SERMON FOR SEPTEMBER 26, 2021              TEXT: MARK 9:38-50

          Jesus has just insisted once again that whoever would be first must be last and the servant of all. He has made his point visually as well by placing a child in the midst of his disciples and charging them to welcome such little ones, persons who lack power or status, who are vulnerable and dependent. “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me” (Mark 9:37). And then one of the disciples, John, interrupts to tell Jesus about some stranger who has infringed upon their prerogatives. Jesus had granted the disciples the power to cast out unclean spirits (Mark 6:13), although they were not always successful. Shortly before this exchange, a man whose son had been tormented by such a spirit, approached Jesus, seeking his help. The father told him that he had previously asked the disciples to heal the boy, but they were unable to do so. Now they jump on the anonymous exorcist, who has apparently had more success with his healing work. He is not part of their in-group, yet he presumes to use Jesus’ name. They find his “deeds of power” offensive and try to stop him. So much for welcoming the stranger in their midst! It is not clear whose honor they think they are defending, Jesus’ or their own. Given the fact that they were just arguing among themselves about who was the greatest in their circle, it’s likely they couldn’t tolerate competition from an outsider.

          “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” Jesus responds. “Whoever is not against us is for us.” This verse from Mark’s Gospel has a fraternal twin in Matthew 12:30, where Jesus rebukes the Pharisees. He has cured a blind mute, and the amazed crowds wonder if he is not indeed the Son of David. The Pharisees, however, scoff at this: “It is only by Beelzebul, the ruler of the demons, that this fellow casts out the demons.” Jesus responds, “If Satan casts out Satan, he is divided against himself; how then will his kingdom stand? But if it is by the Spirit of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come to you. . . . Whoever is not with me is against me . . . .” The first saying sounds open and receptive; the second sternly restrictive. How do they fit together? One of my teachers points out this crucial difference between them. He writes, “[T]he first    saying tells us how to think of the other person, while the second tells us how to think of ourselves. The first, ‘Whoever is not against us is for us,’ calls for generosity in our estimate of others; the second, ‘Whoever is not with me is against me,’ calls for honesty in testing ourselves. By the one, we accept the profession of others; by the other, we try our own profession [of faith]. One says, ‘Judge not’; the other says, ‘Examine yourself.’    * * * John told the Master, perhaps expecting to be praised, that he and his friends had stopped the man from casting out demons in Jesus’ name; and Jesus replied, ‘Whoever is not against us is for us.’ But he might just as well have said: John, are you really with me? Or is there something you value more than loyalty to me? Are you more concerned for your group than for my name? He said, ‘Whoever is not against us is for us.’ Might he not just as well have said, ‘John, whoever is not with me is against me’?”

          The Lord is hard-nosed about gentleness of spirit. He cuts his followers no slack when it comes to generosity. The faculty of the seminary in Berkeley where I taught was small, and consequently the sharp edges of each individual member were regularly on display. There was the guy who probably did know better than the rest of us much of the time and could not understand why others didn’t simply get on board as he bulldozed ahead with his plan. One senior professor had a clinical case of oppositional defiance disorder that, if triggered, would make for slow going on almost any issue. Some weren’t organized enough for others’ comfort level. A few needed to exorcise their demons on a regular basis by talking things to death. There was a handful of sketchy communicators plus two people notorious for their inability to follow through on decisions made. We all took turns at being the one who never saw the memo everybody else had read. My favorite was the senior New Testament scholar, who sat silently through discussions, maybe mediating on the glory of God or planning his next book. Then, when it was time to take action, he popped up like the dormouse from the teapot in Alice in Wonderland to ask what we were voting on. The secretary repeated the motion for his benefit, and he regularly responded, “Why, we can’t do that!” It was deja vu all over again at every faculty meeting. Garden variety irritations all, but the accumulation over time could become corrosive. The colleague in the office neighboring mine told me shortly after my arrival on campus, “Jane, we are a small faculty in a small seminary far away from the Lutheran heartland. We learned a long time ago that if we don’t all row in the same direction, our boat will go down. We aren’t all best friends, but we respect each other. We make it work.” You and I are claimed by God’s love, every one of us seeking together to follow the Lord’s way of mercy and peace, while not walking in lockstep. We can well afford to be generous, to exercise self-restraint, to disagree and still respect one another, to let a failing go rather than rub it in. As my wise and faithful colleague helped me understand, “We make it work” in Christ’s name.

          So we come back to Jesus, who, having exhorted his disciples to see an ally rather than look for an adversary, now warns them sternly. He is still holding the child in his arms when he says, “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.” Better to cut off your hand or your foot or pluck out your eye than let any one of them seduce you into betraying the kingdom of God, causing you to fall and to bring others down with you. Better to lose a limb or an eye than to be thrown into hell, into the unquenchable fire, where their worm never dies, and the fire is never quenched.

          For all the grace and mercy God promises us, one cannot dismiss the terror pronounced here by Jesus as an empty threat. What we do and what we leave undone, what we see and what we choose to distort, matter. The good we choose and the harm we inflict have consequences, for others in this life and for us in eternity. Jesus is focusing on this child, who represents all the little ones, the vulnerable and dependent ones, whose lives are affected by our actions. How striking that a child, who is not in a position to speak on her own behalf, takes center stage in this story. And we are hearing it at a time when it is our children, who cannot be vaccinated, who are at risk and cannot protect themselves. They depend on us to take their safety to heart, to speak and act on their behalf. Little ones and mighty ones, people of faith and those outside our communities, will judge the church by its witness in this anxious time.

          Discipleship encompasses matters both commonplace and unprecedented — generosity in the everyday stress and strain of our common life; protecting our neighbors through a pandemic. We are called to do our own deeds of power in Jesus’ name, and by his grace we will meet the challenge. Amen.