Mark 9:38-50
38 John said to Jesus, “Teacher, we saw someone throwing demons out in your name, and we tried to stop him because he wasn’t following us.”
39 Jesus replied, “ Don’t stop him. No one who does powerful acts in my name can quickly turn around and curse me. 40 Whoever isn’t against us is for us. 41 I assure you that whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you belong to Christ will certainly be rewarded.
42 “ As for whoever causes these little ones who believe in me to trip and fall into sin, it would be better for them to have a huge stone hung around their necks and to be thrown into the lake. 43 If your hand causes you to fall into sin, chop it off. It’s better for you to enter into life crippled than to go away with two hands into the fire of hell, which can’t be put out. q45 If your foot causes you to fall into sin, chop it off. It’s better for you to enter life lame than to be thrown into hell with two feet. r47 If your eye causes you to fall into sin, tear it out. It’s better for you to enter God’s kingdom with one eye than to be thrown into hell with two. 48 That’s a place where worms don’t die and the fire never goes out .s49 Everyone will be salted with fire. 50 Salt is good; but if salt loses its saltiness, how will it become salty again? Maintain salt among yourselves and keep peace with each other. ”
Let the words of my mouth
and the meditations of my heart
be pleasing to you,
LORD , my rock and my redeemer.
I thank God every day that Nickelsville isn’t a town in which we have to compete with other churches. Yeah, I know that the Baptist church is the biggest in town, and by a considerable ratio, but I almost never get the impression that we feel like we’re competing with them, or trying to be like them.
The most vital ministries in Nickelsville happen when people are working across denominational lines. I’m sure you’ve seen that, because it’s something I noticed right away.
And I think that’s fantastic! It’s a gift that a lot of communities don’t have. More often than not, churches and different local groups may come up with all the same ideas (because to some degree, people who live in one defined area tend to think alike), but while they have all these similar and compatible ideas, they want to promote only their church, their group, their sub-community.
That’s a problem.
First, it’s a practical problem because when you have a bunch of smaller communities or groups trying to do exactly the same thing (VBS, food pantry, handymen ministries, etc.), their project is only going to get so far. Everybody will be competing for the same resources and the same population. And what you’ll end up with is a bunch of minimally successful or completely unsuccessful ministries spread out over the area.
Second, it’s an image problem. Every community has a lot of people outside of the church. People who are too busy, too disinterested, too badly burned by churchy people to ever darken the door of a church again. And they are extremely critical of and cynical about the institutional Church. When what they observe is that a bunch of churches in an area can’t get along well enough to do something together, in a culture where even outsiders in the church are fundamentally aware of Paul’s theology of one Body with many members, they realize that what we’re doing isn’t Church. What we’re doing is trying to maintain our own local club.
We are being competitive about ministry.
For a couple years at Buffalo Mountain Camp, there were some songs that groups would sing as they hiked up and down the road. One of them got pretty fierce:
We love Jesus, yes we do!
We love Jesus. How about you?
And a group would always sing it at another group. And the other group would respond. And the kids wouldn’t just get excited; they’d get riled up to the degree that you only see at UT football games.
But Brandon, that’s good! Our kids are fired up for Jesus!
No. No, they’re not. They’re fired up about being louder and fiercer than someone else, which is not the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Ministry should never be competitive.
Ministry should never be about I’m-right-and-you’re-wrong. Ministry should never be about we’re-allowed-but-you’re-not.
That’s what the disciples don’t get.
Teacher, we saw someone throwing demons out in your name, and we tried to stop him because he wasn’t following us.
We tried to stop him.
Oh, we read this today and we think, How could they dare? And that’s too bad, because we should read this today and think, Oh, I just said that.
I’d like to blame behavior like that on election season, but really, that us-against-them mentality has been prevalent for a long time. I couldn’t point to a time when our churches weren’t that way. If I were to hazard a guess, which I suppose I’m doing right now, I’d say that the followers of Christ have never not been that way.
We get fired up about being right all the time, about our ministries being the most important, the most vital, the most relevant, the most scriptural, the most Jesus-like, the most welcoming, whatever. But what does the Holy Spirit have to say about that?
I think the Holy Spirit shakes her dreamy head and smiles and reminds us of what Mark remembers:
No one who does powerful acts in my name can quickly turn around and curse me. Whoever isn’t against us is for us.
Whoever isn’t with me is against me, and whoever doesn’t gather with me scatters.
Tricky.
The context is a little different. In Matthew and Luke, Jesus is telling the authorities that he isn’t doing the Devil’s work, essentially. But in Mark, Jesus is advising the disciples to let people who are doing Kingdom work keep doing Kingdom work.
Oddly, the bottom line is the same. If you’re doing the work of Christ, you’re in good standing with Christ. If you’re showing fruit, you’re growing on the vine.
(Just to mix our metaphors a bit.)
So I am glad that the Nickelsville community has some really good models of ecumenical ministry, but I’m not sure we’re really good at welcoming others into our little ministry circles, even when they are fundamentally cooperative.
And I’m also not sure that the spirit of cooperation plays out more broadly than a couple group of friends who’d be hanging out together anyway.
As an example, I want you to observe what kind of a group we have gathered here in worship this morning. We have, today, all three churches of the Nickelsville Circuit gathered in this one beautiful space to worship together.
Now, look around at who’s not here.
I know that there are some folk with valid, real reasons not to be with us this morning. I get that. But I also know, because people have voiced this concern directly to me, that there are those of our friends who will never attend a cooperative service like this because that’s not my church.
Let’s set aside the fundamental theological problems of claiming any local manifestation of God’s church as our own, and of neglecting the reality of the Church as one, holy, apostolic, and universal, and never, ever just a local phenomenon.
Let’s just juxtapose that complaint with the plethora of other criticisms I hear that boil down to, “We don’t want to do church like that because we’ve never done it that way before.” Every criticism I hear like that is only a poorly veiled request to make our worship and our way of doing things exactly like every other ministry around.
Bland. The same. Unseasoned. Saltless.
Forget that, y’all! Let’s do something else! Let’s do something different! Let’s be salty!
Let’s shut up our fears and our discomfort and our preconceived notions and let the Holy Spirit guide us for a change!
Listen, we’re about to dismiss and find our way around tables to dine with each other as one community. Isn’t that a great venue for conversation?
Here’s what I want you to do. We’ll sing a song, we’ll have a benediction and a blessing, and we’ll feast and share. I want you to be brave like Esther and sit with someone you know less well, and I want you to ask them:
What dreams do you have for ministry in Nickelsville?
What people does God put in your line of sight who need the mercy of Jesus?
What gifts do you have that God wants to put to work in our community?
And let me tell you, not everything that the Church does is purely about evangelism. James reminds us to be in ministry with the suffering, the cheerful, and the sick. Jesus reminds us that whenever we have offered mercy to those who are hungry, thirsty, stranger, naked, sick, and imprisoned, we have offered mercy to Christ. The prophets time and again remind us that God is deeply concerned with the poor, the widow, the orphan, and the alien in our land.
Do you have a dream or a gift you can share with them?
Let’s sing together, as one body with all the Church around the world this morning, and let the Holy Spirit guide us from here.
