Not One of Us

“Not One of Us”

Mark 9:38-50

First Presbyterian Church of Jamestown , New York

The Reverend Thomas A. Sweet

September 27, 2009

Preached at the Jamestown Audubon Center

One of my friends who is preaching this same passage today, for it is the gospel text designated by the lectionary, is calling his sermon “Pick and Ponder.” He chose that title because the passage is filled with so many thoughts and themes that we cannot possibly touch on all of them (unless, perhaps, like last week, we have two preachers and two sermons and the service lasts a hundred minutes. But I suspect that once every 175 years is probably the most we can try that trick). So, my friend advises that we should pick one of the themes and dig into it deeply. Ponder it profoundly. Pick and ponder, he says.

The theme I decided to pick this time around in the preaching of this passage is the one that we find right at the beginning of it: “John said to him, ‘Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he was not one of us.’” Some translations have it slightly different, saying, “Teacher, we saw someone casting out devils in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us.” Eugene Peterson, in his good paraphrase of The Bible, renders it like this: “John spoke up and said, ‘Teacher, we saw a man using your name to expel demons and we stopped him because he wasn’t in our group.’” Well, no matter how we say it, it is not a pretty picture, is it? It casts the disciples in a pretty dubious light.

Trying to set the disciples’ action in the best possible light, trying to be as generous as we can, maybe we could say that the disciples were concerned about quality control issues and they did not want their reputations besmirched by an amateur engaging in their trade. Maybe they didn’t think the man they saw casting out devils was doing it the right way, which is to say their way. Maybe he didn’t have a Good Housekeeping seal of approval or an endorsement from the Better Exorcists Bureau. Maybe they were concerned that the man would do more harm than good if he had not learned how to cast out the demons directly from the Master.

Maybe.

But that doesn’t seem to be the tone of the story as Mark tells it. We get the sense that those two old agitators that plague even us, pride and fear, are at work in the disciples. They are proud of their status as insiders with Jesus and of their standing in the Jesus movement and they are fearful of expanding the circle. Jesus is their franchise. They are the insiders and as such are the ones, so they think, who are supposed to be casting out devils, not anyone else, not just any uncredentialed Jack or Jill. “Teacher, we saw someone casting out devils in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he was not one of us, because he was not following us.”

This story in Mark owes a lot to today’s Old Testament lectionary passage from the book of Numbers. In it, the Israelites as they were wandering in the wilderness after their exodus from Egypt began griping and grousing that all they were getting to eat was manna and they were getting tired of it. After all, back in Egypt , they said, they were fed fish and melons and leeks and cucumbers. But now, just manna, manna, manna. So Moses complained to God about the grumbling of the people, “What did I ever do to deserve this? Why are you treating me this way? Did I conceive them? Am I their mother? So why dump the responsibility for this people on me? Where am I supposed to get meat to feed all these people? I can’t do all this by myself. It’s too much!”

So God told Moses to gather seventy people, leader types, from among the Israelites and take them to the Tent of Meeting and God said that God would meet Moses and the seventy there. God told Moses, “I’ll take some of my Spirit that is on you and place it on them; then they’ll be able to take some of the responsibility for the people and you will not have to carry the load alone.”

“So,” God said, “tell the people to consecrate themselves and to get ready for tomorrow when they’re going to eat meat. Tell them that they have been whining to God, ‘We want meat, we want meat; we had a better life back in Egypt ,’ and that God has heard them. Tell them that God says to them, ‘You are going to eat meat, and not just for a day or two days or five days or twenty, but for a whole month. You are going to eat meat until it is coming out of your nostrils. You are going to be so sick of meat that you will throw up at the mere mention of it. And why? Because you have rejected God who is right here among you, saying, ‘Why did we ever have to leave Egypt ?’”

So Moses told the people what God told him to tell them and he gathered seventy leaders from among the great hordes of people and they went to the Tent. God came down in a cloud and took some of the spirit that was on Moses and put it on the seventy. And then the seventy prophesied. That is, they spoke wisdom to the people. But, the story goes, that didn’t continue. It was a one time event.

Meanwhile, two men named Eldad and Medad had stayed in the camp. They had not gone down to the Tent. Still, Numbers says, “The Spirit rested on them and they continued to prophesy in the camp among the people.” So a young man went running to Moses and said, “Eldad and Medad are prophesying in the camp,” implying, of course, that they had not been properly vetted or authorized. Joshua, son of Nun, who was Moses’ right hand man, said, “Moses, master! Stop them!” But Moses said to him, “Are you jealous for my sake? Would that all the people were prophets and that God had put God’s Spirit on them!”

