Against: Mark 9:38-50
Ordinary Time
John said to him, "Teacher, we saw someone
casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he was not
following us."
But Jesus said, "Do not stop him; for no one who
does a deed of power in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of
me.
Whoever is not against us is for us.
For truly I tell you, whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you
bear the name of Christ will by no means lose the reward.
"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.
If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter
life maimed than to have two hands and to go to hell, to the unquenchable fire.
And if your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to
enter life lame than to have two feet and to be thrown into hell.
And if your eye causes you to stumble, tear it out; it is better for you to
enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and to be thrown
into hell,
where their worm never dies, and the fire is never quenched.
"For everyone will be salted with fire.
Salt is good; but if salt has lost its saltiness, how can you season it? Have
salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another." (NRSV)
I’ve been using drives lately to go
through my collection of old CDs—I have a lot, some of which go all the way
back to buying them in middle school.
(It was a very interesting day when I popped in Spice Girls for the
first time in decades.) I’m trying to
see whether I need to keep all these CDs, whether I even still like them. My music tastes now, as it turns out, are not
exactly the same as they were when I was 15.
I’m hoping that’s true of some of you, as well.
This past week
I was out and about and finished one CD and chose the next one in my case. It was DC Talk’s “Supernatural,” the group’s
fifth album that debuted in 1998. Now,
for a while in the 90s, I was a big DC Talk fan—for those who may not know,
they were an all-male Christian rock group that led the 90s influx of Christian
music that no longer shied away from rock, pop, and metal as viable genres for
faith-based lyrics. I didn’t care as
much about actually believing what they sang about, but I liked their sound and
they gave me brownie points when I had to go to church youth group.
On the
“Supernatural” CD is a song called “My Friend (So Long),” written “around the
idea of a fictitious fourth member of dc Talk that had left the band and found
success in the secular music industry.”[1] The lyrics include lines like “I saw your
video on VH-1 / Looks like they spent a ton / How does it feel to be the flavor
for a spell / And I remember when you used to say / ‘Jesus is the way’ / I
never thought I’d see your light begin to fade”.
The problem
when the song came out is that the band insisted on the fictional nature of
this break but fans didn’t believe it.
There were debates for multiple years as to what could have
happened behind the scenes to cause such a rift that this seemingly tight-knit
band would sing “Don’t think we don’t miss you/ [We think about you every day]
/ We still love you anyway”.
“Teacher, we
saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because
he was not following us.”
Today’s gospel
text comes in the thick of Jesus’ ministry, about two chapters before He goes
to Jerusalem to eventually be crucified.
The band of disciples has been together for a few years and they think
they have a handle on things—they’ve even been through the Transfiguration a
couple chapters back, so surely they have the inside scoop on what is and isn’t
acceptable for those who claim to be followers of Jesus. They can say “Jesus is the way” and feel
confident that they know what it means—well, until Jesus tells another parable
and they have to ask for the Cliffs’ Notes, but at least they know they’re on
the right team. They’re with Jesus
Himself.
And this other guy isn’t, but he’s
doing Jesus’ thing—Professor Paul Berge points out, “Waging the battle against
Satan, demons or unclean spirits is a central theme in Mark. The first public
act of Jesus’ ministry is casting out the unclean spirit of the man in the
synagogue in Capernaum (1:21-28).”[2] Full of this certainty—that they have it right
and this other guy is only taking on to the “flavor for a spell”—the disciples tell
Jesus about their policing efforts around the Jesus brand—and Jesus stops them
cold.
“Do not stop
him; for no one who does a deed of power in my name will be able soon afterward
to speak evil of me. Whoever is not
against us is for us.”
We usually
hear this the other direction—whoever is not for us is against us. In fact, I’ve stumbled when reading this text
aloud before because my brain wanted to switch the sentence, but Jesus is not
interested in making sure everyone toes the party line; He is interested in the
healing that comes. There’s power enough
in the name of Jesus that it can take care of itself, but there is power in the
act of good. God, Who we claim to be
perfectly good, isn’t going to be put out if there is wholeness offered on
God’s behalf; this is one of the few moments where the ends truly do justify
the means. The man is casting out
demons, bringing people back into the fold of society, so Jesus says good on
that guy. He is not working against
the bringing of the Kingdom—that promised state of completeness where there are
no more tears or pain or sorrow—so whatever he’s doing, keep doing it.
Jesus
continues, however, in no uncertain terms about what those who truly are
against Him and His name can do with their actions. It would be better to drown oneself than
cause a “little one” to stumble; better to cut off a hand or tear out an eye
than follow it into wrongdoing; better to keep one’s saltiness than be bland
enough to fall away from the Kingdom.
