Father Stephen De Young: So, we start chapter 17. Now, keep in mind, we still haven’t had a break. This is another ongoing, you may be noticed, St. Luke’s Gospel, there are sort of these discourses, these sort of units. We had the dinner party where Jesus told several parables and said several things. Now we’ve got this, which began all the way back in the beginning of chapter 15, is when this all started. It started because the tax collectors and sinners were all coming around and hanging around Jesus and repenting. And the Pharisees weren’t happy about it. They said, “Look what kind of people he hangs around with.” And so, he told three parables, the Lost Sheep, the Lost Coin, the Lost Son. He then spoke to his disciples about the Unjust Steward. The Pharisees overheard that, so now he told this parable to the Pharisees. Now, the beginning of chapter 17, he’s going to turn back to his disciples. He’s spoken to the Pharisees, back to his disciples:

Then He said to the disciples, “It is impossible that no offenses should come, but woe to him through whom they do come!”

So what’s he saying there? You’re going to sin, right? You’re going to sin, you’re going to do wrong, you’re going to offend people. Jesus realizes that. He realizes that we’re sinful people. He realizes that we’re weak. He realizes we’re going to stumble.

“But woe to him through whom they come.” Remember “woe”. This isn’t what you yell to stop a horse, “Whoa!” [Laughter] Here in Greek, this is a curse. This is effectively a curse word, but probably better, “cursed is he through whom they do come.”

What is this saying? Jesus is saying on the one hand, yes, I realize you’re going to sin, but that’s not an excuse. That’s not, “Oh, hey, we’re all sinners, right? Nobody’s perfect.” That’s not an excuse, but it’s the reality. It’s the reality.

It would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck, and he were thrown into the sea, than that he should offend one of these little ones.

Now, the word “offend” here doesn’t… people, especially today in our modern American culture, people get offended an awful lot by just about everything, just about anything you say someone can find a way to get offended at. That’s not what this is talking about. Jesus is not here saying, you need to be politically correct and make sure you never offend anyone or else you’re going to be in big trouble. You’re going to be accursed.

The word here that’s used is actually literally scandal, scandalia, in Greek, it’s literally the word scandal, right? Scandal is going to come. Okay, so this is more like the politically correct term. When I was a prison guard, we weren’t supposed to call them inmates. We were supposed to call them offenders. So this is “offend” in that sense, okay? Committing an offense, committing an offense. Scandalia is plural, scandalion is singular, literally a stumbling block, something that trips somebody up. Something that causes a fall. So when he says this, he’s saying someone who offends against these little ones.

Interlocutor: Is this like in Proverbs, “stumble”?

Fr. Stephen: Yeah, you could interpret that way, but by sinning yourself. So this is more connected I think to for example, in Proverbs, “cursed is he who throws a stumbling block of the path of the blind”, right? Which sounds really horrible, like really, you’re going to go find this handicapped person and trip them for your amusement? But it’s an analogy. Notice though, even in that analogy we saw these little ones. He’s not talking about like, “Oh, there’s some children here.” He’s talking to his disciples. So who is he talking about? He’s talking about the big crowd, right? There’s this big crowd following him around, all those tax collectors and sinners who are repenting.

So, he’s warning his disciples about how they behave and how they act towards these people, who, compared to the disciples, now the disciples are pretty blind at this point too, right? But Jesus knows he’s going to die. He knows he’s going to rise from the dead. He knows that they’re going to become the apostles and found the church, right? So he’s talking about their relationship with these people who compared to them are blind. That’s why they’re the leaders. They’re supposed to be the leaders. They’re supposed to understand these things. They’re supposed to be helping the people, not taking advantage of the people, not throwing stumbling blocks on their path, not offending and sinning against them, not leading them into sin.

Now this is not so subtle, who was he just talking to? The Pharisees. About what? About getting rich, about worrying about their own reputations, about how they treated their wives. So it’s only very thinly veiled here that Jesus is saying the Pharisees are the leaders. Now. They’re the religious leaders in Judea at this time. The disciples he’s talking to are going to be the religious leaders in the church. He’s telling them, “You need to not be like them.” he’s just told them they’re on the way to ending up like that rich man.

This millstone being tied around your neck, throwing in the sea, that’s another analogy for the same thing. A millstone was the giant round stone with a hole in the middle. The way they would grind grain. People hadn’t invented windmills, yet. They would have two big round stones with a hole in the middle for a bar. The grain would be put between the two stones and they’d have somebody pushing on pegs to turn it around. Grain would get ground down and milled down in between the two stones. So he’s saying, “Imagine we took one of those big stones, tied a rope through the hole in the middle, tied it around your neck, and threw that stone in the sea.” That’s what’s waiting for you, if, like the Pharisees, you choose to take advantage of, offend against put stumbling blocks of the path of the people who Jesus is calling them to lead.

