Lead Them Not Into Temptation

Mark 9: 38-50

 

 

          A young couple came to town because the husband had gotten his first job in the plant. They were new Christians and tender in their faith. They started visiting churches. One Sunday, they visited a church I know. They sat near the front in a pew that was usually occupied by the Petersons. The Petersons liked to sit down front. Same pew every week. They were big givers to the church. Several things around the church had been donated by them and bore inscriptions to that effect. That morning, they had arrived a little late. As they started to enter the sanctuary, they noticed the young couple. Mrs. Peterson looked sharply at her husband. He was up to the task. They marched down the side aisle and Mr. Peterson leaned over and spoke to the couple. The couple got up and moved to another pew. That was the last that church ever saw of them. I did run into him later at a business meeting. I asked how they were doing and whether they had found a church. He said they had looked around when they first came to town, but had a bad experience in one church and decided church just wasn’t for them.

          One Christmas, a family came to church. The church had sponsored this down and out couple as a love offering during the Christmas season. They came largely to see what church was like. Their children had never been to church. They were loud and pretty unruly. The couple behind them, established members, leaned forward and asked them to get control of their children. They did. They walked out as quietly as they could and never came back. Efforts to repair the damage were unsuccessful.

          Have you seen things like that happen? It doesn’t just happen in church. It happens everywhere. We are looking at an opportunity and we call it an inconvenience. More importantly, according to the gospel of Mark, we are looking at the loss of our own souls as we cause others to turn away from God by our selfish, petty actions. There is much more at stake here than meets the eye.

          Speaking of eyes, the prophet Zechariah has something to say about the subject. Zechariah prophesied to the nation of Israel in the post-exilic period. Those who had returned were a dispirited group. The foundation of the new temple had been laid but there was still much opposition. It was high taxes, hard times and little progress. The promises of glory from past prophets seemed far away. But Zechariah came to remind God’s people to be obedient; that God would indeed restore his people to glory. Zechariah has a vision and part of that vision is a call for those still in exile to return to Jerusalem. And Zechariah 2: 8 says this: “For thus said the Lord of hosts, after his glory sent me to the nations who plundered you, for he who touches you touches the apple of his eye.” Would you poke a bear or a lion in the eye? Better to do that than to mislead one of God’s people. In Hebrew, the apple of one’s eye is the pupil, the center of the eyeball. To mislead one of God’s people is to poke God in the eye.

          In Genesis 12, God calls Abram. Abram is elected to go on an errand for God. It will involve all his obedience and all his will, for he is to leave his own county on his way to wherever it is that God is ultimately sending him. His journey will be to a land known only by God. God says to Abram, soon to be Abraham, which means father: “And I [God] will make of you a great nation and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you, I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” The people of God are to be blessed, and those who dishonor them are to be cursed.

          Fast forward a few thousand years. It is the first century and Jesus is full blown into his teaching ministry. In the gospel of Matthew, Jesus is delivering the Sermon on the Mount and he teaches his listeners how to pray. The result is what we call the Lord’s Prayer. In the eleventh chapter of Luke’s gospel, a shorthand version of the same prayer appears. This time it is in the context of a request from one of the disciples that he teach them how to pray. Because of Luke’s version, it is sometimes called the Disciples’ Prayer, for Jesus taught the disciples. In both versions, Jesus prays “Lead us not into temptation.” 

          In today’s passage, Mark takes an expanded approach. He doesn’t use the “lead us not” term from the other gospels, but he gets across the same idea with a more pointed emphasis. Not only are we asking God not to lead us into temptation; we are being warned not to lead others there. Jesus is asking for radical discipleship. The language is severe. He is concerned not with us here, but with whom we come in contact, particularly children and new Christians.

          Look how Jesus makes his point and how many times he makes it. Cause someone to sin? Better to have a millstone around your neck and thrown into the sea.  Is it your hand? Cut it off! Is it your foot? Cut it off! Does your eye cause someone to sin? Tear it out! These are really harsh words, and they come directly from Jesus. The author of love and forgiveness and salvation itself is giving us a deadly warning. Don’t mess with God’s people! If you lead them away, you are playing with fire, God’s fire! You might think of it as though you have been informed that you have a malignant cancer growing in your body. If you act now, it can be cut away and you can live. If you wait…well, it will cost you your life. Such is the gravity of causing others to stumble. Do whatever you have to do to keep from intentionally or negligently leading someone away from the truth of the gospel.

          Maybe the point of all this is that we are responsible. We are accountable. Are you a Christian? Then you are a witness to the gospel. Are you a believer? Then you are a disciple. As a witness, as a believer, you are going to come in contact with children and other new believers. They are tender. Age doesn’t matter. They are tender because they are new in the faith. If you are in their sphere of influence and you lead them away from God in what you do or say or what you don’t do or say, there will be hell to pay and not by them but by you.

          We know sin is bad. It is disobedience of God. But there is apparently something worse if we can understand the gravity of Jesus’ words. To teach another to sin is much worse. Scottish theologian William Barclay tells an old O. Henry story.  O. Henry wrote back in the early 1900s. He grew up just up the road a ways in Greensboro and gained some fame as a writer of short stories. The story goes something like this:

          There was a little girl whose mother died. Her father would come home from work and get comfortable and read the paper. The little girl would come in and ask him to play, as she was lonely. Over and over, the father said he was tired and sent her out to the street to play. She got the message and took to the streets for good. Some years, not nearly enough--passed and she died. When her soul arrived in heaven, St. Peter recommended to send her to hell because she was a bad lot. But Jesus said gently: “Let her in.” And then his eyes grew stern, the eyes of our Savior, and he said this to Peter: “But look for a man who refused to play with his little girl and sent her out to the streets—and send him to hell.”

          You see, it’s not just about being openly sinful, intentionally disobedient to God. Those things are easy to spot. Those are not the things that trip us. It’s the sand in our shoes. We’re too tired or too involved in other matters at the moment. We’re too involved with our own pursuits to see the need of someone else. Even though that need, that person may be standing right in front of us, we sometimes cannot see. But what does that person see? What does that person feel? Whether it is intentional or just thoughtless and plain selfish really does not matter to Jesus. If it creates a stumbling-block for that person, if it causes him or her to doubt who Jesus is or whether Christianity is worth it…we are diluting the salt that makes that person unique and in God’s image. And once the salt has been made sufficiently impure, its saltiness is lost, not just for now but forever.

          And Jesus said to John and his beloved disciples: “It is better for you to enter life crippled than with two hands to go to hell…”  From Genesis to the prophets to the words of Jesus himself, we are warned not to mess with the people of God. Do nothing—nothing--to impede their progress toward God! When it comes to those new and tender in the faith, beware. They are walking on holy ground. Lead them not into temptation.