September 29, 2024
A few weeks ago, my preaching text came from the Proverbs. And one of the weird things about the Proverbs is that, for a big part of that book, we have lost the context of these individual sayings. This means that, for chapter after chapter, each individual verse just sits there by itself. We can make of it what we want, because we don’t know who originally said it, we don’t know when they said it, or really even why.
This is unique in the Bible. For just about every other verse in the Bible—every other word, really—we do know its context, we know who originally said it and when, and we generally know why. Context is everything.
And so, to make sense of the short passage that we just heard from Mark 9, I want to take us to another book, where Jesus might appear to be contradicting himself—where he says something that seems to be the opposite of what we just heard him say: Anyone who is not against us is for us.
So instead of Mark 9, let’s start out looking at Matthew 12. This is a difficult chapter—it’s both difficult to understand, and it deals with subject matter that we might think of as unpleasant. First it starts out with Jesus and his disciples breaking the Law of Moses—at least they were breaking it in the eyes of the religious teachers. They were plucking grain and eating it on the sabbath. Now, of course, it’s okay to eat on the sabbath. But it’s not okay to harvest on the sabbath. And so the teachers of the law criticize him.
So Jesus tells them a story from the Bible that shows that God would rather God’s people break a ritual law than go hungry (1 Sam. 21:1-6). And he ends this lesson by quoting Hosea (6:6), where God says, “I would rather you show mercy than offer sacrifices.”
The teachers of the law did not like this answer. It emphasized Jesus’ mission to love while taking away their power to judge. He then proves his point by very intentionally breaking the law again: He heals a man on the sabbath, proving that God will work when the law says no one should work if it actually saves life or makes life more abundant.
And so the religious authorities began to plot against him—not just in order to prove him wrong, but to destroy him. And a bit later, when he casts out a demon, they say that he’s able to do this because he’s actually in league with the demons. Jesus’ response is a saying we’ve all heard: A house divided against itself cannot stand.
He then goes on to talk about the seriousness of accusing him of doing the work of the devil when, in fact, he’s doing God’s work. He calls it the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit, and says it’s unforgivable. This is serious stuff, and the church has talked about it ever since: Just what is the unforgivable sin? Well, growing up, I was always taught that there’s a simple answer: There are plenty of ways to disagree with somebody without accusing them of being of the devil, so show some respect and don’t take your accusations too far.
But right in the middle of all this, Jesus says that anybody who isn’t with him is against him. His work is to gather people in, and if you don’t join him in this work, you’re scattering; you’re working against him. So Jesus takes what is a very negative situation and he actually makes it positive: He’s a gatherer and we need to join him in gathering people together, not dividing people up.
And so now let’s move to today’s reading from Mark 9. Here we have the disciples telling Jesus that they had just tried to stop somebody from casting out demons in Jesus’ Name. Why? Because he wasn’t one of them.
This is sort of the opposite of what we see in Matthew 12. There, somebody’s saying that Jesus can cast out demons because he’s in league with the devil. Here, somebody obviously admires Jesus and has faith that his Name is strong enough to undo the devil’s work. And so, whereas he said in Matthew 12 that whoever isn’t with him is against him, here he says the opposite: Anyone who’s not against us is for us.
If you just take these two verses completely out of context, it looks like a direct contradiction. Whoever’s not for me is against me, compared to Whoever’s not against me is for me. But once you put them in context, you discover that Jesus is making the same point each time: God works for good in the life of God’s people, and we need to join Jesus in helping others. While some may think they’re making a clever point by quoting a verse here or there out of context, reading the whole thing shows us that there’s no contradiction here at all. Jesus wants us to be free, and he invites others to join him in this work. Do we want to walk with Jesus down this path of liberation? Or do we want to sit on the sidelines and criticize, accuse, or attack?
I saw a quote last week that sort of makes my point for me today. It said to beware of any Christian movement that acts as though the world is full of enemies to be destroyed rather than full of neighbors to be loved. I don’t know who said it, but I agree with it. But more importantly, I think Jesus agrees with it. He not only agrees with it, but it was his message—both in Matthew 12 and today in Mark 9.
There are those on the outside who want us to see Jesus as an enemy and his work of liberation as a threat to their way of life. The Bible literally tells us that their goal is to destroy his message. To them, Jesus says, “If you’re not with me, you’re against me; if you aren’t gathering with me, you dividing.”
But there are also those inside the church who think their way of interpreting the gospel is the only one that’s valid. “Jesus, we saw somebody else helping people in your Name, so we told them to stop because they weren’t one of us.” But Jesus says, “Let them be—if they’re not against us, they’re for us.” If they’re not doing harm, they’re doing good.
According to the Bible—according to Jesus himself—to be a disciple is to be a gatherer. Christians reach out. When we’re told not to be worldly, that means not to worship power, not to base who you are on what you have. It doesn’t mean to hate the world. For in the world we see, not enemies to fear, but neighbors to love. And in a world divided by so many things (including religion), we know we don’t need to sit beside somebody in the pew in order to share our common humanity, and in order to work together for our neighborhood, our nation and our world.
In the week to come, let’s be aware of the choices we have—probably on a daily basis, to be gatherers or dividers. What can we do to bring people into the circle of God’s love? What words can we speak to make the radical welcome of Christ known? And how do our thoughts reflect the Spirit of God, who creates community and not chaos. We’ll probably hear voices calling us to divide up and to distrust those who are different or unpopular. But let us be for Christ, and not against our neighbor.
—©2024 Sam Greening
