Coffee With God

Reflection: Mk 9:41-50

Mark the evangelist expresses his concerns over the bad examples of the members of his community and leading others into loss of faith in the message of the Gospel. He reminds his Community, about how harsh Jesus was, on those who created divisions in the community. St. Mark would teach the Church in Rome that death would a better option than causing a scandal in the community. The word “cause to stumble” or “scandalise” is also used on certain other occasions in the Gospel. In the parable of the seed, the same word is used to refer to “fall away” – referring to those who lost faith in face of troubles or persecutions (4:17). It was then used for the townspeople of Nazareth who rejected the person and message of Jesus (6:3). It would be used again at the time of Jesus’ agony before his arrest, to refer to the loss of faith of the disciples (14:27). Causing scandals or divisions in the community is the work of evil. How explains the gravity of causing a division by comparing it with the chopping off of different limbs of the body. If the whole body refers to the Church of Christ, the different limbs are the members of the Church. Mark must have been referring to the need to isolate from the community those who create divisions among the brothers in the community, where the community was in danger of breaking up. Mark suggests adopting severe measures to perseverance in faith. The message remains so relevant to the Church today, which is divided into pieces on account of our trivial fixations. Jealousy and envy often ruin the life of the community. And all the works we do in the Church fail to be service but turns out to be means of affirming our social status, our ego and ourselves. God has blessed us with eyes, hands and legs to observe and reach out to the needs of our brothers and sisters, to do them good. Whoever wastes their chance to do good in this world loses, forever, the unique opportunity that God has offered him or her; ruins himself or herself like garbage. The Gospel invites us to be vigilant over our own hearts, lest we succumb to evil and bring scandal to others and we become nothing but garbage that needs to be burned in the garbage bin. The word “Gehenna” was the place where all the garbage of the city was dumped. St. Mark reminds his community to make every effort to make their lives beneficial to the community. It is an urgent call to cut off our wrong behaviours, attitudes, lifestyles and ideologies so that we wouldn’t let our lives be wasted in the garbage bin.