I wish that Ted Koppel would run for president. Sometimes he seems to make more sense than all of the politicians put together. You know him as the popular moderator of ABC’s “Nightline” program. In a speech at Duke University a year ago he said this: “We have actually convinced ourselves that slogans will save us. Shoot up if you must, but use a clean needle. Enjoy sex whenever and with whomever you wish, but wear a condom. No! The answer is no. Not because it isn’t cool or smart or because you might end up in jail or dying in an AIDS ward, but because it’s wrong, because we have spent 5,000 years as a race of rational human beings, trying to drag ourselves out of the primeval slime by searching for truth and moral absolutes. In its purest form, truth is not a polite tap on the shoulder. It is a howling reproach. What Moses brought down from Mount Sinai were not the Ten Suggestions.” Right on! Jesus, in our Scripture of the morning, is not giving us a tiny tap on the shoulder. He is giving us a howling reproach.
I. THIS IS A VERY DANGEROUS PASSAGE OF SCRIPTURE. The danger is that somebody might take it literally. There have been cases of persons whose minds were mentally unbalanced, who literally plucked out an eye or chopped off a hand or foot, believing that they were obeying this Biblical injunction of Jesus.
But of course, Jesus’ words were not intended to be taken literally. Jesus is indulging His Middle-Eastern gift for hyperbole. (My observation is that most Christians seem to take what Jesus meant literally, figuratively; and what Jesus meant figuratively, literally.) How many times we miss the Biblical message by not understanding the difference between the language of prose and the language of poetry. For example, when the Scottish poet Robert Burns wrote that his love was “like a red, red rose,” he did not mean that she had thorns growing out of her neck. And when Jesus said “I am the door,” (John 10:9) He did not mean that He had hinges attached to His shoulders. It is so easy to miss the point by approaching Scripture with a wooden literalism. Jesus said that His disciples were “the salt of the earth,” but no one thought He meant that they should be used as seasoning for meat. He said that they were “the light of the world,” but His hearers did not think of making them lamps for the home. A few years later, the sadistic and cruel Emperor Nero would set Christians aflame as torches to lighten the grounds for his night-time chariot races and circuses, but that isn’t what Jesus had in mind when He said “You are the light of the world.”
Of course, Jesus did not intend the words of today’s Scripture to be taken literally. Besides, what good would it do to cut off a hand or foot, or pluck out an eye? Real sins come from the heart, as Jesus pointed out so often.(See Matthew 15:19) Does the thief feel less like stealing if he must use his left hand rather than his right? Does the adulterer find that his lust has disappeared if he has lost an eye? I imagine we can get into as much trouble with one foot as with two, if we have a mind to do so. The hand or foot or eye are not the real offenders: it is what is in the heart.
The analogy of an operating room, where radical surgery must be performed, is a most useful way to understand this Scripture. Most of us today would accept the notion that the whole body is worth more than any of its individual parts, and when we develop a cancerous tumor on eye, hand, or foot, we cast aside “the offending member”—with regret, of course; but we operate on the assumption that it is better to enter life without the diseased organ than not to live at all. If a troublesome organ hampers our life or threatens our very existence we eliminate it. We recognize the principle involved. When a gall bladder or appendix is so badly diseased that it gives us no peace, we cut it out. When a hand or foot is diseased beyond help, we are not loathe to amputate in order to save everything else. When a tumor is malignant and threatens to take our entire life away, we are not hesitant to say to the surgeon, “Cut it out!” It is far better to leave behind the tumor than to threaten one’s whole existence. We understand the principle involved.
