Aren't these beautiful words? And they resonate so well with the little collection of wisdom sayings that Mark quotes in the passage read this morning. Instead of saying, "Either you are with us or you are against us" or using a variation of this saying as George Bush did in 2001 after 9/11, Jesus said, "anyone who is not against us is for us." (Incidentally, one of the other gospel writers—Matthew—has Jesus saying, "if you are not with us, you are against us." Without delving into the mechanics of understanding the biblical texts, some scholars think that Mark quoted Jesus more accurately than Matthew and this change may be more about the community of Matthew than about Jesus.) By saying that those who aren't necessarily with us, but who are doing good work in the world anyway, is hopeful and powerfully community-building. It anticipated well our multi-faith world today and the fact that many Christian denominations are working with other faiths around the world and here at home in Canada to create justice and hope in the lives of all people.

And even the wisdom sayings that Mark offers from Jesus about those who are the downfall of the little ones are at their heart not so much about the consequence as much as they are about the gift of life. The trick of wisdom is to capture people's attention and sometimes one uses negative images to get people to look at hope, love, and the positive aspects of living one's life. Jesus uses this trick of wisdom in these sayings from Mark. And let me say that far from defining hell, which I don't think Jesus believed in, Jesus was really pointing to the hell that many live in the here and now. Hell, in some ways for Jesus and others, was a self-imposed or a societal exclusion and separation from God. Hell is the fact that we don't always appreciate the love of God and the fact that we are created in the image of God. Gehenna, which is the translation of hell, is an actual place. It is thought to be the valley of Hinnom, a valley close to Jerusalem where history has it that those who lived in that region 3 thousand and more years ago practiced child sacrifice. In later years, it became the garbage dump for Jerusalem. So, its associations are negative. When I was young people used to say that if you weren't good, the bogeyman was going to get you—the bogeyman wasn't real (despite the Halloween series of movies and Freddie Kruger!). It unfortunately frightened many children, me included. In Jesus' day and age, it might have been said, you better be good or you'll be sent to the valley of Hinnom!

I still believe that at their heart, these wisdom sayings of Jesus were about light, love and hope-filled living. And I believe in this Wisdom-Jesus who lived such a radical life and who continually pushed the envelope of what is right and good. This Wisdom-Jesus is so life-giving and life-affirming.

Many years ago, shortly after I started here at Nelson United, I was called to the hospital by reception. They said a patient wanted to talk to a minister. I went up to speak with a rather distraught man who was being slowly consumed by something from his past—he never did tell me what; he couldn't tell me. He had never been baptised and didn't live in the area. He asked me to baptise him. In a flash, all of the things wrong about this situation raced through my mind. In the United Church we don't baptise people privately. I thought to myself that maybe he would be more comfortable speaking to a minister from a conservative tradition. I wondered where we would do this baptism and how I would do it. I wondered if I should. It was like I was outside of myself watching my brain at work in a split-second. In the end I rejected all of these negative arguments and realized that because Jesus is about love and I believe in this Wisdom-Jesus, I should baptise this man and provide whatever pastoral care I could at the time. I made the appropriate arrangements and I baptised this man as a pastoral emergency. When he made the promises, he was sincere and when the water touched his head, it was like a weight lifted from his shoulders. I could actually see it! I went back to see him some days later, but he had been transferred to a hospital closer to where he lived. I've never seen him since.

It was like a part of me was afraid to proclaim the beauty and grace of the Jesus that I have come to know and choose to follow. He's the Jesus who opens us to the light of the world and the light that is in each of us. He's the Jesus who helps us to remember the gift of love that has been planted deeply in our beings, the ancient love that is like DNA that stretches back in time and forward into eternity. He's the Jesus who helps us overcome our fears of one another, of ourselves, of the unknown and says, "Don't be afraid. My love is stronger than your fear."