For Sunday
Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Collect

O God, you declare your almighty power chiefly in showing mercy and pity: Grant us the fullness of your grace, that we, running to obtain your promises, may become partakers of your heavenly treasure; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. 

Amen.

Reading

From Mark 9:38-50

“John said to Jesus, “Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us.””

Reflection

I feel for the disciples. It sometimes seems like they can’t do anything right.

Jesus was just telling them about a terrible future with his suffering and dying and what are they doing? Jesus catches them bragging with each other. They were arguing about which of them was the greatest disciple. It must have been utterly humiliating.

But Jesus isn’t trying to humiliate them, is he? He’s trying (always) to teach them.

Turn that bragging around and get with the program. That is closer to it. Being great means you don’t need to be first. Others do.

Then he flips it all around. He highlights a child – a way of saying listen to the unheard – this is our greatest need.

Now the disciples are struggling to live into that teaching. Right off the bat, they are silencing rather than listening.

The disciples confront someone proclaiming the Good News who isn’t a disciple. They look and see a counterfeit. Jesus looks and sees his message spreading through other people.

But Jesus doesn’t let their miscalculation go. He responds to it. Because if they had left it at simply hey, that guy’s not one of us then Jesus could have simply said, yes he is. Leave him alone. But they didn’t. They tried to stop him. And that’s their great mistake.

Jesus’s teaching amounts to: don’t get in their way. Don’t be an obstacle.

A teaching that is expressly about the kin-dom work, not the certification to do it.

More importantly, though, is that Jesus pairs the teachings together. Listen to the unheard. And Don’t be a stumbling block. Taken together, a bigger picture emerges. A vision of compassion and a way of ordering the world that supports the vulnerable rather than exploits them. That vision is the kin-dom.