Take heed to yourselves. If your brother sins against you, rebuke him; and if he repents, forgive him.

Now, let’s pause there. Notice it does not say “If your brother sins against you. Just let it slide, man. Don’t worry about it. You’re a sinner, too. Who are you to judge?” That’s not what it says, right? If your brother sins against you, rebuke him. And if he repents, forgive him. Remember, they’re the leaders. They’re the leaders. So their job is, what? The salvation of the people they’re leading. What does salvation require? Repentance. They’re there to bring the people to repentance, not to overlook their sins. Not to overlook their sins. Remember what started this whole discourse. You’re hanging around with a bunch of sinners, right? Jesus has been making very clear he’s not just overlooking people’s sins. He’s not just saying, “Okay, yeah, that law thing, that’s old, we’re done with that. It’s a New Covenant, forget it. Now we’re just all about loving everybody.” It’s not what he’s saying. It’s still about repentance.

And so, if your brother sins against you and you bring him to repentance, you’ve done a good thing. You’ve brought him closer to salvation. If you just ignore it and don’t address it so that he keeps sinning, what have you done? You kept him going on the trajectory that’s going to lead to his own destruction. It’s not coincidental that clergy of the Orthodox Church use the title “Father”, right? Because if you’re a father and you never correct your children, ever, do you love them? Do you care about them? They go and play in traffic, and you’re just like, “Have fun!” They want to go grab the stove burner, and you’re just like, “Hey, let’s see what happens.” No. If you love your children, you correct them. Why? Because you hate them? No, for their own good. For their own good. So that they can grow, right? Be spared trouble. Same thing here.

When we correct our brother about sin, bring them to repentance, and then show them forgiveness, which is step three here. We’ve brought them closer to salvation. So that’s a good thing. That is a good thing.

And if he sins against you seven times in a day, and seven times in a day returns to you, saying, ‘I repent,’ you shall forgive him.”

You shall forgive him. Why? How many times do we have to ask God to forgive us in a day? If we take our behavior seriously? Me at least a lot more than seven, right? I don’t think I’ve ever had an only seven-sin day in my life.

70 times seven, maybe a couple of times, but I’ve never had a seven-sin day. So, if I’m wanting God to forgive me that much, I need to be willing to forgive my brother that much. And more importantly, if someone is a leader in the church or a leader in a Christian family or a leader in a Christian community wants to represent the love of God to the people who he’s leading, then we have to love them the way God loves them, which means even if they keep coming back, we keep forgiving them.

And the apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith.”

Increase our faith. Why would they say that? Well, Jesus just put a pretty heavy onus on them. He just put a pretty big responsibility on them. And he said, “You guys are the leaders. These are like little children. You need to lead them.” So this is one of the few times in the Gospels where the disciples actually seem to get it a little. They at least understand, “Wow, that’s a pretty heavy responsibility. We’re going to need a lot more faith than we have right now in order to pull this off.” So, it’s one of their few moments of clarity. We should point that out because we’ve made it a point of pointing out how clueless the disciples are a lot of the time. Here’s a time where they’re kind of on point, understand that they’re not up to the task that Jesus is sending them.

So the Lord said, “If you have faith as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be pulled up by the roots and be planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.”

So they say, “We’re going to need more faith.” And let’s Jesus responds, if you have even a little mustard seed, you can go to Kroger and look at one if you haven’t seen one before. It’s in the spice aisle. Little tiny mustard seed. If you have a little bit of faith, you can say to this tree, “Go be planted in the sea.” This is an impossible thing, right? You can’t plant a tree in the ocean. So you’re saying you could do things that seem impossible with just a little faith. Because they looked at what Jesus just told them to do and they said, what? “That’s impossible, we need more faith. You need to give us more. You need to give us more faith.” And Jesus says, “just a little and you can do things that seem impossible.”

“And which of you, having a servant plowing or tending sheep, will say to him when he has come in from the field, ‘Come at once and sit down to eat’? But will he not rather say to him, ‘Prepare something for my supper, and gird yourself and serve me till I have eaten and drunk, and afterward you will eat and drink’? Does he thank that servant because he did the things that were commanded him? I think not. So likewise you, when you have done all those things which you are commanded, say, ‘We are unprofitable servants. We have done what was our duty to do.’”

Why are these two things put together? Well, they just said, we can’t do this, it’s too hard, right? We need more faith. You only need a little, and you do impossible things. But then he’s saying, once you’ve done impossible things, don’t go thinking that you’ve done God some great favor. Because he says, “If you have a servant who’s out working in your field, you’ve got a guy mowing your lawn, when he’s done mowing your lawn and you’ve paid him for mowing your lawn, do you invite him in and serve him a big meal?”

