Jesuscare for all!
Mark 9:38-50
Our passage this week begins immediately after last week’s passage, and continues to answer the question of who can be counted as a real follower of Jesus. The disciples are once again acting as a stand in for the reader. John tells Jesus something very interesting. He says that someone else is casting out demons who does not follow “us.” He does not say that this person does not follow Jesus. He says that this person does not follow us, the disciples. In essence, they are telling us that there are people who work in the name of Jesus who follow different teachers. This makes very little sense in the context of a time when Jesus was alive, but it makes a lot of sense in the context of the time Mark’s gospel was written.
During this period there were many teachers who claimed to be following the teachings of Jesus, and they did not always see eye to eye. Arguments about things like, who’s baptism was better was a pretty common thing. This passage gives us an answer to that question from Jesus. Jesus comes out hard that we are all in this together. He says, “Whoever is not against us is for us.” All are welcome. Moreover, Jesus goes on to tell the disciples not to stop a person who is doing work in the name of Jesus, but does not come from the same tradition they come from. So, I take this to mean that Jesus is squarely in the camp that you should NOT protest in front of churches, because you don’t agree with their welcoming stance on Jesus’s teachings. Just saying.
The rest of the passage shows us Jesus getting really serious about what he wants and what the consequences might be for those who do not follow. In the previous passage he used welcoming a child as an example of serving others and following his teachings. This passage is from that same conversation, and he is referring back to that the child that he mentioned before. Anyone who, instead of welcoming that child, hinders that child’s ability to follow Jesus will meet a fate worse than being thrown in the river with a rock around their neck. He is pretty serious about this.
For the reader of the time, I think this would have made a pretty clear statement that the various Christian communities should be welcoming to one another. Instead of fighting, they should concentrate on following Jesus and serving others. But, for a reader of our time, I think there is a slightly different message. For us, there are rarely individual people that hinder our ability to follow Jesus and serve others. Yes, you can make exceptions for the time they made it illegal to give people water in Georgia, all those times that towns have made it illegal to feed the homeless, and that time someone made it much more difficult to welcome God’s children by dramatically curtailing the number of refugees that could be resettled in this country. Those all come down to individual people, and I would bet Jesus is not thrilled with them.
But, think about this: If I asked you today to spend a few hours feeding the homeless with me, would you say yes? For most of us, including me, the answer would be no, because I am just way too busy. We would be tempted to give ourselves a hard time, and assume that Jesus would not be happy with us. I think we do ourselves and Jesus a disservice if we stop there.
Why are we too busy to help one another? First, we live in a society where most of us must work ourselves to the point to exhaustion to have food, housing, health care and raise children. Second, we live in a society that discards the people who can’t keep up with that life to the streets. I think the biggest stumbling block in front of the feet of God’s children is not our individual failure to serve one another. Perhaps, the stumbling block is a we live in a society that systemically fails to take care of those in need and funnels money into the hands of those who need it least.
Individually we can’t do much, but as a society we could feed everyone and house everyone. As a society we choose not too. I think Jesus would say that a system that prevents us from following his teachings and does not care for God’s children is a system that needs to thrown in a river and replaced with something better. We should make time to help who we can, but we can’t forget the reality that if we work together, we can make change and help everyone. That is where following Jesus leads.
Don’t be afraid to let your friends know if you think this is something interesting. This only works if we work together.