Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost: Gospel, Mark 9:38-50              

Mark 9:38-50

I don’t like this text. I remember a very graphic example of sin being verbally put on display at one of my seminary chapels. The speaker talked candidly about premarital sex on that morning and painted the picture of the offenders (if they were Christians) tying Jesus to their backs as they engaged in their immorality. Even typing this now on my computer brings some of those same chills back that I experienced sitting next to my buddies in a  Portland, Oregon sanctuary nearly forty years ago.

Dragging Jesus into our sin. Binding Him to our sinful practice. It’s disgusting in the purest form of that word. Two things. Even though this week’s gospel doesn’t speak directly about sixth commandment issues, we are well served in remembering that it isn’t only sexual sins that we drag the Lord Jesus into. It’s all our sin(s). Lord, have mercy, and good Lord, deliver us.

Now the second thing. Jesus has chosen to bind Himself to our sin and I guess, in that, there is some relief for my troubled mind. How so? In allowing Himself to be nailed to a cross, He has declared an identification with the worst about us that reminds us of His great, cleansing love. While I still cringe at the example set by our chapel speaker so many years ago, I rest in the grace that truly is greater than all our sin.