Even hell gets put on the table—here, “Gehenna (9:43, 45,
47)…a ravine south of Jerusalem notorious for pagan infanticide (2 Chronicles
28:1–14), envisioned by later Jews as the place of the wicked’s final judgment
(Luke 12:5).”[3]
Harsh, Jesus.
Now, please be
clear, this isn’t literal; don’t tear out your eyes or cut off your feet, not
least because self-maiming is prohibited in Deuteronomy (14:1) and Jesus would
have known that. But do note that it is
powerful to call those listening with such extreme imagery into a recognition
of what “the ones who are against us” actually means. This is a list of self-awareness, not
of appointing a local spirit watchman to make sure everyone else takes Jesus’
name the way the disciples think is correct.
“If any of you put a stumbling block…your hand…your foot…your
eye”.
Jesus doesn’t
want to hear about the disciples’ ideas on other people. He wants to know what they are doing
with their faith, their lives, their bearing of His name.
It is of
absolutely no surprise to anyone for me to say that we live in a divided nation
right now. Just yesterday I read a
report from The Detroit News that Michigan Representative Debbie Dingell
and Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene were filmed having an all-out
shouting match on the steps of the Capitol Building in D.C. after yet another
tense round of arguing on the House floor.
What caught my eye about this was not the video of two white women in
blue dresses screaming at each other about whether the other understood what it
meant to be “decent” but that both of them, in the five minutes of the fight,
invoked Christianity.
“You should
practice the basic thing you’re taught in church,” said one, and the other
replied, “Try being a Christian”.[4]
“We tried to
stop him because he was not following us.”
“I never thought I’d see your light begin to fade.”
The end of
today’s pericope has some interesting commentary on the nature of salt and then
an exhortation to “be at peace with one another,” and it’s tempting to look at
that and look at the fight on the Capitol steps and look at the passive-aggressive
dismissal of the dc Talk song and say “well everyone should just be nice to
each other.” That’s not what Jesus calls
for, however; being nice, or complacent, or refusing to speak up in the face of
actual injustice cannot be what Jesus wants after that many dire threats about
cutting off limbs and going to Gehenna.
There is a vast difference between being polite and being at peace. None other than Ronald Reagan said at one
point, “Peace is not the absence of conflict.
It is the ability to handle conflict by peaceful means.”
When the
disciples bring their indignance about this lone excommunicator working outside
of their rules and regulations; when our representatives hurl the name of
“Christian” at each other like knives to pinpoint the other person’s
wrongness; when we move through our lives with judgment of others because
surely we have the right way to follow Jesus, we are not at peace with
each other. Even if there is no fight,
there is no peace.
The peace
Jesus names, asks for, demands of those of us who claim His name, is peace
that restores. It is peace that protects
the little ones from stumbling blocks. It
is peace that keeps eyes and feet and ears on a path not made rigid with rules
but made gentle with respect to the personhood of those around us. It is peace that stays salty with the
bursting flavor and the preservative of faith that engages the world even on
its worst days to say with the God Who made it that this is valuable, that it
is redeemable, that not all hope is lost, that good is being done here.
It is peace
that accepts that sometimes, that good is going to be done by a means we did
not see coming because thanks be to all the denizens of Heaven, God does not
need our permission to be God and God does not work within our limitations of
what God can do.
It is not an
“us” and a “them” in this faith, in this life, and that’s so very hard because
it’s much easier to say “if you’re not with us, you’re against us.” Those are clearly drawn lines that fit into
tidy choruses and people praise us for our well-defined limits. But Jesus says to His disciples, says to us,
think more broadly than that. It is not
“us” and “them”; it is broken and healed.
It is fractured and whole. It is shackled
and free. It is unjust and just. It is cruel and merciful. These are the dichotomies between
which we are called to choose. These are
the measuring sticks by which we understand that we are using Jesus’ name
correctly.
Where do you
need to break down some “us”s and “them”s this week, Church? I’ll admit myself that I was in a place
recently that had Fox News playing and I made several snap judgments about it
without even talking to the person who owned the TV. But I am not called to snap judgments; I am
called to the work of justice, which starts with acknowledging the owner of the
TV and even the pundits on it as creations of the same God Who made me. We can and should argue about what they were
saying, but only in the context of goodness, not in the context of whether
they’re using the “right” name. Where is
God calling you to see the bigger picture of action?
May we
recognize God’s grace as we get it wrong and try again. May we recognize the Spirit’s love when we
get it right. And may we feel Christ’s delight
when we are part of the work of healing the wounded of all varieties. Amen.
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