Progressive reflections on the lectionary #36

Monday 23rd September 2024

Mark 9:38-50: "If your eye offends you..." Marginalisation and the 'trap' of social status

In the reading this week John asks Jesus about someone who is ‘casting out demons’ - but isn’t ‘following us’. Someone, in other words, who isn’t part of the in-crowd. The reading follows on from the previous week’s discourse about ‘greatness’ and the link shouldn’t be lost.

As Mark sets out Jesus’ response to the query he soon pivots to talking, about ‘little ones’ (mikrōn) and indulges in some pretty hardcore fire and brimstone type metaphor, talking about eye removal and a lot of stuff about ‘Gehenna’ which is often translated simply as ‘hell’.

In the first place: Gehenna. It’s an actual place, of course, the valley of Hinnom, which sits on the edge of Jerusalem’s Old City and marks part of the border between the territories of Judah and Benjamin, and was the site of a grim bit of biblical history:

“For the people of Judah have done evil in my sight, says the Lord; they have set their abominations in the house that is called by my name, defiling it. And they go on building the high place of Topheth, which is in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire—which I did not command, nor did it come into my mind.” (Jeremiah 7: 30-31)

In Rabbinic literature this dreadful history meant that the place became associated with the idea of punishment for sin. In later Christian Biblical translation/interpretation it became associated/muddled with ‘Sheol’ (‘the grave’) to form a composite ‘Hell’ - a place where the dead are forever punished.

In this passage Gehenna is used as a metaphor for terrible punishment, on a par with being forcibly drowned.

That Gehenna gets a lot of attention, forcible drowning somewhat less, indicates that people are perhaps not quite grasping the way that Mark uses metaphor and hyperbole here - despite the fact that Christians never, so far as I know, quite got round to hacking off limbs or plucking out eyes en masse - well, not their own anyway.

So what is really going on in this passage then? Simply put, this passage is another extended discourse on the ‘trap’ (skandalon) that the disciples are falling into, which is the ‘trap’ of social status. It’s ‘greatness - the sequel’.

When Jesus says ‘little ones’ sometimes the move is made to think he’s talking, again, about children. There is some value in that, given the example he has previously used, and the way he will again address in this in the subsequent chapter, but the word is not the same - rather he’s talking about any one who qualifies as ‘small’ or ‘low status’, this includes children, it also includes women, slaves, servants, and now people who are following Jesus’ teachings but aren’t in the ‘elite’ group of disciples or even the wider gang of followers.

Mark has Jesus, seeing that his disciples are still ‘trapped’ in a hierarchical way of thinking, respond using colourful language intended to get them out of that way of thinking. Still, though, they don’t learn.

“Be ‘at peace’ among yourselves,” Jesus finally admonishes - a word/phrase that’s later repeated in the epistles, the word has to do with concord or 'togetherness’. In other words: ‘Respect one another, particularly the ‘small ones’ (marginalised/vulnerable) and don’t get caught in the wretched trap of hierarchies and social status, it would be better to be thrown overboard than to fall for that!’

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