A story is told of Abraham Lincoln who, when apprised of Ulysses S. Grant’s drinking habits, reportedly responded by saying that he wished the rest of the Union generals drank the same brand of whiskey as Grant! Moses said to Joshua that “spirit” is a gift of God freely given and that we are not in charge of it and his only regret is that more Israelites didn’t have it and that if some beyond the seventy chosen had it, like Eldad and Medad, then that’s great, wonderful!

So, here in Mark’s story we have the disciples all a-twitter because someone beyond their circle is exorcising demons and devils in the name of Jesus. Never mind that people are being helped and released. The wrong person, someone besides them, was doing it. And they couldn’t have that.

In 1881, a man by the name of W. N. Clarke wrote a commentary on the gospel according to Mark that I picked up one time at a used book sale. In it he wrote these words that stand the test of time: “The disciples supposed that such power as the man was using was reserved as a privilege for those who followed Jesus as they did. Having themselves a similar mission, they had supposed that such power could be obtained only as they had obtained it. From this story, however, we learn, as they did, that the power of God flowed out more widely than to the immediate circle of Jesus’ followers. The disciples’ exclusive spirit is too often the spirit of the privileged. God has more ways than one to communicate the gifts of God’s grace, and God’s field is wider than we often think.

How often has the church through the centuries appointed itself as the only true channel and vessel of God’s grace? How often has the church thought itself alone to be the bearer of the Spirit, power, and wisdom of God? How much good has the church stymied and stifled because someone outside of church circles dared to do it while the church pontificated about who can do it and how? How often has the church refused to receive and support the gifts of those who are not “one of us”? How prone are we to making ourselves the standard of measurement? How often has the church tried to marginalize people who are in any way different from us, who are not like us?

Here is an observation I think is fair: our animosity toward others different from us usually is in direct proportion to our ignorance of them. We are suspicious of those we do not understand. We do not trust those who are not like us or “one of us.” They make us uncomfortable. Do you ever ask yourself why many churches, including ours to some extent, are so homogeneous in their composition – perhaps consciously, unconsciously, and subconsciously “screening” for membership and a place in the circle?

We all know people who are not members of a church but who are wonderful people, doing God’s work, expressing God’s heart, in ways every bit the equal or even sometimes surpassing those of church people. And yet we often express surprise at that, amazement, as if God really only can work through the church. The church does have a special responsibility to nurture the gospel, to show forth and to embody in our bodies God’s word of justice, compassion, generosity, hospitality and love. The church does bear God’s call to lead the world into peace and to care for the bruised reeds and dimly burning wicks of society. The world needs to be able to count on the church for those things. But the church also needs to rejoice wherever the aims and marks of the gospel are found, in whomever they are lifted up and acted out, and to partner with practitioners of gospel in whatever guise they and it may be.

Maggie Monroe-Cassel, the former pastor of the Judson Fellowship, is on our midweek email list and she played along with my invitation this week in the email to prepare for worship today by thinking about this passage in advance and coming up with your own sermon. I asked the readers of the email to sift out the good news to be found in the passage. So let me, as our concluding word, read what Maggie wrote to me. I have a feeling she speaks for many of us:

“I am a person who likes to do things ‘my way.’ Some call that being a control freak. I call it being right (just kidding, she says). But as I reflect on the passage I find myself thinking how it is not just theology that we all do differently. It is almost everything…from how we squeeze tooth paste out of the tube to driving a car to raising our children. The disciples thought there was only one way to cast out demons in Jesus’ name and it was their way. But there are so many paths toward God’s kingdom. If our hearts are with Jesus, or whatever our spiritual center is, then our paths or our methods will be true and right, even if they differ greatly from our neighbor’s. But this is so hard to accept.”

“For me, the grace in the passage is in seeking a way to accept these differences while not diminishing myself (and my way). It is not something that just will happen. It is something I have to come to accept by letting go and allowing myself to sink into the love of Christ myself and to feel truly loved. For when I feel truly loved, how can I give back anything but love? And won’t that love be a healing love, in Jesus’ name?”

“It seems to me that those disciples were so caught up in who was doing what, right, that they may have missed receiving love themselves…that same love with which Jesus, just before this passage in Mark, drew the children – who barely were tolerated in society – lovingly into his arms. I am ready to stop worrying about who is right and to start letting myself be drawn into those healing arms.”

Me, too, Maggie. And you?

Amen

Return to the Sermons and Articles Page

Return to the Sermon Archives Page