Five words for Lent (3): Offence
Grace – God moves towards us, not because we deserve it but simply because we are loved.
The enemy – the spirit of accusation, telling us that we cannot be loved.
This week, I want to talk about something in our own nature that is a denial of grace, and is a resource for the enemy that is exploited in order to sustain that spirit of accusation – and that is the notion of offence.
Is it ever right for a Christian to be offended? I believe not. I believe that the degree of our ‘offence taking’ is the degree to which we remain to be converted to the gospel. Why do I say this? Well, let us start with something that Jesus says, which may seem a little curious: “blessed is he who takes no offence at me” (Mt 11.6). What does this mean - what is Jesus referring to when he talks about taking offence?
Well, there is a group of concepts in the New Testament which hang together, and need to be understood together. Consider these passages, which is a small selection:
1 Corinthians 1.23 “ we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles” (compare Ps 118.22 (quoted in Mk 12.10/Lk 20) Isaiah 8.12-15, 1 Peter 2 4-10)
Mark 9.42 - whoever causes one of these little ones to stumble, millstone...
Jn 16.1 - "these things I have told you so that you will not go astray"
There is a Greek word that lies behind these different terms, that is translated differently in different places, sometimes straightforwardly as scandal, sometimes as offence, sometimes as 'stumbling-block', or going astray. The word is skandalon (a noun) or skandalizo (a verb). Scandal, being scandalised; what Jesus is saying here is: “Blessed is the one who isn't scandalised by me”. All these aspects point to the same concept: offence.
What does this have to do with the enemy? Essentially Satan is the 'prince of this world' (John 12.31, 14.11, 14.30, 16.11). This does not mean that Satan created this physical world, over against God who created the spiritual world – that is gnosticism and absolutely opposed to Christian faith. No, Satan is the 'prince of this world' in the sense of being in charge of worldly things, worldly perspectives. Satan is literally 'the accuser', and who are the people who end up being accused? They are the ones who are a scandal, who by virtue of that scandal show that they are different, their values may be different, and that difference causes tensions that need to be eliminated. Last week I said that accusation always ends up with crucifixion. The stumbling-block is precisely the 'scandal', ie that which is offensive to this worldly mentality, this 'group think', and it is the perception of scandal which then drives the shouts of 'crucify!'
This is scapegoating, when one person or community is expelled or eliminated by the majority. We can think of Satan as being in charge of 'the herd', or the 'group mentality' which seeks a scapegoat on which to lay the problems of the group (think of the role of the Jews in 1930s Germany, a good example of the Satanic perspective being given free reign). This is what happens to Jesus – he offends the religious sensibilities, he causes the scandal and the tension, and the community expels and eliminates him.
The point of Christian faith, then, is that, through identification with Christ on the cross - the scapegoat crucified by the world - we are set free from these worldly patterns of thought. Therefore one hallmark of a Christian is precisely not "taking offence" - for the taking of offence is worldly judgement. The problem with skandalon – the taking of offence – is that it is an expression of worldly values. Scandal is contagious and reproduces itself across a society, forming a major way in which a society polices its own customs. This is 'the way of the world', and remember: the Satan, the ‘prince of this world’ is that force which seeks to reproduce scandal, the taking of offence – for it is in the shared nature of the offence taking that social solidarity is affirmed and reinforced. So to take offence is, in Christian terms, a sin. It is a breach in our relationship with God and with neighbour. As a redeemed sinner there is no place to stand over against a neighbour, thus there can be no exclusion, that exclusion which ultimately leads to murder – what we have instead is the sharing of peace, leading to communion. For us the stumbling block has become the cornerstone.
Christianity, however, begins with the scandal of the cross. That is, in the story of Jesus we have the unmasking of this process – a scapegoat who isn’t simply a victim, but one who understands this process and who forgives those who take part in it. In other words, a victim who does not take offence. This “non-taking of offence” is central to Jesus’ entire ministry – indeed, he is regularly criticised for eating with sinners and tax collectors, and memorably criticises the religious authorities saying that the prostitutes will get to heaven before them! Through not taking offence, through not seeing religious pieties as things to be defended, Jesus changes the social dynamics and enables a non-violent reconciliation with the excluded to take place. That is the essence of the Kingdom – an unmasking of this process of scandal, scapegoating and violence, in order that a new common life, not built upon these elements, can come into being.
Let me invite you to ponder one verse, from Matthew, where Jesus says: if your right eye causes you to stumble, pluck it out. Once again, the word there is skandal, in other words, Jesus is saying that if you are scandalised by something you see, if you take offence at something you see, you would be better off taking your eyes out than continuing in the state of being offended.
We are called to follow Christ's example. Thus, for a Christian, it is a sin to be offended. To take offence is to play the devil’s games, to enter into antagonism between the ‘righteous’ and the ‘unrighteous’, the ‘sinner’ and the ‘saved’. In letting go of any sense of offence, one is released from the mythological pressures embedded in all stories of ‘them and us’, and is set free to become the sort of person that God originally intended – living in peace and loving the neighbour. Living, most of all, in a spirit of forgiveness – and that is what I shall be discussing next week.