If a Skywalker's hand offends thee...

Darth Vader helps his son stick to Jesus' words.

It's funny, isn't it?  We Christians have a part in service in which we 'share the peace' with one another.  And in that sharing of the peace, we trot about shaking hands with one another, wishing each other God's peace.  It's all well and good, but after the reading that we just had for this Sunday, I'm personally and professionally amazed that any of us can possibly manage it.  We shouldn't be able to manage it, because Jesus tells us that if our hands cause us to sin, that we should cut them off.

⁴² “If anyone causes one of these little ones—those who believe in me—to stumble, it would be better for them if a large millstone were hung around their neck and they were thrown into the sea. ⁴³ If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life maimed than with two hands to go into hell, where the fire never goes out. ^{[44] [a] 45} And if your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life crippled than to have two feet and be thrown into hell. ^{[46] [b] 47} And if your eye causes you to stumble, pluck it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into hell,⁴⁸ where

“‘the worms that eat them do not die,
    and the fire is not quenched.’^[c]

^{-Mark  9:42-48 (NIV)}

Oh, really.  That's one o' them readings that we tend to take with a grain of salt.  Jesus tells you to lop off your offensive hands?  Yeah, blurgh, he didn't mean that.  It's funny, that we as Lutheran Christians can say that the earth and everything else was created in six calendar days, that there was a literal worldwide flood that killed everything, that Jesus literally walked on water, that Jairus' daughter was literally returned from the dead, and that the disciples literally spoke in a multitude of languages on Pentecost.  No problem with any of that.

But the moment Jesus gives us a straight commandment on how to avoid hellfire, all of a sudden, that bad boy's an allegory.

Surely, Jesus didn't really mean to cut off your hands, did he?  He didn't mean to tear out your eyes, or remove your feet, did he?  Well, he seems to say so, and he's God, so two things.
1 - who are you to argue, and
2 - why do you still have ten fingers?

We don't think about this much, do we?   But we don't think too much about much of what Jesus says.  We're real good on Pauline Christianity, because it's about doctrine.  We're much shoddier on Gospel Christianity, because it has a lot to do with what you do.  Jesus really cares about what you get up to here in this world.  He has an eye for the poor, for the outcasts, for the hard done by.  And he has in mind your sin.  Jesus is concerned about your sin in a way that you might not be, for a very good reason. 

Remember a time before your first car? Remember when you had to drive around in the 'folkswagon?'  Your mom or dad or whoever let you use their car back when you were sixteen, and you got to drive it around and stuff?  Remember how your parents seemed really paranoid about you driving it around? Remember how terrified they were that you might crash the car, scratch it, fiddle with the radio stations, whatevers.  Everything had to be just so.  You had to wipe your shoes before you'd get in.  Why exactly?  Because your mom or dad or whoever paid for the car.  You didn't care so much.  You were happy to drive that car until it fell apart, because you did nothing for it.  It's the same way with the free gift of salvation.  And yes, my wife does still not exactly care for the term free gift.  But it's the same way with the free gift of salvation.   this gift that someone else paid for, and really squander it.  You see, we do that with free stuff all the time.  If you worked for something, if you saved up earnings, if you sweated away hours and hours, if you worked as hard as you can, then you appreciate what you have, and you take care of it like crazy.  It's the difference between renting and owning a home, or between renting and owning a car.  Have you ever wondered why, when they sell cars from budget or whatever, they go for so cheap?  Because people drive those into the ground, until they almost don't exist anymore.  People do things with rental cars that they'd never do with their own vehicles.  Why?  Because they did nothing to own this car, and they don't have to pay to maintain it, fix it up, nothing.  Nothing whatsoever.  There's no wonder all this stuff gets beaten up, as typically we're really bad at caring for stuff we didn't earn.

What goes around comes around.

So when Jesus points out the seriousness of our sin, when he talks about cutting hands off, cutting feet off, gouging out eyes to keep you free of hellfire, it should stand as a shock to our Christian sensibilities.  You, as a Christian have gotten too soft on the reality of what you do.  If daddy Jesus will take care of it all anyway, then why bother caring about what you do?  None of it matters because God will blot it all out anyhow, right?  Once you point out to Sunday School kids that Jesus forgives sins, all sins, every sin without cost or weight to you, then their first question always seems to be 'so, we can do whatever we want, right?'

Well, wrongo.  Jesus cares so tremendously much about what you do because he's the one fronting the cost.  He's supplying the hands, stretched out on the cross that you refuse to cut off to avoid hellfire.  He's the one supplying the feet that you refuse to remove to keep you free from the worm that never dies and the fire that never goes out.  He's the one whose eyes closed in death to cover all the stuff that you happily observe that you know you shouldn't.

What's the point of this passage?  Not to give you a how-to to remove your body parts, but to remind you complacent Christian about the price paid for you.  Yeah yeah yeah, Jesus died for your sins, big whoop.  But think about cutting off your hand to stay away from the internet porn, or cutting off your foot to keep from driving to your mistress' place, and you'll realize very quickly that you're not willing to do any of that.  Not one bit.  You're not willing to inconvenience yourself even in the slightest to avoid damnable sin, while your savior has his hands and feet nailed to wood, his side pierced, and his last breaths drawn from his body for that sin.

We Christians are particularly notorious for this issue, in which we say to ourselves, to each other, to whatever, that we're not really on the hook for this stuff, sooooooooo it doesn't really matter.  And it's true that Jesus will forgive everything, but think on the price. Think what it costs to keep you free from hell.  If it won't keep you away from sinning, it'll at least make you think a little harder about what you've done.

PJ.

Bonus decapitation.  Nothing to see here.