It’s pretty delightful to live across the street from an elementary school. I love the way the neighborhood comes alive with the morning and afternoon rush of pick-ups and drops-offs. I love the drone of children’s voices outside for recess—the bellows, the high-pitched screams, the little yelps of joy. I love glimpsing kids hard at work in the school garden—planting veggies, learning the names of herbs and flowers, weeding, picking and eating. And on evenings and weekends when the school yard is quiet and deserted, for me, this land holds an almost sacred quality as a place set aside for the nurturing of children. 

Remember last week’s Gospel passage? Jesus took a child in his arms. True greatness is to serve, he said. If you want to be great, welcome the littlest and the least—like this child I’m holding. Value their lives just as God does. And in so doing you will know God and join in making God’s dream for the world a reality. Well, there is no indication in today’s reading, which comes right after this, that Jesus had put the child down. It seems that John interrupted him in the middle of the lesson. “Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us.” Though John respectfully addressed Jesus as “Teacher” this comment makes it clear he does not actually understand or accept Jesus’ teaching. The desire to prevent others from using Jesus’ name to heal was steeped in the very culture of competition Jesus had just finished critiquing. It seems that John wanted exclusive rights to the Jesus brand. But Jesus countered this impulse, saying: “Whoever is not against us is for us.” Jesus was interested in collaborating, in joining forces with anyone whose character or actions resonated with his, whose labors helped to build the beloved community he came to establish.

This fall we’ve been reading the scriptures with a question in mind, “What are the politics of Jesus?” Not who would Jesus vote for or which party would he support. But how do the teachings of Jesus have the potential to shape our shared public life? What are the values and the vision that we as followers of Jesus ought to take into the larger community to which we belong? I think it’s fair to say that the politics of Jesus are mycelial. Yes, I’m talking about mushrooms again, sort of. Recently, I received an amazing book as a gift: Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds by Merlin Sheldrake. It’s full of these gorgeous photos of fungi—dazzlingly diverse in color, size and shape; from mushrooms that turn rotting logs into stunning works of art, to fields of intricately patterned microscopic spores, to the fuzzy interlacing threads of the mycelium that literally connect our entire planet. And strangely, I do think that Jesus and fungi are both leading us in the same direction today. Toward a vastly different way of understanding this world and our place in it. 

Today’s Gospel passage is a wonderful example of why we should be very careful about reading the Bible literally. Jesus was not actually threatening his disciples with drowning and hell nor was he really advocating for the chopping off of hands and feet, the tearing out of eyes. I imagine he was still cradling a little child in his arms, as he said: “If any of you put a stumbling-block before one of these little ones who believe in me.” The word translated stumble here, skandalon, was commonly used to describe a trap for catching a live animal. It carried the nuance of tripping someone up, seeking their downfall and destruction. So this language draws a vivid portrait of someone who preys on those with less power.

Jesus knew he wasn’t getting his message across even to his closest followers, so he used imagery designed to shock, agitate and awaken them. “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.” In other words, harming children (or other vulnerable people) destroys the abuser as well as the abused. Jesus drove home this point by using the same language both to describe the harm and to name its consequences. “If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off.” Those who trip up little ones will end up being victims of their own traps. “It is better for you to enter life maimed than to have two hands and to go to hell, to the unquenchable fire.” The word translated “hell” multiple times in this passage is Gehenna, which was the name of an actual place, a valley outside Jerusalem notorious for its association with child sacrifice. The books of 2 Chronicles and Jeremiah recount that some of ancient Israel’s kings adopted the practices of other gods, making their own sons “pass through fire” in Gehenna. 

So really, “hell” is a place here on earth. Hell is a self-destructive society in which we sacrifice little ones for greed, or out of fear, or because we lack the power to prevent their slaughter. Hell is child hunger and child labor. It’s hell that we are unable to prevent gun violence in classrooms and that our tax dollars are paying for the weapons that are murdering children in Gaza. Hell is extractive capitalism, a system that values profit over people, that normalizes exploitation of the earth, that believes the abuse of the poor and powerless is an inevitable consequence of doing business. And the alternative to hell, Jesus taught his disciples, is the “kingdom of God,” which is a beloved community that brings abundant life to all of us by centering the needs and celebrating the gifts of the littlest ones.

As I said, lately I’ve been learning about fungi. The first couple of paragraphs of Entangled Life, sum up the wonder of this subject. Sheldrake writes:    

Fungi are everywhere but they are easy to miss. They are inside you and around you. They sustain you and all that you depend on. As you read these words, fungi are changing the way that life happens, as they have done for more than a billion years. They are eating rock, making soil, digesting pollutants, nourishing and killing plants, surviving in space, inducing visions, producing food, making medicines, manipulating animal behavior, and influencing the composition of the Earth’s atmosphere. Fungi provide a key to understanding the planet on which we live, and the ways that we think, feel and behave. Yet they live their lives largely hidden from view, and more than 90 per cent of their species remain undocumented. Fungi make up one of life’s kingdoms—as broad and busy a category as “animals” or “plants.” (p. 19)

Sheldrake suggests that studying fungi suggests a seismic change in the way we view our lives on this planet. Fungi offer us another version of intelligence, one that is vastly different from our own yet perhaps complimentary. They mess with our sense of scale—what it means to be big or small—and with our boundaries and categories. Sheldrake explains that “For your community of microbes (trillions of them, many of them fungi)—your body is a planet.” (p. 32) Given the intertwining of their lives with everything on this earth, fungi make us wonder in what sense individuals even exist. And it seems that fungal networks, known as mycelium, might in fact be our partner in designing equitable and sustainable ways for human communities to work.  

Our teacher Jesus uses strong language to agitate us to take action to clear the obstacles in the way of beloved community. He urges us to examine whether the most entrenched stumbling blocks preventing change might in fact be parts of ourselves, ways of thinking and being that seem as integral to us as our hands, feet, or eyes. May his fiery rhetoric awaken us. May it jolt our senses out of complacent acceptance of hell on earth. May it call us to recognize that the health of us all depends on the well-being of the littlest ones, and to build networks of collaboration, care, and justice that allow us all to thrive together. Amen.