Pentecost 18
September 26, 2021
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.
It’s his work, intended for all. And we are in this work together.
September 26, 2021
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.
A lot of preachers begin the sermon with old, stupid jokes that aren’t funny. Why should I be different?
The story goes that a Presbyterian minister died and went to heaven. He met Saint Peter at the gate, who said, “After I let you in, let me take you on a tour.” Rev. Oswald agrees, and they hop on a golf cart and go for a ride. They travel along a beautiful golf course, pristine, well-managed, with an endless number of holes. And why not? Everybody has a lot of time.
Then they circle around and see beautiful mountains, and then stunning sandy beaches. There are landscapes for everybody. Then they head down a road paved with gold, go around the bend, and there is an enormous mansion. A really big house. Parking the gold cart, they go inside. There is a banquet room, the biggest Oswald has ever seen. It stretches miles in either direction, but still seems cozy and comfortable. “The food is really good here,” says St. Peter.
And in this house, there are many rooms. There is a Methodist room, and everybody is singing. There is a Russian Orthodox room, filled with gold paintings and smelling of incense. There is a Roman Catholic room, lined with marble statues and great works of art. The Lutheran room is holding a theology class. The Episcopalian room offers wine tasting class. The Pentecostals and Baptists are together, reading books on church history. All these rooms are open. People are enjoying themselves.
Oswald says, “Are there any Presbyterians here in heaven?” St. Peter looks at him for a second and says, “Come with me.” They go down the hall, around the bend, down some steps. They come to a room. The door is shut. Oswald tries the door and it’s locked. St. Peter says, “It’s locked from the inside.”
Oswald says, “These are the Presbyterians?” St. Peter says, “Oh yes. They think they are the only ones here.”
It’s an old joke. And the more you think about it, it’s not very funny. It is a reminder of all the divisions and separations that the church of Jesus Christ has torn itself into. It reinforces all the caricatures and stereotypes that reinforce those divisions. Worst of all, we are reminded of the recurring notion that we are the only ones here, the only ones who count, the only ones who are getting it right.
According to the Gospel of Mark, this is a presumption that goes all the way back to the apostles.
One day on the road to Jerusalem, John the disciple tells Jesus about something that happened when the Lord wasn’t looking. “We saw a healer out there, working for you,” he said, “but we told him to stop.” Once more, just like the story we heard last week, Jesus stops cold in his tracks, spins around, and says, “What?!?”
“He said he was working for you,” John said, “but he wasn’t following us.” He wasn’t one of the twelve of us who are following you. He wasn’t part of our inner circle. He wasn’t part of our private club. He wasn’t a card-carrying Presbyterian. Whatever. So John said, “We told him to knock it off.”
And before we listen to how Jesus responds, I think we need to imagine him standing there, speechless, incomprehensible at the cluelessness of his own followers.
Maybe John presumes he is part of something special. In a way, he is. He left his old man in the fishing boat to get in step behind the Lord. He stands among the first circle of humans who experience the power of Jesus. He just came down from a mountaintop where he saw Jesus glow like a thousand suns. Doesn’t that count for something? Can’t he decide who’s in and who’s out?
No. No, it doesn’t. Jesus stares at John, and says, “You need to knock it off. Don’t stop him. He’s doing a deed of power in my name. We are on the same team, not opposing teams.” And we never do learn if John gets the point.
This is a recurring issue, not just in bad jokes about locked rooms in heaven. It’s a recurring issue in the church that carries the weight of presumption. I remember the cranky clergyman in the first town where I served. A hungry neighbor knocked on the door of his house, looking for some help with food. The preacher said, “I don’t know you. Go away.”
The man said, “But I lost my job. My kids are hungry.” The preacher said, “You are not a member of my church. Go away.” And shut the door. I’m not making up that story. It’s true.
Or I think of the marketing strategy of a church I know. Marketing, it’s all about marketing. They put up billboards, they trained their people to say, “Your church hasn’t told you the truth about Jesus, but we will.” Again, I’m not making that up. It’s a true story. Some of you have heard it. The strategy is called, “Build your flock by stealing somebody else’s sheep.” And the presumption is, “We have something that nobody else has.” Not even our fellow Christians.
Certainly this is the apostle John’s presumption. He told the uncredentialed exorcist to stop. But Jesus says, “Leave him alone.” Let him do his work.
