Gimme That Old-Time Religion

Gimme That Old-Time Religion

Mark 9:42-48

March 8, 2020 • Mount Pleasant UMC

When I was in youth group at Rossville Church, our leaders were Dave and Carol Bushfield, and a few years after I left for college, Dave became a local pastor. He served for several years at a small church, and we would run into each other at Annual Conference. I remember one particular conversation with Dave and a group who had gathered, probably in the Cokesbury bookstore display, and we were talking, I think, about how the way we do “church” had changed over the decades and how what we call “hellfire and brimstone” preaching seemed to have gone by the wayside. That was a good thing, as far as some there were concerned. But Dave had a different perspective. He spoke up and said, “It’s true we don’t talk about hell as much as we used to. But we’re also not saving as many souls as we used to, either.” And that was pretty much the end of that conversation!

It seems to be human nature to believe that “the good old days” were always better, and we long for those days especially when we turn on the news and hear all about the latest political news! The past always seems to be better in our memories; we tend to forget the hard parts of the past and only remember certain parts. And when it comes to the church, to our faith, when we think of the “good old days,” we think like my youth leader and colleague Dave did—if we just went back to old ways of hellfire and brimstone preaching and teaching, we’d be better off. As we sang just a little while ago, “Gimme that old-time religion.”

Well, today you might feel like you’re back in those “old-time days,” because we are going to talk about hell this morning. I thought about turning up the heat really high this morning, but decided the finance folks probably wouldn’t appreciate that when the bill came in! This Lenten season, we’re looking at some of Jesus’ more outlandish actions and teachings in the Gospels, and a lot of his more controversial statements, or at least some of his teachings that we tend to ignore these days because they make us uncomfortable, center around hell. Jesus talked more about hell than anyone else—so what did he have to say, and what does it have to do with us today, in the modern, grown-up twenty-first century? Is this just another example of “Jesus Behaving Badly,” or is there something we need to hear still today?

So we turn to that strange passage we read from Mark’s Gospel this morning. Jesus is teaching in Galilee, in the north, and he has just told his followers that they have to become like little children to be able to enter the kingdom of God (cf. Mark 9:37). After that, probably while the child is still sitting on Jesus’ lap, John speaks up. It’s the only thing he says in the Gospel of Mark (Card, Mark: The Gospel of Passion, pg. 122), and it’s a complaint. “Some other people are working in your name, Jesus, some people we didn’t know. So we told them to stop,” John says (cf. 9:38). I picture Jesus giving him one of “those looks” as he tells John not to stop them. “If they’re not against me, they’re for me,” Jesus tells John. Maybe that’s why John doesn’t say anything else in the whole Gospel! And then comes this passage about millstones and mutilation and worms and fire.

Something you might have noticed about this passage, at least in the version we read this morning, is that it’s “missing” verses—two, to be exact. Verse 44 and 46 are sent to the footnotes in the NIV and other modern translations, and since I’ve been asked the question of why that is, I thought it might be worth a short diversion to answer that question here—because this is not the only place in the newer translations where this happens. So why, people wonder, do the newer translations “leave out” certain verses? The simple answer is this: they were not there to begin with (cf. Wessel, “Mark,” Expositor’s Bible Commentary, Vol. 8, pg. 709). So, a brief tutorial about texts and how Bible translation works: though the King James Version wasn’t the first English translation, it became the most popular, best known and most widely used. In 1611, when it was first published, the translators used the best Greek and Hebrew texts they had available to them at that time. But in the four hundred years since then, earlier texts and portions of texts have been discovered, giving us a better idea of what the original texts actually said. None of the original texts exist, or at least they haven’t been found yet. We don’t have Mark’s original manuscript, but the closer in time the texts we have are to the time when they were originally written, the more accurate they are believed to be. As they were copied, it is thought, sometimes the copyists would add notes off to the side, sort of like in our modern study Bibles where there are notes at the bottom, and over time, those notes got copied into the actual text. In newer translations, efforts have been made to get closer to the original version of these books. There is no conspiracy to leave out verses, just as there was no conspiracy to add notes as verses. Every generation is working with the best texts we have, from King James all the way down to today. As far as the passage today, the two verses that are left out are the same as verse 48, and it’s thought they were inserted so that all three of the statements about hell read the same way. We do know in ancient times, when copies of the Scripture weren’t available to everyone like they are now, memorization was vital and repetition helps in memorization. It’s possible the notes were added to help students learn. However it happened and whatever the reason, nothing is lost with those verses missing and nothing is gained if they are inserted.

So…having said all that (and that may be more than you wanted to know!), let’s talk about what Jesus actually says here. In the largest part of this passage, Jesus is giving a warning to anyone who might cause one of these “little ones” to “stumble.” Some think he’s referring to the children he was just talking about, while others think he’s using the term “little ones” to refer to all of his disciples. Either way, Jesus is concerned for those who get in the way of anyone he cares about, anyone he loves. The word for “stumble” here is a word I talked about not too long ago: skandalon. It’s the word we have turned into “scandal,” and it’s a word that is also applied to Jesus himself (cf. Romans 9:33; Isaiah 8:14). It’s anything that causes you to fall, something you trip over. It might be that hurt, habit, or hang-up that stands between you and Jesus. It might be that addiction that causes you to turn away from him. It might be that persistent sin that keeps cropping up in your life. I’m going to guess that it doesn’t take much thought for you to know what it is that causes you to stumble, what “scandalizes” you. Whatever that is, Jesus takes it seriously because it is something that keeps you away from him and distant from the kingdom of God. That’s not the life he wants for you.

