Stumbling Blocks

 Mark 9:38-50

September 26, 2021

            There is a beautiful scene in the movie, The Apostle. It is one that I suspect is overlooked or quickly forgotten by most viewers, but it stunned me when I watched the movie, and it is the scene that remains most vivid in my memory today.

            The Apostle is about a charismatic, Pentecostal, slain by the Spirit, whip people up into a frenzy kind of preacher named Sonny. Sonny is played by the brilliant actor, Robert Duvall, who also wrote the screenplay and directed the movie. As much as he is a fiery, showy preacher, who at the beginning of the movie, dresses in flashy suits, dances through the church in sunglasses, and drops $100 bills into the offering plate, is also a sometime womanizer, drinker, and someone who can become violent, Sonny also seems to legitimately want to bring the salvation of God to people. His long-suffering wife, played by the late Farrah Fawcett, ends up leaving him for another man. After showing up at a little league baseball game drunk and taking a baseball bat to the other man – also a member of his church – Sonny flees Texas and heads East.

            Even on the run, Sonny is an apostle. He can’t stop preaching, reaching out to people, trying to save souls. He goes to a Black Pentecostal minister and tells him that he believes God has sent him there. Together they grow a church. Sonny attracts people. He is dramatic and compelling, and he is insistent that people must be saved here so they know that they will be accepted into the Kingdom of Heaven when they die.

            Still, out of the all the amazing scenes in this movie, the one that stands out to me is not a moment when Sonny converts someone or when he preaches or even when has a whole church standing and dancing and raising their arms in the air shouting and singing.

            The scene that I remember so vividly is when Sonny is walking along a bayou, and he stops and looks over and sees a Catholic priest standing on the shore at the edge of the water. The priest is clearly making the sign of the cross, blessing the fishing boats in the water before him. Sonny stops and looks at the priest and he smiles and says,

“You do it your way, I do it mine, but we get it done, don’t we?”

There is no animosity, no judgment. The viewer gets no sense that Sonny thinks he is better than the priest, or that he has found the true way to heaven while the priest is still stuck in the dark ages of religiosity. No, Sonny means what he says.

“You do it your way, I do it mine, but we get it done, don’t we?”

Sonny is the opposite of everything that I hold dear as a preacher. I reject his theology and his understanding of what the gospel is about. But that moment made me wonder, then and now, if I were in Sonny’s shoes would I be able to say what he says? Would I be able to look at this other preacher, this other minister, this other apostle of God and say the same thing?

“You do it your way, I do it mine, but we get it done, don’t we?”

Clearly, from our story in Mark’s gospel, John and the other disciples could not say that. They see an unnamed person exorcising demons in Jesus’ name, but instead of rejoicing that this was being done in the name of Jesus for the sake of kingdom of God, they run to tell Jesus. In many ways, it sounds like John tattles on the other man.

“Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us.”

We don’t know anything about this other person, this other disciple. One of the Biblical scholars I refer to commented on this and said, “We don’t know this disciple’s name, so let’s just call him Bob.  

Why would the disciples have been so upset about Bob casting out demons? I think the first answer is that he was doing something that they were unable to do. They had tried to cast out a demon already and failed. But Bob the disciple did what they could not do. That must have irked them, to say the least.

Another reason, and perhaps the biggest reason, Bob bothered the disciples is that he was not one of them. They were the disciples. They were the ones Jesus called to follow. No one knew anything about Bob. How could he be a disciple if Jesus himself had not called him? How could he do the work of a disciple if he was not in the in-crowd? There is an aspect to this exchange between John and Jesus that I had not noticed before. When John complained to Jesus about Bob the disciple casting out demons, he didn’t say, “We tried to stop him because he was not following you.”

John said, “We tried to stop him, because he was not following us.”

Jesus did not question John about using us instead of you. In fact, Jesus responded in the plural.

“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.”

Whoever is not against us is for us.

John may have been presumptuous in asserting that he and the other disciples were to be followed same as Jesus. But Jesus didn’t seem to have a problem with John’s use of the collective as much as he did with them trying to stop Bob. Whoever Bob was and however he heard about Jesus, his work in Jesus’ name was legitimate. He was not against them, so he was for them. Even though he was not one of them, he was still for them. He was still for Jesus, and his deed of power in Jesus’ name was not to be dismissed.

This is yet one more misunderstanding of Jesus’ message, mission, and purpose by the disciples. This follows immediately after our passage last week when the disciples argued among themselves about who was the greatest, and who carried the most status as a disciple. Their argument was preceded by Jesus telling them for a second time that he would undergo great suffering, death, and resurrection. Jesus even went so far as to embrace a little child so they would understand his words about the first being last, the last first, and the greatest of all being the servant of all. But the disciples don’t get it.

They don’t get it, and their lack of getting it comes out in jealousy and insecurity over Bob the disciple. Here was this unknown person doing what they were not yet able to do. So, they tried to stop him. When they couldn’t, they tattled to Jesus about him. But Jesus knew that what was more important was that anyone who was not against them was for them. Bob the disciple was for them, and that was all that mattered.

Then, amid all the hard and challenging truths Jesus had been telling them about his own suffering and death, Jesus speaks some more hard words about stumbling blocks.

“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.”

That should have been enough to get anyone’s attention, but Jesus does not stop there.  If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off. If your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off. If your eye causes you to stumble, tear it out. It is better to go into heaven maimed and lame and one-eyed, then to go into hell sound of body, but lost in mind, heart, and soul.

Every biblical scholar I have ever read in relation to this passage states emphatically that Jesus did not mean any of this literally. He was speaking in hyperbole, using great exaggeration, to get the disciples’ attention. This is about the kingdom. This is about the work of God in this world through me. This is about getting people to understand that the kingdom of God is in their midst right now, right here. This is about opening the eyes and the hearts and the minds of God’s people to see God, to hear God, to recognize what God has done and will do for them. This is urgent. I’m not here for long, so I need people to understand. So, don’t put a stumbling block in front of anyone who is doing deeds of power and healing in my name. if you cause them to stumble, it will harm you. If the stumbling block comes from your own body, cut it off before you harm someone else. Because whoever is not against us is for us.

Bob the disciple was not against them. He was for them. But the disciples were too afraid and too insecure to see it. They wanted to stop him. What they could not understand was that their own fear was a stumbling block – to Bob and to themselves.

How does our fear cause us to stumble? How does our fear cause others to stumble? Are we as urgent and emphatic in our understanding and our sharing of the gospel as Jesus was, as Sonny was? Who are the Bobs in our lives? What can we do to remove the stumbling blocks we throw in people’s way, in our own way, rather than add to them?

I don’t ask these questions with any specific answer in mind that will serve all of us, because we all have to wrestle with our own stumbling blocks. We all have to wrestle with our own fears and insecurities. We all have to face up to the Bobs in our lives.

I don’t have answers, but I do know this. When it comes to the kingdom, there is room for all of us. When it comes to God’s love for the world, we are all included. It seems to me Jesus wanted the disciples to understand that God’s love, God’s kingdom, was expansive. It was open to all who accepted God’s call to share the good news. Jesus wanted them to see, really see, that whoever is not against us is for us. Whoever is not against us is for us. Remove the stumbling blocks, clear the path, make room, and make welcome all those who are for us.

“You do it your way, I do it mine, but we get it done, don’t we?”

Let all of God’s children say, “Alleluia.”

Amen.