SERMON Fires

Pentecost 16(B) (2009) (Lectionary 26) (Proper 21): Numbers 11 :4-6, 10-16, 24-19;

Psalm 19:7-14; James 5:13-20; Mark 9:38-50

We've heard a great deal about Islamic law recently. Shiria. It is once again insurgent with the Taliban in Afghanistan. It's being adopted in Somalia, and earlier this month the hands of two thieves were cut off. Two weeks ago, the Indonesian province of Aceh enacted even stricter Shiria. When I think of Shiria I don't, however, think of the Taliban. Or Somalia. Or Indonesia. When I think of Shiria, I think of Amina Lawal. I am sure you remember her.

Amina Lawal was the 31 year old Nigerian woman whom a fundamentalist Islamic court condemned to death for adultery. Proof of her adultery was a baby daughter born more than nine months after a divorce from her husband. The baby's father -- not her former husband -- swore on the Koran that he was not the father. The court found him not guilty. In finding Amina Lawal guilty, the court imposed a death sentence by stoning -- a sentence to be carried out as soon as the baby was weaned.

I remember the revulsion that I felt when I heard the original sentence. You probably do, too. Revulsion that a beautiful young child would be senselessly orphaned. Revulsion at the sentence itself. Under Shiria, a man who is sentenced to death by stoning is to be buried to his waist, while a woman who is to be stoned must be buried up to her chest. "In stoning to death, the stones should not be so large that the person dies upon being hit by one or two of them, neither should they be so small that they cannot be called a stone." Stoning is usually carried out in public. Families of the victims forced to watch. Can you even begin to imagine this? What barbarity!

As a woman and a Christian I was appalled. I protested. As a lawyer, I watched the case closely. And with the rest of the world, I rejoiced when Amina Lawal won her second appeal -- even though she did so on technicalities that left the law in place and enforceable against others.

That law goes so against everything we believe. I recently heard a member describe Wicker Park Lutheran Church to someone as "non judgmental." And in many ways that are important, that is true. We are inclusive and accepting of individuals. God judges, not we. Hell fire and damnation are not usual Sunday fare at Wicker Park Lutheran.

But today they are.

At the core of Jesus' message this morning, are hell fire and damnation.

It's really quite a frightening message. Not one we like to hear. One we tend to ignore. The images are brutal: being thrown into the sea while being strangled with a huge weight around the neck (a form of capital punishment); cutting off hands and feet, tearing out of eyes. We think of Shiria and Amina Lawal's sentence and shutter. Yet, we hear Jesus tell us that the drowning and the maiming are all preferable to the unquenchable fire where the maggots never die. All preferable to hell. The word here for "hell" is not Hades, the Greek and Jewish shadow world of the dead. Rather, the word here for "hell" is Gehenna.

Gehenna is a real place. Look at the first page of your bulletin. It was the constantly burning, maggot infested garbage dump outside of Jerusalem. Remember seeing the pictures of the burning, collapsing garbage dump outside of Manilla in the Philippines several years ago? I imagine Gehenna was like that. Only worse. Probably still the most frightening experience of my life was seeing the movie Bambi when I was four years old. I will never forget the sheer horror of seeing the fire that killed Bambi's mother. It was an unquenchable fire. Like Gehenna's real fire.

So Jesus is talking about a real place when he is talking about hell.

But perhaps even more frightening than the images and the fire are whom Jesus is talking to and about. He is not talking to or about derelict bums (and there probably were some) on the road to Jerusalem. He is not talking to or about convicted criminals or corrupt politicians. He is definitely not talking about non-Christian Jews or pagan gentiles. Indeed, as we just heard, when the disciples tell Jesus that someone, not a follower, is successfully casting out demons in his name, Jesus tells them to leave the man alone. "Whoever is not against us is for us," he tells the disciples, and then adds: "[W]hoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you bear the name of Christ will by no means lose the reward." That's incredible inclusiveness when you think about it.