That’s why Jesus’ language in dealing with it is so over the top (cf. Card 123). He knows following him is difficult, and that it demands sacrifice. Being a disciples calls us to give up things we think we can’t live without (cf. Wright, Mark for Everyone, pg. 127). Today, a lot of what passes as “Christian” teaching is aimed at personal fulfillment and satisfaction. There’s a lot that seems to say you can have your cake and eat it too. We are told we can pick and choose which of Jesus’ teachings and which of the Bible’s teachings fit our already-determined lifestyle. But you won’t find that kind of teaching in Jesus’ actual instruction. Jesus says there is one way to follow, one path to walk, and it’s the path that is narrow, the path that is difficult (cf. Matthew 7:13-14). His language here is drawing attention to that truth, boldly so. Look at what he says in these “it would be better” statements. First of all, if you’re going to cause someone to stumble, IT WOULD BE BETTER to have a huge millstone (those things weighed around a hundred pounds) tied around your neck and you be thrown into the sea. The Romans would sometimes use that as a form of execution, but the Jews regarded this kind of punishment as too inhumane (cf. Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, pg. 1647). So this image is a particularly ugly one for those who were listening. So is the second one: if your hand, foot or eye is causing you to sin, IT WOULD BE BETTER for you to get rid of those body parts because the alternative is ending up in hell. Now, let’s be clear: Jesus is not really recommending bodily mutilation. This is hyperbole, which was a common form of teaching in those days. What he wants to do is get people’s attention, to help them understand how seriously he takes sin. And that’s why he talks about hell.

The word Jesus uses here, and the word used very often in the New Testament, that is translated as “hell” is actually the word “Gehenna.” Sometimes you’ll see that word actually in the text. Gehenna was a real place; it is the “Valley of Hinnom,” and it’s one of the valleys that surrounds Jerusalem. Gehenna is on the southwest side, and in ancient times, this particular valley was the place where children were offered as sacrifices to the pagan gods Molech and Ba’al. In other words, Gehenna was a place where children were burned alive. In the 600’s BC, one of the last good kings if Judah, Josiah, destroyed these pagan altars, and then they faced this question: what do you do with that kind of real estate? No one would want to build on it, no one would want to own it. So Gehenna became a garbage dump. All of Jerusalem’s human waste and garbage, including dead animals, was thrown there to be burned. By Jesus’ day, it literally was a place where fires burned all the time and worms were always crawling through the nasty garbage. In the time between the Old and New Testaments, “Gehenna” became a symbol of divine punishment, referred to in writing as an “accursed valley.” Gehenna had been and continued to be hell (cf. Strauss, Jesus Behaving Badly, pg. 96; Wessel, “Mark,” Expositor’s Bible Commentary, Vol. 8, pg. 708).

So Jesus says it would be better for us to be maimed than to end up there. And we have to agree! Most anything would be better than ending up for eternity in a place where fires burn and worms crawl. But Jesus had a lot more than that to say about hell. Let me just list some of them for you this morning. He said that if you call someone a fool, you are in danger of hell (Matthew 5:22). He said we should fear God who could throw us into hell (Matthew 10:28). He told the religious leaders that their hypocritical actions put them in danger of landing in hell (Matthew 23:33). He also talks about hell in several parables, describing hell as a place where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth. It’s both a dark place and a blazing furnace. It is eternal fire, and it is a place that has been prepared for the devil and his angels. As one author puts it, “That is a heck of a lot about hell” (Strauss 97). Now, obviously, you can’t rectify all of these images into one clear picture, though Dante certainly tried in his work Inferno. But hell can’t be both eternal darkness and a blazing fire, at least as we understand those things. Jesus is not so much trying to accurately describe hell as he is painting a picture to provoke a response, and I think the response he wants is this: hell is not a place we want to go.

But the reason we don’t want to go there is not so much the nature of the punishment, though flames and darkness do not sound appealing. The reason we are supposed to want to avoid hell is because of what is not there, or rather who is not there. Hell is wherever God is not. Hell is the absence of God’s presence. Hell is eternal separation from the one who created you for himself, and so hell is life without ever being able to satisfy our deepest longings. Whatever else it might be, whichever of these images from Jesus and from the Bible you choose to put in the forefront of your images of hell, the worst part is (or should be) being separated from God. Hell, Jesus says, is not where you want to go.

