Salted with Fire © Jan L. Richardson
September 27, 2015
The Holy Spirit gathers us this
Lord's Day to ponder difficult questions.
Who belongs to Christ and who
should be excluded?
Jesus offers a straightforward
answer.
"Anyone who is not against us
is for us." (Mark 9:40)
Jesus' words deserve repeating.
"Anyone who is not against us
is for us."
They can be hard words to live by.
Each of the readings for today's
liturgy invite our gathered assembly to become more aware and appreciative of
the Spirit of God at work in others, even those we least expect.
Both the first part of the gospel
and the first reading are saying,
Look, some other people seem to
have the Spirit, or are they speaking for God, working for God, acting as
prophets, or confronting evil and replacing it with good?
They are not one of us so should
we stop them?
This is a classic "them"
or "us" scenario.
It is the old tension between the
Church as a "club for saints" or a "hospital for sinners."
The answer from Moses and Jesus is
No! Cheer them on!
They are doing God's work and God
sometimes takes the spotlight away from us and gives it to others.
The differences between churches
furnishes an example.
Because Christianity is divided
into many churches, it has been difficult for their members to say good things
about each other.
For many Protestants, Catholics
were idol worshippers.
And Catholics considered everyone
else to be heretics.
A "them" and
"us" mentality:
had Christian churches through the
centuries paid more attention to today's Scripture, efforts to find moral and
religious common ground would not have been so long in coming.
The disciples of Jesus were just
like the rest of us.
They thought they had a monopoly
on truth so they tried to stop a man who was performing miracles because he was
not of their company.
Jesus replied in no uncertain
terms.
"Anyone who is not against us
is for us." (Mark 9:40)
He states the same principle even
more strongly in John's gospel.
"I have other sheep that do
not belong to this fold." (John 10:16)
Apparently Jesus did not limit his
friends to his close circle of followers—and neither should we.
Jesus' response is tolerance and
acceptance.
He adds some important comments,
such as, a person does not have to do much to be on Jesus' side.
He tells us that even if a person
only "gives you a cup of water to drink
because you bear the name of
Christ will by no means lose the reward." (Mark 9:41)
Jesus welcomed as a friend any
person who does the most menial deed as an act of love.
Remember his description of the
great judgment?
He numbers among his friends those
who had given a drink of water to the thirsty, given clothing to the naked, given
bread to the hungry, and given shelter to the homeless.
Simple deeds like these are ways
of befriending Jesus.
Jesus said, "'Truly I tell
you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my
family, you did it to me." (Matthew 25:40)
Anyone who is a helper or a healer
is a friend of Jesus.
But how can we call helpers and
healers friends of Jesus if they do not profess his name?
It's one thing to say all
Christian helpers and healers are friends of Jesus regardless of their
denomination.
It's another thing to say that
Jesus recognizes all helpers and healers
whatever their faith or the lack
of it.
How can that be?
The great Catholic theologian Karl
Rahner speaks of "anonymous Christians,"
those men and women who are doing
the work of Christ without ever hearing his name.
Jesus is our friend, but like any
friend, he wants our friendship in return.
He want us to be helpers and
healers just as he is for us.
Here and in a thousand other
places is your apostolic turf—
not by papal or episcopal
permission, not by patronage of your pastor,
not by filling the gap and doing
this work until we can find more men to wear Roman collars.
Here we are the Church, by God's
gracious calling and the power of our baptism.
To paraphrase Moses' words,
"Would that the Lord might
bestow his Spirit on us all."
No comments:
Post a Comment
Add