No, when Jesus is talking about Gehenna, when he is talking about hell, he is talking to and about his disciples. He is talking to and about us.

For Jesus, the alternative to hell, the alternative to physically dying and decomposing in the fiery, maggoty garbage dumb of Gehenna, is the Kingdom of God. And what Jesus is saying to his disciples is that, if they put a stumbling block before "one of these little ones who believes in me"-- and by "little ones" Jesus means adult followers -- if they do that, "it would be better for [them] if a great millstone were hung around [their] neck[s] and [they] were thrown into the sea." They will not be part of the Kingdom of God.

So what would such a stumbling block be? Obviously, it has to do with belief. "If you get in the way of my followers' believing," Jesus is saying to the disciples, "you are not going to be part of the Kingdom of God even though you are disciples." But what does that mean?

Well, it probably doesn't mean what we think it means. Fortunately, because this verse used to provoke anxiety and real guilt for me.

We have a way of thinking of belief as belief in something. We talk about believing in doctrines, in ascribing to creeds. When I was in high school, I did a lot of reading on my own and at some point in my sophomore year concluded that I was an agnostic. To my pastor's credit, he convinced me that, even though I was having grave intellectual doubts about God and Christianity, I should continue to go to church and sing in the choir. Which I did. I also shared my intellectual doubts and agnostic convictions with the alto sitting next to me -- as well as with the debate team and other friends. By my senior year, I had done a fairly effective job of making agnostics of all my close friends.

Now all that may have been healthy religious growth in my case, but most of those friends stopped with that high school agnosticism and never looked back -- or forward.

And I have since felt that I was a stumbling block. And in a sense I was.

But what belief meant for Jesus and his disciples is not intellectual assent to doctrines, but trust and loyalty in someone. We just heard the author of James speaking of someone who "wanders from the truth"-- in other words, someone who has ceased being loyal, who has drifted away. Belief is a way of being, a way of doing.

And because belief is a way of being and a way of doing, a matter of trust and loyalty, hands and feet and eyes make a difference. One commentator writes:

[T]he [Jews] viewed human being's as consisting of three interlocking zones symbolized by the parts of the body. Hands and feet symbolize purposeful activity. If one's activity (hand or foot) causes one to stumble during tests of loyalty, one must put an end to such behavior.

Eyes are invariably paired with the heart in the Bible to symbolize the zone of emotion-fused thought, reflective consideration of proper courses of action. If the eye, the organ that feeds information to the heart, is unreliable in tests of loyalty, one must take serious action to halt the damage. (Pilch 1996, 143)

Jesus is probably not envisioning, a gathering of lame and blind followers in saying "If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off .... And if your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off .... And if your eye causes you to stumble, tear it out." And he is not advocating Somalian Shiria. But he is underscoring the deadly seriousness of being loyal to him and faithful to God's kingdom.

And, as was true for Jesus' disciples, the tests for our being loyal to him and faithful to God's Kingdom involve active participation in the community of faith. The author of James describes some of them: anointing the sick, forgiving and praying for one another, seeking out and bringing back the lost and wandering. The tests of loyalty and faithfulness spill out from the community of faith to the community around us. They are the ones demonstrated by the man we hear about this morning who heals in Jesus' name.

We are all tested, both individually and as a community. Jesus goes from describing the fire and brimstone of Gehenna to saying, "For everyone will be salted with fire." Like the salt itself, this fire is good fire. Living in the love of God and by God's grace, we are salt for one another. "[B]e at peace with one another," Jesus says. And we are salt for others. In the words of one of my favorite hymns, we can and do pray:

Grant us wisdom, grant us courage,

                  For the facing of this hour.

Grant us wisdom, grant us courage,

                  For the living of these days.

Grant us wisdom, grant us courage,

                  Lest we miss your kingdom's goal.

Grant us wisdom, grant us courage,

                  Serving you whom we adore.

Amen

September 27, 2009

Ruth VanDemark, pastor

Wicker Park Lutheran Church

Chicago