And what is true in the physical realm, translates over into the spiritual realm. If there is something in our lives: some habit, some action, some attitude, that gets between us and God, we must “cut it out.” I remember that in the very first church I served, there were two persons who were almost literally at one another’s throats. If one attended a worship service or a meeting, the other was sure not to. Their feud had been going on for sometime, and I inherited it when the bishop appointed me to serve the church. Being young and somewhat naive, I visited each of them individually (you couldn’t get them into the same room together!) and said something like this: “Is this thing you’ve had going for these past few years worth losing your soul over?” I guess it had some impact, for they were reconciled, I am happy to say, and later on became good friends. But it was a close call. Nothing is worth losing one’s soul over. That’s the message of Jesus’ words. These are dangerous words. They can be misunderstood. Jesus took the risk of speaking in such a strong fashion, because He knew that there is a far more serious danger:
II. THE DANGER THAT WE MIGHT NOT TAKE SIN SERIOUSLY. If our sin is serious enough to warrant such strong language about it, then it must be a whole lot more serious and destructive than we have imagined it to be. We don’t have that feeling about sin, do we? We are more like the fellow who was telling a friend of an experience when he nearly drowned in a lake. “As I was going down for the third time,” he said, “all the sins of my past life flashed before my mind.” “What did you do?” asked the friend. “Well, after they rescued me, I jumped in again to see the show for a second time!” But that doesn’t square with human experience I know anything about. Sin is not fun; sin is hell. Sin is separation from God, from others, and from one’s own best self. Therefore, sin is a very serious matter.
Psychiatrist Karl Menninger in his famous book WHATEVER BECAME OF SIN? (New York: Hawthorn Books, 1973) notes that American Presidents used to mention sin once in awhile, but that none has done so since 1953. The Republicans refer to the problems of “pride” and “self-righteousness.” The Democrats refer to “short-comings.” But none use the grand old sweeping concept of sin anymore. Thus, it seems, we as a nation stopped sinning thirty-five years ago! And, speaking of politics: a poll on Heaven and Hell in the Des Moines Register awhile back found that only one Republican in 35 expects to end up in Hell, whereas one Democrat in nine assumes he will. I am not sure what that means. It may mean that it does little good to preach hellfire and brimstone to a congregation that is filled with people who don’t believe there is a chance in hell that they will end up there. And that reminds me of Mark Twain’s famous statement. He said that when he died, he would like to go to Heaven for the climate, but would probably prefer Hell for the companionship. Mark Twain was clever and witty, but he missed the point. Sin isn’t fun. Sin is hell. And hell is serious business.
The New Testament word for hell is “Gehenna”-the Valley of Hinnom, just outside the southwest walls of the Old City of Jerusalem. The town dump. The garbage heap. Hell is the place which God has reserved, in His infinite mercy, for those who wish to ignore Him, so they can go right on ignoring Him for all eternity. Again, while we don’t have to take Jesus’ words literally, we must take them seriously. “The wages of sin is death” says Paul in Romans 6. If not physical death of the body, then the spiritual death of the soul. (Though the direction our world seems to be going these days, with our policy of Mutually Assured Destruction, that could become a possibility.) “Roses are red, violets are blue, You incinerate us, and we’ll incinerate you.” Who needs to preach about hell hereafter, when we have every prospect of experiencing it here? Of discovering that all of us are “cremated equal.”
Still, the concept of Hell as separation from God has great meaning. Theologian Karl Barth had a deep feeling about the meaningfulness of dreams. And they often disturbed him. According to one of his friends named Eberhard Busch, Barth said, “I was dreaming that a voice asked me, ‘Would you like to see hell?’ and I said, ‘Oh, I am very interested to see it once.’” Then a window was opened and he saw an immense desert. It was very cold, not hot. In this desert there was only one person sitting, very alone. Barth was depressed by the loneliness. Then the window was closed and the voice said to him, “And that threatens you.” Barth said: “There are people who say I have forgotten this region. I have not forgotten. I know more about it than others do. But because I know of this, therefore I must speak about Christ. I cannot speak about Christ enough.” (Martin Marty, Context, August 15, 1986) Sin is very serious business. It can separate us from God. Sin, like war, is hell. And Christ came to save us from them all.
The message of today’s Scripture is: some things are more important than other things in life, and we have to make decisions. We have to get our priorities straight. Every day that we live, the road of life forks out and we must choose. If I read this book, I cannot read that other one. If I see this movie, I cannot see that other one. If I marry this spouse, I cannot marry that other one. If I give my time to this cause, I cannot give it to that other one. And any or all of these choices, may not be between good and evil, but between better and best. And we have to make decisions every day. And Jesus is saying, when you have to make a choice, choose the more important and not the less. As a rabbi friend of mine puts it: “You only live once; but if you do it right, once is enough!” That seems to be what Jesus is saying in this passage in Mark.
