“More Than Foot and Hand and Eye” Mount Olive Lutheran Church Season of Pentecost Sunday Sermon September 29, 2024 – Mark 9:38–50

Mount Olive Lutheran Church / Rev. Ted A. Giese / Sunday September 29th 2024, Season of Pentecost, Mark 9:38–50 “More Than Foot and Hand and Eye”

John said to Him, “Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in Your name, and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us.” But Jesus said, “Do not stop him, for no one who does a mighty work in My name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of Me. For the one who is not against us is for us. For truly, I say to you, whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you belong to Christ will by no means lose his reward.

“Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to sin, it would be better for him if a great millstone were hung around his neck and he were thrown into the sea. And if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life crippled than with two hands to go to hell, to the unquenchable fire. And if your foot causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life lame than with two feet to be thrown into hell. And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into hell, ‘where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched.’ For everyone will be salted with fire. Salt is good, but if the salt has lost its saltiness, how will you make it salty again? Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another. 

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in Your sight O Lord. Amen.

Grace peace and mercy to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Good Christian Friends a scar is often a good occasion for a personal story. More than that, if you’ve lost a finger or toe or a limb or an eye people will often be tempted to ask how it happened. There are job sites where men are cautioned not to wear their wedding rings because if it were to get caught on something or in certain pieces of machinery it could result in their ring finger being yanked off in an instant. So whether it’s a scar in your eyebrow from falling on the corner of a sharp coffee table as a young kid or, a missing finger from a curricular saw blade or maybe just a part of one, or perhaps you’re missing an arm or a leg from an accident with an auger on a farm, people may be curious about how it happened. Of course many people are also very polite and may be afraid to ask. If you have survived with a scar and a good story you may be excited to tell someone if you catch their interest; you even may be tempted to boast about how you narrowly escaped greater injury or maybe even death. Less dramatically my great grandmother on my mother’s side liked to pop out her false teeth for the great grandkids, sometimes people with a glass eye like to do the same. Of course if the scar is truly hidden away than they may not even know that you have a story to tell. Perhaps you’ve guessed where this is all going.         

In the Book of Hebrews we hear these words, “In your struggle against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood.”[1] Keep this in mind we will return to that verse and a couple of the verses around it to help unpack what Jesus says to us in the Gospel Reading today when He says, “if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life crippled than with two hands to go to hell, to the unquenchable fire. And if your foot causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life lame than with two feet to be thrown into hell. And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into hell, ‘where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched.’”

First, of all the people you will meet in Scripture Jesus is the one who talks about hell the most, He’s the one who gives warnings to the Christian and all who will hear Him about the dangers of Hell, to warn people from ending up in hell. Secondly with these words Jesus is calling you to take stock regarding your sin, to stop and take it seriously. What’s more serious than the loss of hand or foot, the loss of your eye? And more than that what’s more serious than death and hell and eternal damnation? There’s a great Lenten hymn that we often sing on Good Friday, “Stricken, Smitten, and Afflicted,”[2] where in verse three we sing:       

3  Ye who think of sin but lightly
    Nor suppose the evil great
Here may view its nature rightly,
    Here its guilt may estimate.
Mark the sacrifice appointed,
    See who bears the awful load;
’Tis the Word, the Lord’s anointed,
    Son of Man and Son of God.

The hymn writer, Tomas Kelly (1769-1855), is pointing you to the cross of Jesus’ crucifixion where the wages of your sin are paid out upon the body of the innocent Christ Jesus. More than losing an eye, more than losing a foot or a hand Jesus for your sin has His feet and hands pierced by the nails, His eyes filled with the blood running down from that crown of thorns forced into His sinless brow.    

1  Stricken, smitten, and afflicted,
    See Him dying on the tree!
’Tis the Christ, by man rejected;
    Yes, my soul, ’tis He, ’tis He!
’Tis the long-expected Prophet,
    David’s Son, yet David’s Lord;
Proofs I see sufficient of it:
    ’Tis the true and faithful Word.

2  Tell me, ye who hear Him groaning,
    Was there ever grief like His?
Friends through fear His cause disowning,
    Foes insulting His distress;
Many hands were raised to wound Him,
    None would intervene to save;
But the deepest stroke that pierced Him
    Was the stroke that justice gave.

