Stumbling toward the Reign of God

Proper 21/19th after Pentecost; Mark 9: 38-50

Last week’s Gospel had the disciples—pausing in Capernaum on the journey with Jesus to Jerusalem— mistakenly constructing internal power structures within the community of the coming reign of God. The scene has not changed, and now immediately after their lesson abut receiving the child, they continue to offer mistaken understandings about just what it means to be this curious band on its way to an unknown future. These exchanges probably also reflect the puzzlement and conflict experienced among the early community of believers first envisaged as reading this Gospel.

John (who features by himself only here in Mark’s Gospel) now demands Jesus set boundaries, seeking rebuke of an unauthorized exorcist they have come across. The irony of this demand is greater if we realize that just a few verses earlier (9:14-29, a section omitted by the lectionary) John and the other disciples had been quite unable to perform an exorcism on a child themselves. Jesus quickly clarifies that the nature of work and belonging—whether exorcism and healing, or offering a drink of water to the thirsty disciple (v.41)—is bounded by practice, not by profession. Acts of liberative power will form those who undertake them.

The journey together remains the context even though they are pausing at Capernaum, and the reference next to “stumbling” and to the “little ones” —one of whom had just been put in their midst in last week’s text, and another of whom was in the background of that conflict about exorcism—is thus not (just) a sort of ancient warning about the vulnerability of children in Churches (as so many will inevitably hear it now), but about them as fellow-travelers. The “mill stone” here (v. 42) is literally a “donkey-millstone,” one large enough to require the harnessed animal to turn it. The image was potent in a different way to the reader who walked past the many bakeries of an ancient city where such apparatus was in use—they are visible today in the ruins of Pompeii and Ostia—and where the donkey’s journey was a cyclical one, with no goal or journey.

Sometimes translated as “offending,” the literal sense of “stumbling” should be retained here, because it refers to the journey that the disciples are on, along with the little ones. “Stumbling” is not the interruption of some ideal of life and growth in isolation from the context of discipleship. This image disrupts the disciples’ persistent assumption that the community of Jesus is made up of powerful, able, and courageous characters…like them (?). Instead, Jesus makes the “little ones” not just objects of their benign action or even protection, but companions.

This initial warning about others stumbling then leads to a series of teachings about other obstacles to undertaking the journey. While John’s question had implicitly been about who was worthy to be seen as a companion, Jesus doubles down on a set of other circumstances that change the nature of the question itself. Now the disciples themselves, who seem to assume their own power and privilege and have just (through John) been scrutinizing the qualifications of others, become the focus of scrutiny. What if they themselves are among those who need what the reign of God brings?

A set of examples about parts of the body causing one to stumble follows. Jesus’ confronting teaching about mutilation reads a bit differently when we put it into ancient terms. First of all, mutilation and amputation were probably a lot more common then, than among modern westerners. We might have to imagine any crowd listening to Jesus as including those who had lost arms, legs, or eyes through war, interpersonal violence, but also as a means of survival and health. While amputation was sometimes used as a judicial punishment, and violence perpetrated by an imperial power with little regard for life or limb was a common experience, modern readers should pay more attention (as Candida Moss argues in her book Divine Bodies) to cases and stories where the removal of a body part was sought with a beneficial effect.¹

Millstone on the Sterling Divinity Quadrangle, Yale. Author photo.

Sometimes these instances are dramatic. The historian Herodotus tells the story (Histories 9.37) of one Hegesistratus who cut off his own manacled foot to escape from enemies. This is reminiscent of the modern case of Aron Ralston, who cut off his own arm to escape from a rockfall and lived to tell the tale. One difference is that Hegesistratus’ escape involved human power and institutional violence, not natural disasters.

If emergency self-amputation is an extreme case, modern readers are well-enough aware of instances where injury or disease has meant that surgical removal of a body part was necessary to preserve life (although anesthesia is a very real point of difference between ancient and modern experience). In the ancient world, physicians, philosophers, and rabbis all pondered the merits of excising body parts that were the source or the means of harm, despite the extreme pain involved, and eyes and feet may often have been removed (whether or not for reasons that would pass muster with health care providers today) to ensure the survival of the patient.

So when Jesus introduces this topic, it is less that he is making some wild statement about the possible benefit of loss of body parts—this was probably assumed. Rather he is likening the call to fulness of life in God’s reign, and the importance of undertaking the journey with him, to more well-known prescriptions for physical health. If it was worth losing a foot to stay alive and well in the present world, how much more so for eternal life?

One implication of Moss’ discussion is a shift in understanding how disability itself is being thought of in the community of readers and hearers, or in the group we imagine around Jesus. If many of them had experienced either therapeutic, penal, or other amputations, the notion that they can enter the reign of God precisely thus is striking; there is no necessary implication that they must be “fixed.” Note also the ironic connection between these forms of amputation or disability and the constant theme of “stumbling.” Jesus is saying that the amputee is not at a disadvantage on this journey, despite what common sense might say. Rather these are included, like the “little ones,” to the surprise of those concerned with greatness (last week) and boundaries (this week).

There remains a urgent call to the reader, through the disciples being addressed in the story, to consider how the road with Jesus is to be negotiated. Parts of ourselves, even parts that we may assume are necessary or just given, must be considered. Asking too earnestly whether this is material or spiritual (and of course always resolving the issue as only spiritual) is to avoid the confronting nature of the call. In context, the literal excision of body parts does not stand alone, but underlines all the ways we and others may have to consider what we can take, of what we have and who we are, on this journey.

1. Moss, Candida R. Divine Bodies: Resurrecting Perfection in the New Testament and Early Christianity. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019, pp. 41-65.