Mark 9:38-end (NRSV)
Another
Exorcist
38 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.’39But Jesus said, ‘Do
not stop him; for no one who does a deed of power in my name will be able soon
afterwards to speak evil of me.40Whoever is not against us is for us. 41For 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.
Temptations
to Sin
42 ‘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. 43If 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. 45And 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. 47And 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, 48where their worm never
dies, and the fire is never quenched. 49 ‘For everyone will be
salted with fire. 50Salt 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.’
In this reading we encounter the experience of the
disciples (and from other documents the experience of the early Christians) of
an exorcist who successfully used the name of Jesus for the purposes of
exorcism – but without becoming a Christian. Here, the disciples are troubled
by this – and by our Lord’s own solution to the problem – as Nineham suggests:
“… an exceedingly tolerant solution, indeed so tolerant as to arouse some doubt
of its genuiness …” Nineham is of the view that “… if the first Christians had
from the beginning such explicit directives to tolerance, it is hard to account
for the very intolerant attitude they seem often to have adopted in such cases
…’
I do not have the same difficulty! It would appear to be
quite logical that such occasions arose in Jesus’ own time and it is well in
line with our Lord’s demeanour to welcome the outsider. As Jesus relies: ‘Do not stop him; for
no one who does a deed of power in my name will be able soon afterwards to
speak evil of me.40Whoever is not against us is for us.’
Tolerance, especially of those whose lives and good and pure, is vital
for us as Christians. For those who exhort the name of Jesus and never speak
evil of him are indeed ‘… on our side …’ I find this every day as some of the
loveliest boys I teach are of other faiths. They revere our Lord – but just do
not take the final step of accepting him as we do – as God incarnate. But they
see him as being of such great importance that they would never speak evil of
him.
Indeed, you might recall, when there have been blasphemous plays about
Jesus, it has often been the Muslim community that have protested most
vehemently and even challenged us Christians for being too weak to stand up for
our Lord.
I also love the way Jesus ends this first section; he focuses on the
ordinary, because we humans, often prefer to focus on the spectacular. It is
often in the simplest things where the presence of Christ becomes most manifest
– giving a thirsty person a drink of water.
Who belongs to God is God’s business. I firmly believe that Jesus is who
the New Testament claims him to be because this is my experience and I will
never deny it. But the same New Testament claims that when a person loves
another in an unselfish way, God is present and they dwell in him and he in
them (1 John).
It is too easy to try to argue this passage away as some later addition.
I believe our Lord wants us to focus on what matters: living the life of
tolerance and acceptance for others, especially those who deeply revere his
name, even if they do not go as far as we do and we would with them to do.
I know only too well, that sometimes radical surgery is
needed in order to save the health of a body; for as you know I don’t have a
duodenum, a gallbladder, most of my pancreas and part of my stomach. Here,
Jesus tells us that the same is true for our spiritual lives. It seems pretty
obvious that Jesus is speaking symbolically and that he is saying – using
typically eastern imagery - that there
is a goal in life which is worth any
sacrifice necessary to attain it; and this is referred to by Jesus, as ’life’
or interchangeably the ‘kingdom of God’.
Barclay suggests that the Jewish style of parallelism is
used by Jesus to explain what he meant by the ‘Kingdom of God’. Barclay
explains:
“In parallelism two phrases are set side by side, the one
of which either restates the other, or amplifies, explains and develops it.”
This means that one petition is an explanation and
amplification of the other. In the Lord’s prayer we therefore have an
explanation of what is meant by ‘kingdom of heaven’ and that is ‘… a society
upon earth in which God’s will is as perfectly done in earth as it is in
Heaven.” To apply this to our passage it
means that it is worth any sacrifice and any discipline or self-denial to do
the will of God and that it is only in doing the will of God that ‘… there is
real life and ultimate and completely satisfying peace.’
And this can mean drastic surgery!
This passage therefore needs to be taken not literally or
purely symbolically, but mostly ‘personally’! It means that it may be necessary
to get rid of some habit, to cut out something that might even have become very
dear to us, to abandon some pleasure, to be rid of some friendship even in
order to become obedient to the will of God. No one can decide this for us; it
is something we need to come to terms with ourselves. Barclay explains:
“… if there is anything in our lives which is coming
between us and a perfect obedience to the will of God, however dear that thing
or person is to us, however much the habit and custom may have made it part of
our lives, it must be rooted out.”
This will probably sometimes be painful and drastic, but
if we are to know real ‘life’, happiness and fulfilment – it must happen – and
we will enter the kingdom of heaven here on earth.
C F D Moule, the famous New Testament scholar (and teacher
of the Archbishop of Canterbury) does not comment at length – as Barclay does -
but herewith a few of his thoughts on the Gospel passage for this week.
In verse 42, Jesus refers to the ‘little ones’ and on the
surface we think it is a warning against leading children astray – and indeed,
I believe, we as teachers need to beware that we do not do this, but Moule puts
it a little differently and suggests “Jesus, or God Himself, comes to us in a
small child – that is greatness …” Teachers seems to think that they have
‘arrived’ when they teach predominantly in the 6th Form; university
lecturers and professors are valued more highly by society than other teachers,
but Moule makes the important point that Jesus comes to us in all people – but
especially in children.
But I believe we must beware that we do not consider some
people more important than others; rather that ALL people matter. As Moule
comments: “Jesus was one of the first ever to see how essentially precious any
person is, particularly a young child …” It is true that, in their
vulnerability we need to be particularly careful in our treatment of small
children, but all people matter and when we see them as the way God comes to
us, it revolutionises the way we treat them and our overall experience of them.
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