John said to him, ‘Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him<a, because he was not following us.’ But Jesus said, ‘Do not stop him; for no one who performs a miracle in my name will be able soon afterwards to speak evil of me.
Mark 9.38-39
It is not always an easy or simply thing to look out at the world with a welcoming eye. We humans like the security we find in the familiar; in faces that resemble our own or places that reflect our own sense of ourselves. Perhaps it’s something written into our social DNA, a remnant of a time when we were surrounded by very real threats to our existence, like lions. So making our homes among the familiar calls up that ancient need to be safe.
And one way we humans believe we are being safe is to be very careful about who we welcome in the midst of our lives. That issue is very clearly on the mind of the writer of Mark’s gospel. So is the issue of security; especially given the precarious nature of life in his time, caught up as he was in the cataclysmic violence of the Jewish revolt against Rome, which lasted from 66-73CE. So perhaps we should not be surprised when we hear the disciples running to Jesus boasting of how they drove off someone healing in his name, even though he was not a part of their circle. The roots of denominational squabbles and church conflict are ancient, it seems; and they run deep.
And it is not sufficient for faithful readers of the gospel to excuse ourselves from this sort of behavior; because the writer of Mark is not merely narrating an historical event in the life of Christ. He is commenting on the life of the church; and the chronic problem we Christians have of claiming the authority of the gospel for ourselves, to support our opinions, to endorse our claims. Jesus reminds us that our true lives, and our ultimate security actually lie in our sense of solidarity with the people around us. Only by being salt for he world, only through the welcoming embrace of others can we truly ensure our own well-being and faithfully live into the promise God holds out for all of us.
Out of the Wilderness 