Yesterday we were at Midweek Holy Communion at St. John and St. Philip’s in The Hague. The Rev. Dr. Roland Price , Honorary Assistant Chaplain in the parish, reflected shortly on the Gospel reading. We thought it was interesting and asked him for permission to post his reflections on our blog and translate them.
Mark 9.38-40
What is this little story about? Who is it for?
It was John, one of the sons of Thunder who came up with the report to Jesus that he and some of the other disciples had seen
a man driving out demons. And surprise, surprise, he was doing it in Jesus’ name. Copyright, intellectual property rights. John was incensed. The disciples told the man to stop what he was doing. He had no rights over the name ‘Jesus’. Why? Because he was not one of the select group of disciples around Jesus. So far as they were concerned, only they (and Jesus of course) had the rights to cast out demons in the name of Jesus. What was more important – to cast out demons or to make sure that nobody misused the name of Jesus? We are very hot on copyright, registered names. There is no way that you can sell a drink under the name CocaCola, or a refined wine under Champagne. It is tempting isn’t it to patent anything and everything, medicines, genetically modified plants or even human genes. John was sure that he did what was right. After all, the man might get things wrong and Jesus’ reputation might suffer. When they told Jesus his response was not to tell him to stop, because if the man performed a miracle in his own eyes, then he was unlikely to say anything bad about Jesus. In other words, those who are not against us are for us. Treat them as such and you cannot go far wrong. But perhaps there will be people against us. That is we may be persecuted, then we find that some unusual people stand alongside us to support us If somebody gives us a cup of water in Jesus’s name because we belong to Jesus. Then that person will be rewarded. But, lets’ return to this man doing what John thought he shouldn’t. Perhaps John was disturbed because he should have been doing what this man was doing. And he wasn’t. After all, Jesus had given the disciples authority to do greater things than Jesus did. And here is this man doing the things that they should have been doing. We have to ask ourselves the question: are we doing the things God has called us to do? Or are we looking at those elsewhere doing what we should be doing and wanting to protect our patch?
Everyone who knows the problems we deal with in relation to the establishment of the Polish Episcopal Network a little may imagine why these words appealed to us. Unfortunately, among fellow Anglicans there are people who think that we shouldn’t do what we are doing, because we ‘do not follow them’, that is, we don’t function under the aegis of the Diocese of Gibraltar in Europe (but of the Convocation of Episcopal Churches in Europe). Yet this interpretation would be not only an abuse of the preacher’s words, himself a priest in the Church of England, it would, moreover, put us on the ‘good side’ and the ‘evil others’ on the other. And this is precisely the way one should not read the Gospel. Everyone who concludes after reading it that he is the good and righteous one, haven’t read it well enough. In reality the question the Rev. Price asks refers to each of us. Is the reason why we have a problem with the fact that someone else functions in other structures or beyond any structures at all, maybe beyond what we usually call ‘Christianity’ altogether, the fact that they are doing something we are not doing, even though we should?
