I would like you to think of all the things done in the name of Jesus. I know that when we pray, we often close our prayers with “in Jesus’ name. Amen.” This is praying, and we pray in His name. What are some of the other things we do in the name of Jesus?
You can quickly thing of lots of things we do as members of this church family. Provide backpacks for children going back to school. We teach Sunday school. We sing in the choir or serve on the vestry. We work with the altar guild. We bring funeral potatoes to the luncheon. All of these are things we do because we are members of this faith community. We do them in the name of Jesus. There are many small kindness we do because we are driven by our faith to be charitable as well.
We don’t always see the results of charity or outreach. We really don’t know the true impact of something like the Non-Food Pantry. This was one of those things about teaching that was always a little bit of a challenge. Sometimes you really work with some group of kids and at the end of the year wonder just how much progress you really made. We don’t always see the fruit of our labors. Every now and then as a teacher, you hear from a student ten years out and discover that you inspired someone to study something in college or go into teaching or engineering for example. I heard not too long ago from someone we had helped through the Non-Food Pantry. We had helped her get back on her feet and her life was very different now.
We won’t truly know all that the Lord has accomplished until we see the Lord face to face. I am confident, though, that, on that day, we will be surprised by the wonderful things that Christ has done through the small deeds of ordinary people. These were things done in Jesus’ name. I believe that we will be surprised at the power of our own witness.
There are other things we do in Jesus’ name too. They aren’t all good. You can think of some of the bad things that people have done in the name of Jesus as well. We judge. We tell people they are bad because they are gay or they had a marriage that did not work out. We divide the Body of Christ. We are not always a good witness.
We know how fragmented the church can be. A human temptation is to focus on the things that divide us rather than the things that we hold in common.
In today’s Gospel. The disciples are worrying about someone doing something in the name of Jesus.
“Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name,
and we tried to stop him,
because he was not following us” (v. 38).
It is interesting to observe that the disciples tried to stop this man from casting out demons in Jesus’ name, “because he was not following us.”
Now let me ask you a question: When did you ever read in the Bible that Jesus said, “Come, follow us!” Jesus never said, “Come, follow us!” He said, “Come, follow me!” But Jesus’ disciples tried to stop this man “because he was not following me.” That suggests that Jesus’ disciples were losing focus. They were becoming a little self-important. My granny might have described them as “too big for their britches.” They were not trying to further the Kingdom. They were trying to protect their status.
I’ll tell you what Jesus said to those disciples, He is saying this to us as disciples as well. He is saying this to the Church.
“Do not stop him,
for no one who does a deed of power in my name
will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me.
Whoever is not against us is for us.
For truly I tell you,
whoever gives you a cup of water to drink
because you bear the name of Christ
will by no means lose the reward.”
Let me be clear. Jesus wasn’t saying that we must give our seal of approval to anyone who calls himself or herself a Christian. There will always be people who call themselves Christians and are that bad witness I talked about earlier.
But Jesus gave his disciples two criteria for judging those who would bear his name:
First, Jesus called his disciples to accept people who do deeds of power in His name.
Second, Jesus called his disciples to embrace those who give us a cup of cold water to drink because we bear the name of Christ.
This seems simple enough. Sometimes the simple things are the hard ones to live though.
We are to accept people who are doing deeds of power in Christ’s name.
We have to understand that people who love us because we love Jesus will be rewarded by our Father in heaven.
It is perhaps easiest to study the Church in terms of its conflicts. There are Northern and Southern Baptists. There are divisions in the Presbyterian Church. There are people who split with the Episcopal church over the ordination of women or the prayer book. There are divisions now over the question of same-sex unions. On a larger scale, there are the divisions between the Orthodox and the Protestants and the Roman Catholics.
In 1964, the Second Vatican Council made this pronouncement:
“Catholics must gladly acknowledge and esteem
the truly Christian endowments from our common heritage
which are to be found among our separated brethren.”
I think this was a historic moment in the life of the Church. One large body of Christians was reaching out to another. I don’t know that we have been blessed by unity and an ecumenical spirit since then, but I believe that the people doing the work of Vatican II had an understanding of today’s Gospel. I think things are better. It is not about deciding if someone else is making the cut here though. We are called to accept those doing deeds of power or kindness in the name of Jesus.
Christ calls us to pull down the walls that divide Christian from Christian. The author of Ephesians talked about the dividing wall that separated Gentile Christians and Jewish Christians. He said:
“For (Christ) is our peace;
in his flesh he has made both groups into one
and has broken down the dividing wall,
that is, the hostility between us” (Ephesians 2:14).
Christ has broken down the wall that divides Christian from Christian.
As Christians, we need to strengthen each other, to love each other. to bear one another’s burdens. We need to be effective witnesses for Christ, and that will be much easier if we love our Christian brothers and sisters.
Let’s start where we are. We need to think about those we work with. We need to think about members of our families or even people at church. Is there someone in one of those groups that irritates you? Is there someone you avoid? If you said no to these questions, you are a saint.
But if you can think of people who have the ability to get on your last nerve, ask Christ to give you the grace to love that person. Ask Christ to break down the wall that separates you from that person. Ask Christ to break down all the walls that separate you from other Christians, wherever they might be.
When that happens. When Christ answers those prayers, you will be on your way to being the person that God created you to be.
I have said these words in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Sermon preached by Fr. Tom at St. Thomas, Plymouth
September 27, 2015/Eighteenth Sunday of Pentecost
Esther 7:1-6, 9-10; 9:20-22
Psalm 124
James 5:13-20
Mark 9:38-50