Mark 9:38-50 (NRSV)
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 deed of power in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me. Whoever is not against us is for us. For truly I tell you, whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you bear the name of Christ will by no means lose the reward.
“If any of you put a stumbling block before one of these little ones who believe in me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea. If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life maimed than to have two hands and to go to [Gehenna], to the unquenchable fire. And if your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life lame than to have two feet and to be thrown into [Gehenna]. And if your eye causes you to stumble, tear it out; it is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and to be thrown into [Gehenna], where their worm never dies, and the fire is never quenched.
“For everyone will be salted with fire. Salt is good; but if salt has lost its saltiness, how can you season it? Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another.”
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"The extended warning against scandals (9:42-48) seems on the surface to be a stunningly sacrificial text. It commands one to cut off and throw away a hand, foot, or eye that causes one scandal, to expel the wrongdoer in sacrificial style. Cutting (apokoptō, 9:43 et passim) is the essential sacrificial act, and the skill of the sacrificial butcher is most evident in dismembering. Sacrifice is prescribed as the cure for scandal.
"A metaphorical rather than a literal sacrifice is being prescribed. The deconstruction of sacrifice has proceeded so far that the Gospel can use it as an image to convey the moral injunction to resist envy decisively. Scandal, as we have seen, is to love the thing one hates and hate the thing one loves. Scandal is envy, a desire to be like the other that is so intense that it would destroy the other if it cannot be like him, and also if it can. The injunctions to sever offending limbs are hyperbole expressing the urgency of the need to avoid the envy that comes from what one does (hand), where one goes (foot), and what one sees (eye), envy exemplified in the behavior of the disciples just narrated, in their wrangle about who is the greatest, and their attempt to keep the privilege of being Jesus’ agents for themselves.
"The sayings that close this section confirm the sacrificial metaphor. “For everything will be salted with fire” (9:49) is an allusion to the customs of salting the cereal sacrifice and offering salt with every sacrifice (Lev 2:13). The injunction, “Have salt in yourselves, and live in peace with one another” (9:50), applies this metaphor in a moral exhortation to behave so as to achieve the peace that the sacrifice achieved."
- Robert Hamerton-Kelly, The Gospel and the Sacred, pp. 108-109
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"The call to amputate the offending hand, foot, and eye in verses 43-48 are by any account strange and troubling. Mark seems to be combining the Pauline metaphor of the community as “body” (see “hand, eye, foot” in 1 Corinthians 12:14-26) with the Pauline principle of not causing the “weaker member” to be scandalized (see Romans 14). But think of the modern analogy of the struggle against addiction. The process of recovery often feels like part of oneself (the addicted, codependent part) is being amputated. “Any struggle with addiction [...] involves deprivation,” writes Gerald May in Addiction and Grace. “Every false prop is vulnerable to relinquishment.” Such “amputation” is life-saving surgery on the cancer of our illusions and appetites.
"According to Mark, our greatest individual and social addiction is the will to dominate. Disciples are called to defect from what society may see as natural, such as all the ways “little ones” are routinely victimized by patterns of hierarchy and exclusion. But to do this is to be perceived as “defective” (like the amputee) by the dominant culture. These strange sayings, then, are arguing that it is better to be deformed than to conform to what oppresses more vulnerable members of the body politic.
"In a world of violence and institutionalized inequality, the choices are stark. We either embrace the “fire” of recovery (9:49) or live in the “hell” of addiction (9:48 alludes to the very last line in the book of Isaiah). Salt, used medicinally in antiquity, suggests that the goal is healing (9:49), which must include reconciliation within the community of faith (9:50)."
- Ched Myers, with Marie Dennis, Joseph Nangle, Cynthia Moe-Lobeda, and Stuart Taylor, “Say to This Mountain”: Mark’s Story of Discipleship, pg. 118
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"[Jesus] uses the word “Gehenna” which strangely is translated as “hell” in all our modern translations, which I think is deeply unhelpful, because Gehenna referred to something really quite physical, which was the trash heap which was constantly burning outside of Jerusalem [...] in the valley. And the contrast was between that, the trash heap with the fire which never went out because it was ever-burning trash, and the Temple up on high with its sacrifices, with salt, where the sacrifices were good things. Except of course [...] what's being brought out is something even bigger than that - the sacrifices on high are to be the lives of the disciples.
"And it's at this point that we get the last two verses... “For everyone will be salted with fire. Salt is good; but if salt has lost its saltiness, how can you season it? Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another.” So he's saying everyone will be salted... the whole question is, which way is your salt going to work? Is it going to be the salt of Leviticus 2:13 with which all holy sacrifices were salted?
"In other words, are you going to be becoming the new Temple, the one that is coming down promised in Isaiah, the one for which *all* will be salted? And you will therefore show that by being able to give yourselves into the midst of a sacrificial world without being run by a sacrificial mentality, and therefore actually to be able to take part in the bringing into being of the new Creation.
"Or are you going to be part, if you like, of the non-salted, conspiracy-theory-mongering, victimary-thinking group who are in fact going down into the trash where there's a different salt of burning sacrifice, the wrong salt, the trash-heap salt? It is these two are being paralleled with each other.
"He said... “but if salt has lost its saltiness, how can you season it? Have salt in yourselves.” So this is again, for those of us who love the thought of Rene Girard, this is this wonderful suggestion that it's the overcoming of victimary thinking in-between us that turns us into disciples. The work of the Holy Spirit is actually enabling us to become self-givers-away in the midst of victimary circumstances, rather than dwellers in victimhood and conspiracy.
"And therefore, “Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another.” He's saying that there are two patterns here: the pattern of the victimary heading to Gehenna, and the pattern the self-giving, avoiding [victimisation], having your desire purified so that you're no longer grabbing, grasping, planning deceit. And you are becoming the new Temple that is promised in Isaiah."
- James Alison, from video "Homily for Sunday 26 in Ordinary Time 2021" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWOcRpum_CY)
[Source of Robert Hamerton-Kelly and Ched Myers quotes, and for analysis and discussion on all this week's lectionary texts: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-b/proper21b/]
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