III. WHAT IS THE GOAL FOR WHICH EVERYTHING ELSE IS TO BE SACRIFICED? Twice Mark says it is “life,” and then, at the end of this difficult passage, he says it is “the kingdom of God.” Maybe they are not two different things. It seems that the two are interchangeable in Jesus’ mind. “Life” is only truly “life” when it is lived in the Kingdom of God. What is the kingdom of God? We may take our definition from the Lord’s Prayer. In that prayer two petitions are set beside one another: “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” Jewish writings are often characterized by parallelism. That is, the same thing is said in two different ways. It seems to be so here. “The Kingdom of God” is that state in which God’s “will is done on earth as it is in heaven.” Is the kingdom here and now or yet to come? Both. It is here in quality, but not yet in quantity. But we may enter it here and now. It is the “great treasure” for which any of us ought to be willing to make any sacrifice, give up anything that gets in the way, to enter. Whenever John Wesley was confronted with a passage of Scripture difficult to interpret, he had a rule: “Compare Scripture with Scripture.” So this week when I got bogged down wondering what on earth I was going to say about this difficult passage, it occurred to me that our Lord gave us a perfect parable to help us understand it: the story of a treasure hid in a field. “The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up, then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.” (Matthew 13:44) Never mind the ethics of the story, the excitement is Jesus’ point. Jesus is saying that there are some treasures in life worth sacrificing everything to obtain. Frederick Buechner defines the Kingdom of God in this way: “It’s like finding a million dollars in a field, or a jewel worth a king’s ransom. It’s like finding something you hated to lose and thought youUd never find again - an old keepsake, a stray sheep, a missing child. When the kingdom really comes, it’s as if the thing you lost and thought you’d never find again is you.” (Frederick Buechner, WISHFUL THINKING, New York: Harper and Row, 1973, p. 50)
The Kingdom of God is the treasure worth giving all to get. That’s Jesus’ message in these difficult words. Whatever else you may miss in life, don’t miss the Kingdom! You may miss out winning the lottery. You may miss out on having fame and fortune and friends. You may miss out in achieving that goal you always wanted. You may miss out on having good health. You may miss out on so much, but you need not miss out on God’s Kingdom! It’s yours for the asking. Neglect all else rather than this! We should feel about the Kingdom the way a football player feels about the ball: fall on it, hang onto it at all cost to legs, arms, and head. Don’t let go of it! George Arthur Buttrick said it this way: “Its value is so far beyond all reckoning that at any cost of purchase it is still a gift. The ‘buying’ is indescribable good fortune, the ‘sacrifice’ is joy, the ‘duty;’ is sheer exhilaration; for the kingdom has driven irksomeness from the world.” (George Arthur Buttrick, PARABLES OF JESUS, New York: Harper and Brothers, 1928, p. 32) The disciples “left all and followed” eagerly. Paul yielded up without regret his pride of Pharasaic birth and learning. He said: “...what things were gain to me these I counted loss for Christ...”(Philippians 3:7) St. Augustine parted with his favorite sins, saying: “...what I feared to be parted from me was now a joy to surrender. For Thou didst cast them forth, and in their place didst enter in Thyself, sweeter than all pleasure.” (Augustine: “Confessions” ix.I) For such treasure who would not willingly abandon every lesser good?
The name of E. Stanley Jones is familiar to most long-time Methodists. He was a missionary-evangelist who traveled around the world for many, many years, especially in India, proclaiming the good news of God’s love in Jesus Christ. Stanley Jones lived a life of joy and peace which came from his faith. In the ninth decade of his life he set pen to paper and wrote his autobiography titled A SONG OF ASCENTS. (New York and Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1968) In his introduction, he says, “How did it all happen? I asked myself that question as I sat in a hotel room in Alaska writing. I looked up and saw myself in a looking glass and said to myself, ‘Stanley Jones, you’re a very happy man, aren’t you?’ I replied, ‘Yes, I am.’ And then the vital question: ‘How did you get this way?’ And my reply: ‘I don’t know. It is all a surprise to me, a growing surprise. I walked across a field one day, and I stubbed my toe against the edge of a treasure chest, jutting out of the earth. ‘It’s treasure,’ I cried. Ran off and sold all that I had, including myself, and bought that field; and I’ve been hugging myself ever since that I had sense enough to do it!’” (p. 24) Go thou and do likewise.