. Your life is precious. Don’t let it be discarded on the trash heap of life. God doesn’t make any garbage, and God made you.”
And Jesus says that no child of God’s creation and love is meant for Gehenna. Jesus stares our hellish possibilities in the face and rebukes them. He speaks to us with words that are stark. But let’s be honest. Life can have its stark, hellish side. And that is what Jesus challenges with his warning. What the hell?
Maybe Jesus is not so much giving us a warning as attempting to get us to see what is really important, how the life choices we make have long-term, stark consequences.
We say when we repeat the Apostle’s Creed that Jesus was, “Crucified under Pontius Pilate, dead, and buried. He descended into hell. He rose…”
Jesus was the one who constantly descended into hell. Not just after he died while he was waiting for his resurrection, but throughout his ministry. He entered those places that we avoid, those places that we put out on the margins, out on the edge of town—the shoddy nursing homes, the pitifully ill-equipped places for those suffering from mental illness, the town dumps, the homeless shelters, the hospital rooms of the countless people who have either died from Covid or lost a loved one to Covid. We have seen him throughout this year in the Gospel of Mark, confronting demons, rebuking the devils that possess people, healing, and driving out all that which dehumanizes and degrades. He spent so much of his life with those who had reached the end of the line. You might think of it as those places of hell on earth.
Later, sometime after this teaching, Jesus himself would be put upon a cross overlooking Gehenna. He, who had willingly entered into the trash heaps of the world, could see Gehenna clearly from Calvary. His own deepest experience of Gehenna was Calvary. Take that as a symbol for what Jesus does throughout his ministry. He warns us not to frivolously throw away the treasure of lives that God has given us, to choose life rather than death, and then Jesus goes to hell that he might defeat hell and win for God a kingdom of the ones whom the world once regarded as mere refuse.
Jesus lived his life to show us that hell doesn’t win. He shows us time and time again, that love wins in the end. That even though we, just like Jesus, experience hell on earth, hell doesn’t have the last word. Grace, and love, and even Jesus’ mother and Father have the last word. Thanks be to God – amen.