No, right? If you have a servant, you have somebody who you’re paying to cook for you. You’re paying them. They come and do their job and feed you. “Oh, thank you so much for doing your job.” I’ve never had a boss like that. I’ve never had a boss who came around and said, “Thank you for showing up on time to work today. I appreciate it so much.” Like I’m doing them a favor. Now, if I’m late, I’ve heard from them, but I’ve never heard “Isn’t it great that you show up at work on time and leave on time? Thanks so much for not taking an extra ten minutes at lunch every day.”

You don’t hear that, right? Because you’re doing what you’re supposed to be doing. You’re not going above and beyond. We sometimes think that. We sometimes think that we have done some great thing for God if we lead like a reasonably Christian life, right? As if keeping the Ten Commandments is something to be proud of. “I didn’t murder anyone today, nor did I cheat on my wife. Aren’t I great? Give me a gold star.”

The point being, if you kept the whole law of the Old Testament perfectly, let’s say you did, let’s say you went a whole day without sinning once, hypothetical, for me especially, but hypothetical.

You went a whole day without committing any sense, what would you be able to say at the end of that day? “I did what was required of me today.” That’s it. You haven’t earned anything. So the fact that I don’t do that in any given day right, means I’m down in the demerit position. This is part of, this gets back, actually, to the purgatory question. Hitting this bar, where now, “Okay, I’m perfect and I can go to heaven.”

Again, If I actually was perfect and I never sinned, would that earn me eternal life? No. According to Jesus right here. If I were absolutely perfect as a human being. I would have done the minimum that God required of me. I wouldn’t have earned anything extra.

Interlocutor: What happens to that guy?

Fr. Stephen: What guy, the theoretical perfect guy? He dies, and he’s dead.

But this is what St. Paul is getting at. And this is a place where our Protestant friends and our Roman Catholic friends have been arguing for 500 years about something irrelevant, right? It’s a misunderstanding of what St. Paul’s going to say about faith and works. Because what they’re going to argue about is essentially how you earn your way into heaven. How do you accumulate the merits that you need to get into heaven? And our Protestant friends are going to say, “Well, Jesus earns all those merits, and then if you have faith in Jesus, he gives them to you for free.” And our Roman Catholic friends are going to say, “Jesus earns those merits, he earns a whole lot of merits. Plus, the saints earn some merits, and you can earn some merits. And you get some of Jesus’ merits and some of the saints’ merits and some of your own merits and you pile them all up in a big pile until it reaches to heaven.”

In both cases, you are doing something that Jesus here says is impossible and that St. Paul is going to say is impossible. You’re earning eternal life. How can you earn the right to share in the life of God? What can you, as a human being, do to earn the right to share in the life of the Holy Trinity? Nothing. There is no right. There is no bar.

God freely shares his life with us, so it’s asking the wrong question. Asking, “How do I get the merits I need to get into heaven?” Is asking the wrong question. The question we should be asking is, God, in his grace and his mercy, wants to share his life with us. How do we participate in his life? How do we share in his life? The answer is through faith in Jesus Christ. The answer is through participating in the works that God is doing in this world. The answer is through the sacraments. The answer is through prayer. All of these things are ways that God has provided for us to share in his life. And the experience of sharing in his life through all those things is what we call salvation.

So, we’re fundamentally answering a different question than the one they’re answering. They’re arguing about the answer to a question that we don’t ask, because we think it’s the wrong question. And this is one of the main passages having to do with that, where Christ makes it plain. Thinking that we could do something to earn or achieve sharing in the life of God is like, I have a number of rescue dogs. It’s like thinking that those dogs did something to earn being in my home. They were stray dogs down at the pound and what, they just behaved better than all the other stray shelter dogs or they were cuter or something, right? They believed in me, and the other dogs didn’t. Doesn’t it make any sense.

The same way we can’t… what God has given us is so far beyond even what we can understand, let alone achieve, that it’s the wrong question. And so, our goal in our life, what we struggle for through repentance and through living the Christian life, is to try to just do our job. Do the minimum requirements as best we can. And when we fall short, we repent, and God forgives us. But we’re not working on achieving some glorious reward that we’re going to earn because we did the right things and made the right choices and believed the right things. It’s not how it works. It’s not how salvation works. And Jesus is saying to the disciples and to the Pharisees who he knows are listening that that’s not how salvation works. Even for the apostles, even for the saints, even for the leaders of the Church, that’s not how salvation works.

Actually, I think going to leave off here because that’s the end of this discourse. As you can see, the next verse begins with “Now, it happened.” And as we’ve said before, that’s a transition, right, that’s covering the Aramaic word henai It’s usually translated “behold” in the King James but means “now” or “look” or “hear”. We’re going to begin another section here. So this is probably a good place to leave off. So we’ll pick up next week here in verse eleven. Thank you everybody.