Making Cuts

Transcripts are computer-generated and may not be 100% accurate.

Thanks, Debbie. Yeah. All right. I didn't get a stand before, so I'm going to steal this one, and I promise I'll put it back. Good evening. Good to see you all. See all your smiley faces. My name is Jae. I am on the team here at The Table, and listen, if we haven't met yet, I would love to meet you. And so after service today, I would love if you stick around and chat with me, chat with one another.

I really believe that sermons are dialogues. They are not monologues, although they are literally monologues. So please feel welcome to ask me questions or tell me your thoughts. I am not one of those pastors who hates hearing other people's ideas about the text. I want to know if you feel that it could be viewed in another way. So really, I truly mean it. Stick around, and I would love to chat with you.

Well, I am happy to be here, but I don't know that I am super happy to be preaching on this text, Debbie. It is one of the most difficult of what Jesus, what we call Jesus' hard sayings, the hard sayings of Jesus.

So let's just dive right into it. Patti, could you just throw that text up for us and we will read it, and you are going to quickly see why I might not be super stoked to be preaching on this tonight. It says, it is Mark 9 verses 42 through 50, and it says,

“If any of you cause one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, 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 sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life maimed than to have two hands and go to hell to the unquenchable fire. And if your foot causes you to sin, 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 sin, tear it out, for it is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to be thrown into hell. Where there were never dies and the fire is never quenched.”

I hope it's clear why this is considered one of Jesus' hard sayings or the hard sayings of Jesus. This is a difficult text that I began reading two weeks ago, and reading, and continuing to read, and hoping that the text would change somehow magically while I was reading it. That I read commentary after commentary, and still hoped that somehow magically the text would change, but it didn't.

And I really think we're invited to wrestle, because every single part of the Bible, even the really hard, difficult, and inconvenient ones, I believe if we take Scripture seriously, can still say something for us, and to us today. Most English versions of this text use hell and sin, and you can see little letters there, right? And those are footnotes.

And if you haven't cracked open a Bible in a while, or you're not used to that, or you've never maybe been taught how to read different versions of Bibles, I'd invite you to learn what it means to read footnotes. Footnotes are incredibly helpful, and so I invite you to find a really good Bible with some good footnotes. But if you were to click on these footnotes, they would reveal to you that actually the words that are being used for hell and for sin don't actually necessarily in all translations mean literally hell and sin.

But when we use hell and sin, it evokes a very specific modern understanding and leads to many sermons that unfortunately can prey on an individualized fear of our own place in the afterlife. So let's read another translation with the same version, but I've changed the instances of how and sin to be more varied in translation of the Greek into English because the actual Greek being used for to sin is not the word that literally means to sin. Rather, it is scandalis, which has a much more diverse set of definition options. Scandalis means to lose faith, to stumble, to give up faith, to fall away, or to go astray. It can also mean sin, but that's largely only because we, in modern translations, have made it mean sin.

So the text also which says held is not really the word held, but the word is Gehenna, which is a Greek name for the Valley of Hinnom, which was a real place where initially many tombs were put. And in the days of imperial occupation of the land of Israel, it became a place synonymous with burning garbage, with death, and with the idolatrous sacrifice of children. So they are not talking about hell in the modern way that we think of it. They are talking about a real place. And so I have done a little different translation. Patti, can you throw the other one up?

And I'm going to read this one too. And I want to see if when we add a variety of English words, it might change the way you experience this gospel. It might free you from feeling like it is telling you that you personally should be deeply concerned about your personalized soul's place in the afterlife, but more of something that it might be pointing us to something else.

It reads, “If any of you cause one of the powerless who believe in me to give up the faith, 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 offends you, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life maimed than to have two hands and go to the valley of Hinoam to the unquenchable fire.”

And if your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life disabled than to have two feet and be thrown into the valley of Hinoam. And if your eye causes you to lose faith, tear it out. For it is better for you to enter the kingdom of heaven with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into the valley of Hinoam where the worm never dies and the fire is never quenched.

When we change words, it might help us hear the text a little differently. You might be wondering why I've taken this whole first chunk to just go over the text twice with you, but words matter. And especially if we've come from backgrounds that have weaponized words against us, learning that there might be different words to understand a text that actually may be more faithful to the Greek could be helpful to us.

When we have words that evoke a set of assumptions or feelings, I hope that by revealing to you these other meanings, I might be able to help us move forward with our scripture instead of being afraid to engage with it. So anyways, yeah, Mark 9, even when we change the words, not a super great lovey-dovey Jesus that we're getting here, not a super fun, happy friend Jesus. But Jesus is saying something of deep importance, not like I mentioned, just for your soul.

But this text is really deeply getting at the heart of what it means to be a community. So when we change these words, we hear a message that is really about what it means to show up for other people, especially powerless people. It says, the powerless, with intention. Faith is not just a personal situation, it is communal. And it is especially given to us in a way that is meant for us to pay attention to not just our own needs, but the needs of those who we call neighbor.

The Christian life is a team effort, whether you want it to be or not. But this text forces us to deal with a very uncomfortable question of whether there are times that that team requires cuts to be made. How do we determine what is being cut off, or who might be cut off?

Inevitably, this text, though, does point us to the conclusion, and it might sound frustrating in a world where we want to believe all inherently do belong, that there are times when certain cuts in our lives must happen. So texts like this can sound frustrating at first glance, because we know, we deeply know that in our modern world, we are seeing the powerless actually be the ones that are being cut, and the powerful and the unjust are often the people who are not only kept in the fold of a church, but they are raised up to the top of it. And so this can be frustrating.

