The Sermon for the Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost
Mark 9:38-50
Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, Hoopeston, IL
September 27, 2009; Rev. James T. Batchelor
A hyperbole is the use of an extravagant exaggeration to make a point. Parents do this all the time. “If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a million times.” It is very likely that the parent has not even told this to the child a hundred times much less a million times. The real meaning of this sentence goes something like this: I’ve told this to you often enough so that you should remember it.
Jesus often used hyperbole to make a point. If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. If your foot causes you to sin, cut it off. If your eye causes you to sin, tear it out. Three times Jesus tells us that it is better to mutilate ourselves than to allow sin to live on in us. With these hyperboles Jesus is telling us that sin is very serious. We need to get rid of it at any cost.
Jesus also wants us to understand that leading others into sin is a terrible thing. Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him if a great millstone were hung around his neck and he were thrown into the sea. Here the Greek presents the picture of a millstone that is so large that a human being cannot grind with it, but that a person would need a donkey to drive this millstone. I am reminded of the stereotype of organized crime where they set an enemy’s feet in concrete and then throw them into a large body of water. A hopeless death by drowning can be the only result. Jesus states that such a fate is superior to the fate that awaits those who cause His little ones to sin.
Although Jesus often used hyperbole to make a point, He never used it to talk about hell. You cannot use hyperbole to teach about hell. There are no words in any earthly language that can exaggerate the horrors of hell. The limits of language mean that any description of hell must be an understatement. That is the reason that Jesus is so serious about sin. Sin is actually more serious than simple death on this earth. Sin leads to eternal death in hell – a hell that Jesus describes with horrible words. The worm does not die. The fire is not quenched. Hell is a wretched existence where one experiences all the horror, terror, and torture of the dying process without the release that one experiences in an earthly death. It is a dying process that lasts forever. As horrible as this all sounds, it is an understatement of the eternal tortures of hell.
So it is indeed true that it is better to be handless, footless, half blind, and slowly drowned in the heart of the sea than to experience the eternal horror of hell. The question is: does hacking off body parts really keep us from sinning? Does sin really originate in the hand, or the foot, or the eye? Can we really prevent sin by drowning at sea? It would be worth it if we could, but we can’t. If we chopped off every body part that participated in sin, we would soon be a congregation of deaf, dumb, and blind quadriplegics. Even then, we would still be quite capable of committing all kinds of sins.
You see Jesus starts each of those sentences with the word, “if.” “If” is a word of hypothetical situations. “If” doesn’t say it is that way, but it asks us to imagine what would happen under a certain set of circumstances. In fact, the word “if” may introduce a totally ridiculous idea with the purpose of introducing us to a deeper truth. That is what Jesus is doing here. He is taking His teaching over the top in order to make a point.
You see, sin does not originate in the hand, or the foot, or the eye. In the Gospel reading from the end of last month, Jesus told us the true source of sin. [Mark 7:20-23] He said, “What comes out of a person is what defiles him. For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.” The hand touches or does what the mind tells it to do. The foot goes where the mind tells it to go. The eye looks where the mind tells it to look and then provides simple raw data for the mind to interpret. In all these cases, it is the mind that uses these organs of the body to do good or evil. If we really wanted to go without sin, we would have to amputate our minds.
Of course, if we did that, we would all be dead. Without the mind, it doesn’t make any difference if the rest of the body is tooling along like a finely tuned Swiss watch. If the mind is dead, you are dead and that is that.
As we follow along with Jesus’ illustration and take it to its logical conclusions, we find ourselves trapped in an impossible situation. Sin is very serious because it leads to hell and hell is a place of horror beyond our contemplation. Since the ultimate source of all sin is our thoughts and feelings, the only way we can avoid sin with our own resources is not to think or feel. The only way we can do that is not to have lived in the first place. We were doomed the moment we were conceived. Our only hope must come from outside of ourselves for we cannot chop off the true source of our dilemma.
That is the reason that Jesus took on His humanity. As the Son of God, He took on human hands, feet, eyes, and all the other features of humanity with one exception. He took on humanity, but He did so without sinning. With His eyes, He saw the crowds and had compassion. With His hands, He brought healing. With His feet, He delivered the Good News of the Kingdom of God.
Jesus took all His body parts to the Jordan River where John baptized Him. Because He led a life without sin, He could take our sin onto Himself and that is exactly what He did. [2 Corinthians 5:21] For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. Through baptism in the Jordan Jesus sanctified and instituted all waters to be a blessed flood and a lavish washing away of sin.
Jesus carried our sins to the cross. Because He led a life without sin, His sacrifice would mean something. Because He was carrying our sin, He could offer up Himself for us and that is exactly what He did. He did not merely chop off a hand, a foot, or an eye. He gave up all the parts that we have ever used as we sin. He gave up everything. His hands and His feet were nailed to a cross and on that cross He gave His hands, feet, eyes, and everything else. He gave His entire body as a sacrifice that secured eternal life for us.
Jesus not only gave His body parts into death on the cross, but He also raised those same body parts in glory. He not only sacrificed Himself to save us from hell, but He also promises a new eternal life with Him in His resurrection. And even though Jesus said that it was better to enter heaven crippled than to enter hell with all our body parts, He promises to raise our bodies in perfection. He promises to raise our bodies so that sin is the only thing that will be missing.
We cannot use hyperbole to describe the resurrection to eternal life because earthly language does not have the resources to apply hyperbole to heaven. Just as no earthly language has the words to exaggerate the evil of hell, so also no earthly language can exaggerate the good of heaven. The perfection of heaven is simply beyond our understanding.
Although we cannot fully understand these things, we do understand them enough to know a few things. Hell is a destination to be avoided at all costs. Heaven is a destination to be desired above all costs.
In spite of this, we have all done everything we could to earn an eternity in hell. We are all conceived and born sinful and under the power of the devil. We would be lost forever unless delivered from sin, death, and everlasting condemnation. We must have a deliverer.
Jesus Christ is that deliverer. Jesus is the only one who sacrificed His hands, His feet, His eyes, and all His other body parts to rescue us from our sin. He is the only one who raised His body after He died for us. After He rose, He promised to raise us and He is the only one who can keep such a promise. Only those who believe in Jesus Christ have eternal life. They will not perish, but live in perfect joy forever. Amen
Last printed 9/25/2009 6:58:00 PM Page 2 of 2
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