Now, why does he say it? Two reasons, I think. Mark the storyteller has already given the first clue. The man is an exorcist. Jesus is an exorcist, too. In fact, that’s the first think Mark says about Jesus. Fresh from his baptism, Jesus is pushed into the wilderness to confront the temptations of evil. It took him forty days. In the end, he was a little ragged, and hungry, yet he was stronger than the evil.
Immediately he stepped into the synagogue in Capernaum and starts to teach. Suddenly a possessed man starts shouting at him. Jesus shouts back. The possessed man screams and Jesus screams. It’s a shouting match, until the Christ says, “Come out of him, you evil spirit.” Suddenly the man is well, and the congregation says, “We never saw a sermon like that!”
With the authority of God, Jesus comes to confront evil. He comes to release people from the unseen grip of whatever is twisting them out of shape. Immediately here, immediately there, Jesus restores. He heals. He lifts people from their oppressions. This is his work. This is his mission. He is relentless, to the point that he agitates the powers of hell – that drives the plot of Mark - yet in the end, he is stronger than the destructive, dehumanizing powers, because he comes with the power of God. This is his mission. To make us well. To make all things well.
And these days, any careful observer is going to notice once again what Jesus is up against. Listen to people argue about wearing masks or getting medically approved vaccinations. Every day I hear a story about somebody who believes she is exempt from getting sick, but she’s not. Or somebody who thinks he knows better than those who study illnesses for a living, and he doesn’t. And there are people will make up lies and peddle them as alternative facts. Some days I wonder, “What kind of madness has gotten into them?”
And here comes Jesus, making people well. He casts out the unseen forces that can make any of us crazy. It’s called an exorcism. In the first century AD, the Gospel of Mark says, “This is what Jesus is all about.” He comes to make people well, inside and out, body, spirit, and soul.
So John reports that there is somebody up in the Galilean hills who is doing the same thing? No wonder Jesus says, “Leave him alone. Let him do his work.” It’s the same mission. It’s the same purpose. It is the work of God to make people well.
The second thing to notice is that the work is being done in Jesus’ name. In his name. For his sake. So it seems what Old John can’t quite swallow is that there might be Christ Followers out there, loose in the world, who are not part of his own exclusive bunch. That requires another kind of conversion – a conversion from exclusivity.
Jesus is teaching, “Think bigger, look wider. God’s mission is underway. There are more of us doing the work than you realize.” The psychologist who unlocks the learning disorder, the surgeon who fixes smiles, the social worker who connects, the resource center that provides a safe place for a frightened woman to sleep, the counselor who listens to the broken heart, the volunteer ladling out macaroni casserole, the deacon who prays – all of them are part of the mission, God’s mission. And we are in it together.
Jesus says the kingdom of God is like a farmer who throws seeds all over the place. The farmer is generous, effusive, even to the point of being wasteful. He is throwing seed everywhere, hoping some of it will take root.
Maybe it will, maybe it won’t, but he doesn’t stop. He throws the seed on receptive soil; he throws the seed on rocks – ever hopeful. This generosity is the essence of God’s dominion among us.
So maybe God doesn’t stay only in a church to do the holy work. Maybe God goes out into the world, too. Imagine that. Either we are part of the work or we’re not. Either the kingdom’s seed is taking root in us, and the evil is getting cast out of us – or we are living in the presumption that we are better than others and we really don’t want to get our hands dirty. If you catch my drift.
At the heart of it all, this holistic, integrated, all-inclusive healing is the work of Jesus. There’s a wonderful Hebrew phrase to describe it: tikkun olam, translated, “taking the world in for repairs.” That’s our work because it is his work. Whether we always name it or not, it is his work – And he is working among us, within us, and always beyond us.
One of my favorite stories is of a British missionary named Lesslie Newbigin. He was a proper Presbyterian minister, member of the Church of Scotland, and accepted a post in India. It was an exotic land. It pushed him beyond his comfort, but he labored long, loved the people, taught the Bible, helped whomever he could, and built up the church.
Some of the Christian leaders in India decided to pull together and create a single Christian body, called the Church of South India. They loved Newbigin so much that they appointed him as a bishop. He was Presbyterian – we don’t do bishops – but he accepted their appointment to become a bishop. They didn’t understand that back in Edinburgh, but that’s what he did.
Late in life, he explained his decision indirectly. He was giving a lecture and remarked that every organization can be defined in one of two ways: by its boundaries or its center. If you define a church by its boundaries, you decide who’s in and who’s out. But if the church follows Jesus Christ into the world, it has no boundaries. Any attempt to define the boundaries “always ends in an unevangelical legalism.”