But I really want to parse out what Jesus is saying for us, because as I was reading it and reading it and reading it and reading it and spent five hours with it yesterday I finally felt really actually relieved and seen and inspired and hopeful in what Jesus is saying, even though it sounds super gross.

I want to tell you a quick story to get us at the heart of what Jesus is saying. And it's about a pastor who inadvertently found himself as one of the foremost activists for queer Christians in Korea, despite at the time being a non-affirming pastor. I'm going to throw up this picture of Pastor Lee Dong-Hwan. He is a pastor, but was a pastor of the Korean Methodist Church, which is a conservative, non-affirming denomination of Christianity in Korea.

And in 2019, he was invited to give a prayer at the Incheon Queer Culture Festival, which is what they call Pride. As a non-affirming pastor, they asked him to come do this prayer at Pride, and he thought to himself, the least I could do is show up and give a prayer of blessing, regardless of if I agree with their theology on marriage or not, the least I could do for a powerless people in a country who are being systematically discriminated against, the least he could do was to show up and to pray. And for that very act, he was suspended of his credentials in his church. And that began getting him thinking, is this right? Is my stance against this powerless people building them in faith, or is it oppressive? Is it causing them to lose faith, to stumble?

And he began meeting more often with LGBTQ Christians in the country, and slowly he began to find a more loving way of being a pastor. And for that, he was excommunicated. In 2023, this pastor was excommunicated from the KMC and lost his credentials.

For doing what he believed was the least he could do for a group of people's faith. Excommunication, let's be clear, is the most severe way to be kicked out of a community. It doesn't just mean that he can't hold a position of power in that church anymore, but he cannot physically ever step foot in another Korean Methodist church ever again in his entire life. It is full amputation from the body of Christ that he had been part of his whole life.

Pastors sympathetic or in solidarity with LGBTQ people and Christians often excommunicate people like this because they think they are doing what Mark 9 says. They think that they are cutting off a limb that will cause people within their own church to go astray and sin.

They think they are doing right and cutting a limb off so that others don't stumble into the trap of being affirming. But if we look at this situation, if we look at the situation in the light of the gospel and in light of his intentions, it paints a very complicated idea of who is cutting off who. Who must, in the light of Mark 9, who must cut off who, actually.

Mark 9 specifically is referring to protecting the faith of the little ones, which can be translated, as I did, as the powerless ones, because little can be both little in stature and little in dignity. Which again shows Jesus' special attention to the oppressed. And Jesus in Mark 9 is concerned with whether people are being empowered towards a faith in Christ, or whether people are making it harder to be faithful in Christ.

Whether our actions, our words, or how we show up for others moves them and us closer to the ways of Jesus, or whether it makes people want to give up altogether. That's what Mark 9 is getting at. Not cutting off your hand, because it's related to some aspect of sexual sin.

Not cutting off your feet, because it's related to some aspect of your own moral sin. But this text is getting at, are you in your own faith, and in your own community, showing up in ways that moves us all towards the ways of Jesus. Or is forcing people to feel that they must give up the ways of Jesus.

The KMC's actions of suspending and excommunicating, although they are actions of cutting off like Jesus says, they are actions which caused people to lose faith. To stumble and question whether the presence and love of Christ is true and real in our time. If it's true and real in the walls of churches that claim to follow the ways of Jesus.

So, I am wondering, what if the one who needed to cut off a limb which was causing stumbling, sinning, and a loss of faith was not the KMC, but was Pastor Lee? That by the spirit of what Jesus is trying to get the disciples to understand, Pastor Lee, in order to guide people stronger in a faith with Christ, to gird up someone's faith and make it stronger, had to cut off and allow the KMC to fall away in his life. A limb which would otherwise cause him to hurt the faith of the powerless, the little ones, in order to bring the true gospel.

Although it is hard to accept, there are things, people, systems, that we must cut off if we are to truly walk in the way of Christ and Christ alone. What keeps us from showing up in a community in a way that helps others? What is it that stops us or causes barriers to us showing up for others? Showing up for the powerless in our communities? What trips us up from experiencing Jesus more fully in our world or our community? What are those things?”

What are those things that are stopping you from experiencing more strongly a faith that lets you steadily walk in the ways of Jesus? What are those things? When Pastor Lee allowed the KMC to fall away, his ministry grew, it didn't dwindle. He gained an international platform to profess the Gospel, to strengthen people's faith, not just in Korea but all over the world. That there is a place in God's kingdom for the powerless.

How much more can your faith grow? How much more can a community grow? How much more can the faith of others around you in your community grow? If you are able to make some cuts. Maybe the cuts are social assumptions. Maybe it's cutting out of our self-assumptions.”

Maybe it's cutting away the assumptions that we know best. Maybe it's cutting out how we prefer to show up. Maybe it's cutting away a desire to only show up for things curated 100% just for us. Maybe the cuts are harder. Maybe it's cutting out activities, jobs, people. I can't tell you what or who those things are.

I can simply invite you to dwell in the spirit of the gospel, which Jesus presents to us in a very difficult way in Mark 9, to consider whether you are being surrounded by and surrounding others with energy, intention, encouragement, which leads towards the ways of Jesus or not.”

Pray with me. God of abundance, we pray that you would help us reveal when and where cuts may be necessary in our life, in the life of your church, in order to bring a holy and a liberating gospel to the powerless, the little ones, and those who need to be encouraged rather than torn down in their walk with you. Jesus, would you help us continue to walk steadily with you in this life and in this community? Amen.