Sunday’s gospel passage is really several different teachings put together – or it reads that way. How otherwise to account for the abrupt change in mood from Jesus’ conversation with his disciples about how to respond to people outside the faith community to his stern warning against blocking children – and maybe also the poor and powerless – from believing in him:
“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.”
By “these little ones” he didn’t necessarily mean children. He may well have been referring to simple folk, plain, uneducated, unimportant in the eyes of society’s leaders. And who would dream of putting “stumbling blocks” in the way of such people? Not, we hope, his disciples, though more than once we see them trying to hush beggars or lepers calling out for Jesus.
He may have been targeting the religious leaders, Pharisees and scribes, whom he so often accused of laying burdens on people, making them feel they could never measure up to the demands of the law, forgetting the breadth of God’s mercy. Any insistence of the “right way” to believe, to act, to think, to worship can serve as a stumbling block to someone who has not been raised that way, or has another way of celebrating the love of God.
Are we snared here? Are there people whose spiritual progress toward Christ we impede? Maybe not impede – but how about don’t facilitate? Do we celebrate people’s belief in Christ wherever we find it, even if the packaging is different than ours? Do we make sure we are not creating barriers in the way we organize ourselves or worship? Are we out there creating easy on-ramps to faith by being open about our faith in Christ and the Good News?
There are people with a simple and natural faith in Jesus. I’m sure you can think of a few if you try. We need ask nothing of them but that they show us how to love our Lord so simply and so fully, for sometimes in our complexity we create stumbling blocks for ourselves.
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