Then he says,
The story goes that a Presbyterian minister died and went to heaven. He met Saint Peter at the gate, who said, “After I let you in, let me take you on a tour.” Rev. Oswald agrees, and they hop on a golf cart and go for a ride. They travel along a beautiful golf course, pristine, well-managed, with an endless number of holes. And why not? Everybody has a lot of time.
Then they circle around and see beautiful mountains, and then stunning sandy beaches. There are landscapes for everybody. Then they head down a road paved with gold, go around the bend, and there is an enormous mansion. A really big house. Parking the gold cart, they go inside. There is a banquet room, the biggest Oswald has ever seen. It stretches miles in either direction, but still seems cozy and comfortable. “The food is really good here,” says St. Peter.
And in this house, there are many rooms. There is a Methodist room, and everybody is singing. There is a Russian Orthodox room, filled with gold paintings and smelling of incense. There is a Roman Catholic room, lined with marble statues and great works of art. The Lutheran room is holding a theology class. The Episcopalian room offers wine tasting class. The Pentecostals and Baptists are together, reading books on church history. All these rooms are open. People are enjoying themselves.
Oswald says, “Are there any Presbyterians here in heaven?” St. Peter looks at him for a second and says, “Come with me.” They go down the hall, around the bend, down some steps. They come to a room. The door is shut. Oswald tries the door and it’s locked. St. Peter says, “It’s locked from the inside.”
Oswald says, “These are the Presbyterians?” St. Peter says, “Oh yes. They think they are the only ones here.”
It’s an old joke. And the more you think about it, it’s not very funny. It is a reminder of all the divisions and separations that the church of Jesus Christ has torn itself into. It reinforces all the caricatures and stereotypes that reinforce those divisions. Worst of all, we are reminded of the recurring notion that we are the only ones here, the only ones who count, the only ones who are getting it right.
According to the Gospel of Mark, this is a presumption that goes all the way back to the apostles.
One day on the road to Jerusalem, John the disciple tells Jesus about something that happened when the Lord wasn’t looking. “We saw a healer out there, working for you,” he said, “but we told him to stop.” Once more, just like the story we heard last week, Jesus stops cold in his tracks, spins around, and says, “What?!?”
“He said he was working for you,” John said, “but he wasn’t following us.” He wasn’t one of the twelve of us who are following you. He wasn’t part of our inner circle. He wasn’t part of our private club. He wasn’t a card-carrying Presbyterian. Whatever. So John said, “We told him to knock it off.”
And before we listen to how Jesus responds, I think we need to imagine him standing there, speechless, incomprehensible at the cluelessness of his own followers.
Maybe John presumes he is part of something special. In a way, he is. He left his old man in the fishing boat to get in step behind the Lord. He stands among the first circle of humans who experience the power of Jesus. He just came down from a mountaintop where he saw Jesus glow like a thousand suns. Doesn’t that count for something? Can’t he decide who’s in and who’s out?
No. No, it doesn’t. Jesus stares at John, and says, “You need to knock it off. Don’t stop him. He’s doing a deed of power in my name. We are on the same team, not opposing teams.” And we never do learn if John gets the point.
This is a recurring issue, not just in bad jokes about locked rooms in heaven. It’s a recurring issue in the church that carries the weight of presumption. I remember the cranky clergyman in the first town where I served. A hungry neighbor knocked on the door of his house, looking for some help with food. The preacher said, “I don’t know you. Go away.”
The man said, “But I lost my job. My kids are hungry.” The preacher said, “You are not a member of my church. Go away.” And shut the door. I’m not making up that story. It’s true.
Or I think of the marketing strategy of a church I know. Marketing, it’s all about marketing. They put up billboards, they trained their people to say, “Your church hasn’t told you the truth about Jesus, but we will.” Again, I’m not making that up. It’s a true story. Some of you have heard it. The strategy is called, “Build your flock by stealing somebody else’s sheep.” And the presumption is, “We have something that nobody else has.” Not even our fellow Christians.
Certainly this is the apostle John’s presumption. He told the uncredentialed exorcist to stop. But Jesus says, “Leave him alone.” Let him do his work.
Now, why does he say it? Two reasons, I think. Mark the storyteller has already given the first clue. The man is an exorcist. Jesus is an exorcist, too. In fact, that’s the first think Mark says about Jesus. Fresh from his baptism, Jesus is pushed into the wilderness to confront the temptations of evil. It took him forty days. In the end, he was a little ragged, and hungry, yet he was stronger than the evil.
