For Sunday
Easter 6B
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
Reflection
There’s a word for what the disciples are wrestling with in this week’s passage: unsanctioned. There is someone doing Jesus stuff without being a disciples. He isn’t enrolled in the program; he doesn’t have the certification; he isn’t known to the treasurer. And this clearly upsets the disciples.
This is a familiar concept in the modern world—and it has several parts of it that cause frustration for the disciples (and readers!). This is someone they don’t know so they don’t know if they can trust him. He hasn’t been their from the beginning, so there is concern about his experience. And he isn’t under the guidance of Jesus, so they don’t know what will happen.
I suspect there’s a deeper emotion, however: jealousy. They’ve put in all of this work and he hasn’t. In modern labor terms, we call this the free rider problem. There is someone who benefits from other people’s work (gets a free ride) but doesn’t need to contribute to making the work sustainable (he doesn’t pay his dues). Here is someone running around, being Jesusy without giving up everything to literally follow him.
What is curious for us is that this movement organizer doesn’t agree with the disciples. In fact, he forbids them from discouraging him. Why? Because the man is doing the work they are called to do. Effectively. There’s a kind of don’t-mess-with-it vibe around this moment.
Jesus seems to treat the disciples here the way he treats the Pharisees and the Scribes around Sabbath teaching, saying that they shouldn’t get hung up in process when the point of the thing is to participate in the inbreaking grace of God. Process is important—to a point. And it can distract us from what we ought to see with our own eyes: that the grace of God is spreading.