Scripture teaches that “it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment,”[3] and Saint Paul teaches in his letter to the Romans that “the wages of sin is death.”[4] Perhaps from time to time your sins in life, sins of carelessness or foolhardiness, or ignorance or willfulness produce physical scars but what many miss seeing is that our sins, my sins, your sins caused the nail wounds and the marks of the lash and the cutting sharp wounds of the thorns upon our innocent Lord Jesus’ head and body, and more than that your sin went beyond loss of hand or foot or eye to bring forth death in the one man who did not deserve death for His own thoughts, words or deeds. Yet because Jesus who had no sin of His own was made to become sin in our place,[5] and Himself bore our sins in His body on the tree,[6] our sin died with Him and when Jesus was judged while He received the judgment of death for our sin He likewise received the judgment of life for His personal sinlessness; and all of this “that we might die to sin and live to righteousness.” As Saint Peter says, “By [Jesus’] wounds you have been healed.”[7] Saint Paul then follows up his causation about the wages of sin being death with the promise that “the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”[8] And so the hymn “Stricken, Smitten, and Afflicted,” ends:

4  Here we have a firm foundation,
    Here the refuge of the lost:
Christ, the Rock of our salvation,
    Is the name of which we boast;
Lamb of God, for sinners wounded,
    Sacrifice to cancel guilt!
None shall ever be confounded
    Who on Him their hope have built.

Saint John who witnessed the crucifixion of our Lord tells us how “on the evening of that day, the first day of the week, the doors being locked where the disciples were for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.” When He had said this, He showed them His hands and His side. Then, [Saint John tells us] the disciples were glad when they saw the Lord.”[9] Because of your sin He died and was laid in the tomb, but because of His personal sinlessness Jesus was not thrown into hell, ‘where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched.’ No after His death Jesus was able to walk into Hell on His own two feet to proclaim His victory over Sin, Death and the Devil.[10] And He was able then also to walk out of the tomb that first Easter Morning not crippled or made lame because of your sin but Resurrected and made new. He did however retain the scars of the crucifixion as the trophies of His victory. Dear ones “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.”[11] If you want to tell stories about your scars, tell people about the most important scars you have, the ones that Jesus bears for you in your place, the scars that saved you from Sin, and Death, from the Devil and Hell, from the World and most importantly from yourself.  

This brings us back around to where we began when I mention that passage from the Book of Hebrews that says, “In your struggle against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood.” The verse immediately before that verse says, “Consider Him who endured from sinners such hostility against Himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted.”[12] Today this is what we have done. We have considered Christ Jesus as the one “who endured” regarding what He teaches us when He says, “If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life crippled than with two hands to go to hell, to the unquenchable fire,” for He was the one who was willing and able to have His whole life cut off not just a hand or a foot so that you would be saved from the unquenchable fire.

Dear ones, with this in mind, resist sin and the temptation to sin. And as ones who are forgiven remember we are called now to not grow weary or fainthearted in the face of our sin, and we are likewise called not to grow weary or fainthearted in the face of the discipline we receive from the LORD when we do fall into sin for the Book of Hebrews continues “have you forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons?

       “My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord,

              nor be weary when reproved by Him.

       For the Lord disciplines the one He loves,

              and chastises every son whom He receives.” 

It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline? If you are left without discipline, in which all have participated, then you are illegitimate children and not sons.”[13] Dear ones by the grace of God in Christ Jesus you are sons and daughters of your heavenly Father, therefore do not fret or be embarrassed over the scars you’ve gained in life along the way, let them be a reminder of both your mortality and your immortality in Christ. Avoid the temptation to boast in yourself and rather boast in Christ and His wounds on your behalf. The story of His scars will be a more fruitful story to tell than any story you can tell of your own scars. And lastly if you’ve received some physical ailment or injury that in hindsight, when you look back at it, has actually provided you refuge from unbridled sin in your life be glad: be glad that in the wisdom of the LORD you have been spared from a life riddled with even more sin, by such chastisement the LORD may very well be keeping you from the fires of hell, by them the LORD may very well be giving you opportunity to look to the suffering of Christ Jesus in your place.

Some may wallow in self pity and shake their fist at God in anger over their scars thinking Him cruel for allowing them to happen in their life, if this is you take heart and reconsider, would that such folks would rather bend their knee and bow their heads in thanksgiving to God whose wrath was poured out in its severity on His Son and not on them. We are called to see His almighty mercy in our life and in the life of others. We are called to resist sin, to look to Jesus as the perfect example of this resistance. Pray for eyes to see and ear to hear this truth. Amen.    

Let us pray:

Lord have mercy on us, Christ have mercy on us, Lord have mercy on us, “take our minds and think through them, take our lips and speak through them, take our hearts and set them on fire; for the sake of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, Amen.

[1] Hebrews 12:4
[2] “Stricken, Smitten, and Afflicted” Lutheran Service Book, Concordia Publishing House 2006, #451
[3] Hebrews 9:27
[4] Romans 6:23a
[5] 2 Corinthians 5:21 “For our sake [God] made Him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.”
[6] 1 Peter 2:24a
[7] 1 Peter 2:24b
[8] Romans 6:23b
[9] John 20:19–20
[10] 1 Peter 3:18-20
[11] 1 Corinthians 1:31
[12] Hebrews 12:3
[13] Hebrews 12:5–8