So here’s the struggle, the question I’ve been asked and you might have been asked, the question skeptics ask about the doctrine of hell: how can a loving God send people to hell for eternity? Or, it might be phrased this way: how can a loving God punish someone eternally for what might be a temporal sin? It’s a legitimate question. We think that if we were God, we’d just upgrade everyone to heaven, or at least we’d put a time limit on hell. Do the time, serve your sentence, then you get moved up. That’s the way, we think, the universe should work. God should do it our way. Maybe eternal hell could be reserved for the few really, really bad people—and, of course, for Satan and the demons—but not for the average person. In the past, most people took hell for granted. Today, we hear a growing chorus asking: why should there be a hell? Isn’t this just a primitive belief? Isn’t it just vengeful wishing on our behalf, to think our enemies all end up in a place of eternal punishment? Some believe the doctrine of hell is so cruel that it couldn’t have come from Jesus; the early church must have made it up, created it whole cloth and put these words into the mouth of Jesus.

The reality is that a doctrine of divine judgment is an essential part of the character of God. If God is both loving and just, he must punish evil, otherwise he would not be either loving or just. If there were no ultimate consequences for evil and sin, the world would be a very scary place after all. It doesn’t take much thinking at all to realize that the world has a long history of evil and injustice—horrific death and genocidal leaders that show up routinely, mass murders, rapes and torture, drug wars that result in innocent children being killed, church shootings and school shootings, not to mention the “big” events like the Nazi Holocaust, the Rwandan civil war, the crimes of ISIS and the attacks of 9/11. If we rely solely on human justice to take care of such things, we are bound to be disappointed time and time and time again. What, if anything, could ever make up for the systematic murder of 6 million Jews, a million Rwandans, Coptic Christians beheaded on a beach, or the 3,000 who were killed instantly on 9/11? What balances the scales for such things? Add into that the hatred, racism, sexism and all the other “isms” that plague our country and our politics these days—attitudes that don’t necessarily result in crimes punishable by our human justice systems but are evil nonetheless—what balances the scales? This doctrine and Jesus’ teaching reminds us that even if evil goes unpunished in this world, even if the legal system fails, “there is an all-knowing, all-powerful Judge who keeps perfect records, and who will one day justly judge all the evil of this world” (Strauss 100). The doctrine of hell is an affirmation of the justice and the goodness of God. Sin will be punished; wrong will be made right, even if it doesn’t happen in this world.

Our struggle may be more with our images of hell than with the idea itself. I’ve said before that most of our images are more from the middle ages than they are from the Bible. Dante influences us more than the authors of Scripture. As I shared just a little bit ago, there are glimpses and snatches of pictures from Jesus’ teaching; the same sort of imagery pops up in other Biblical books, but the reality is we really don’t know what hell is like. We do know this: hell is where God is not, and that’s enough to make it a horrible place. We also know God does not send people to hell. People make the choice to spend eternity with God or without. I shared this quote from C. S. Lewis a couple of weeks ago, but it’s so rich I have to share it again. Lewis described our choice this way: “There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done,’ and those to whom God says, in the end, ‘Thy will be done.’ All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. Those who knock it is opened” (The Great Divorce). The choice is ours; if in this life we choose to live in a way that is all about us, that is focused on our own will, our own pleasure, our own desires, God will honor our choice and allow us to spend eternity without him. That is not God’s desire; we know from Paul’s letter to Timothy that God “wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth” (1 Timothy 2:4). But if our choice is to reject God, God will honor that.

Here is what I know: Jesus’ last command to us, his followers, was to “go and make disciples of all nations” (Matthew 28:19). It’s been nearly two thousand years since Jesus gave us that command, and the command remains unfulfilled. All nations have not been made disciples of yet. According to the Joshua Project (https://joshuaproject.net), there remain 7,372 unreached people groups in the world—cultural groups that have not yet had the chance to respond to the Gospel. That represents about 42% of the world’s population that does not know or, in some cases, has not even heard the name of Jesus. That’s astounding to think about here in the twenty-first century, isn’t it? Eighty-two of those unreached people groups are right here in the United States, but evidence is that number may be growing as our nation continues to turn away from the Gospel. So the question for us: what are we doing about our commission? The real issue when Jesus talks about those who walk away from him is whether or not we’re living in such a way that his way is attractive to others. One of the expectations we have of people who are connected to Mount Pleasant, whether you are a member or someone who regularly attends, is “witness.” By that I don’t mean you go out onto the street corner and beat people over the head with a Bible. “Witness” means we live out our faith consistently, faithfully and in a way that others see Jesus in us. We share our faith through actions and through words and we help people see in us the joy of the Lord. Not a fake, artificial “happiness,” but a deep joy and contentment that God is good, even when life is not. We know that in the early church the thing people noticed most about the followers of Jesus is that they loved each other and they loved the world around them. When a plague broke out in the Roman Empire, everyone who could afford it headed for the hills but Christians ran toward the sickness, to help those who were sick and dying. They loved people like Jesus would (cf. Colson, The Faith, pgs. 15-17). And that kind of love changed the world. I believe it could do so again, and save people from eternal separation from God. That, my friends, is the kind of “old-time religion” we should be longing for and living out.

“If God did not respond to evil with justice, he would not be a just and loving God” (Strauss 106). Our calling is not to figure out what hell is like and who is going there, but to reach out with the love of Christ so that everyone has a chance to spend eternity in God’s presence. To that end, then, let us work and let us pray.