Immediately he stepped into the synagogue in Capernaum and starts to teach. Suddenly a possessed man starts shouting at him. Jesus shouts back. The possessed man screams and Jesus screams. It’s a shouting match, until the Christ says, “Come out of him, you evil spirit.” Suddenly the man is well, and the congregation says, “We never saw a sermon like that!”
With the authority of God, Jesus comes to confront evil. He comes to release people from the unseen grip of whatever is twisting them out of shape. Immediately here, immediately there, Jesus restores. He heals. He lifts people from their oppressions. This is his work. This is his mission. He is relentless, to the point that he agitates the powers of hell – that drives the plot of Mark - yet in the end, he is stronger than the destructive, dehumanizing powers, because he comes with the power of God. This is his mission. To make us well. To make all things well.
And these days, any careful observer is going to notice once again what Jesus is up against. Listen to people argue about wearing masks or getting medically approved vaccinations. Every day I hear a story about somebody who believes she is exempt from getting sick, but she’s not. Or somebody who thinks he knows better than those who study illnesses for a living, and he doesn’t. And there are people will make up lies and peddle them as alternative facts. Some days I wonder, “What kind of madness has gotten into them?”
And here comes Jesus, making people well. He casts out the unseen forces that can make any of us crazy. It’s called an exorcism. In the first century AD, the Gospel of Mark says, “This is what Jesus is all about.” He comes to make people well, inside and out, body, spirit, and soul.
So John reports that there is somebody up in the Galilean hills who is doing the same thing? No wonder Jesus says, “Leave him alone. Let him do his work.” It’s the same mission. It’s the same purpose. It is the work of God to make people well.
The second thing to notice is that the work is being done in Jesus’ name. In his name. For his sake. So it seems what Old John can’t quite swallow is that there might be Christ Followers out there, loose in the world, who are not part of his own exclusive bunch. That requires another kind of conversion – a conversion from exclusivity.
Jesus is teaching, “Think bigger, look wider. God’s mission is underway. There are more of us doing the work than you realize.” The psychologist who unlocks the learning disorder, the surgeon who fixes smiles, the social worker who connects, the resource center that provides a safe place for a frightened woman to sleep, the counselor who listens to the broken heart, the volunteer ladling out macaroni casserole, the deacon who prays – all of them are part of the mission, God’s mission. And we are in it together.
Jesus says the kingdom of God is like a farmer who throws seeds all over the place. The farmer is generous, effusive, even to the point of being wasteful. He is throwing seed everywhere, hoping some of it will take root.
Maybe it will, maybe it won’t, but he doesn’t stop. He throws the seed on receptive soil; he throws the seed on rocks – ever hopeful. This generosity is the essence of God’s dominion among us.
So maybe God doesn’t stay only in a church to do the holy work. Maybe God goes out into the world, too. Imagine that. Either we are part of the work or we’re not. Either the kingdom’s seed is taking root in us, and the evil is getting cast out of us – or we are living in the presumption that we are better than others and we really don’t want to get our hands dirty. If you catch my drift.
At the heart of it all, this holistic, integrated, all-inclusive healing is the work of Jesus. There’s a wonderful Hebrew phrase to describe it: tikkun olam, translated, “taking the world in for repairs.” That’s our work because it is his work. Whether we always name it or not, it is his work – And he is working among us, within us, and always beyond us.
One of my favorite stories is of a British missionary named Lesslie Newbigin. He was a proper Presbyterian minister, member of the Church of Scotland, and accepted a post in India. It was an exotic land. It pushed him beyond his comfort, but he labored long, loved the people, taught the Bible, helped whomever he could, and built up the church.
Some of the Christian leaders in India decided to pull together and create a single Christian body, called the Church of South India. They loved Newbigin so much that they appointed him as a bishop. He was Presbyterian – we don’t do bishops – but he accepted their appointment to become a bishop. They didn’t understand that back in Edinburgh, but that’s what he did.
Late in life, he explained his decision indirectly. He was giving a lecture and remarked that every organization can be defined in one of two ways: by its boundaries or its center. If you define a church by its boundaries, you decide who’s in and who’s out. But if the church follows Jesus Christ into the world, it has no boundaries. Any attempt to define the boundaries “always ends in an unevangelical legalism.”
Then he says,
But it is always possible and necessary to define the center. The church is its proper self, and is a sign of the kingdom, only insofar as it continually points (people) beyond itself to Jesus...[1]
It’s his work, intended for all. And we are in this work together.
(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.
[1] Lesslie Newbigin, Sign of the
Kingdom (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1980) 68.
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