When my dad was still alive he would sometimes recount some of his wartime experiences in WWII as a crewman on a B24. Normally these conversations would occur after liberal partaking of brewed beverages but occasionally things would just blurt out in the normal run of things.
It was back in the late 80s and Gail and I were visiting from seminary. Dad was sitting in his easy chair in front of the TV watching a news report on some fighting in an area in what used to be Yugoslavia.
He sat up and said something to the effect: “Well son of a …gun….I know that gosh-darned place, the so and so Germans shot our derrieres off on a bombing run and we had to crash land right there. What a heck of a time that was.” Now please understand that this has been edited significantly for pulpit use.
Then he went on to tell me how on two different occasions on missions into Romania or Bulgaria, their B24 had been shot up real bad. They had to throw everything out the open ports and bomb bays; he wondered if anyone was hurt by the .50 caliber machine guns and ammunition and junk they dumped just to keep the airplane in the air.
Then how they crash landed in that area twice, once in the area they were talking about and once on the island of Vis, being extracted by British commandos of some sort who got them back to Italy to fly again.
I remember him saying how the real scary part of these experiences happened after they were on the ground; after surviving everything else, the scary part was trying to figure out who was your friend and who was your enemy. That’s what meant life or death – knowing who was your friend and who was your enemy.
Mark in this morning’s gospel is warning the church about the same thing. In past weeks we have heard, mark reporting how Jesus is revealing the kingdom of god. Today he reports Jesus giving advice to his disciples on who is your friend and who is your enemy.
We hear John telling Jesus that he and his other disciples had seen a fellow casting out demons from people using the name of Jesus. John tells Jesus how he told him to stop because he was not part of the entourage following Jesus.
John was concerned that this fellow had no authority to do this – he wasn’t part of the band of disciples – his name wasn’t even known. What right did he have to do these great works of power – he wasn’t part of our band?
Jesus replies that this should not be forbidden just because this person was not part of their band. He was using the name of Jesus with authority, he was trusting in the power of Jesus to do this kingdom work so he had to be a believer, and one who functions with faith in Jesus is not an enemy but a friend, an ally in establishing the kingdom of God.
We don’t know who this fellow was. It seems John and his friends didn’t know who he was. Apparently he was one of the fringe members of the disciples, one of those seldom seen, never heard kind of people, the quiet unpretentious type, the kind of person no one pays attention to much – one of the outsiders.
But it is clear that whoever he was, he knew Jesus. He must have watched Jesus, and heard Jesus, because he was doing what Jesus did. He was doing spiritual battle for another person in the name of Jesus. He knew Jesus.
It seems that John and maybe some of the others got the idea that ministry in the name of Jesus was reserved just to them; the few, the known, the chosen. Jesus gives them a mild rebuke and informs them that all who respond to Jesus and enter the kingdom are therefore ministers of the kingdom just as important as they are. That the message of the kingdom is so important that even those who are still outside it but treat you kindly because you are a Christian, will be rewarded by God.
This insight might apply in a couple of ways. If you are a Christian, if you profess Jesus as your Lord and Savior, the Christ, you are a minister. God has called you into the kingdom by his grace to equip you to be a conduit or transmitter of that grace to others. He has given each of us gifts and abilities, which, when tendered to the lord for his service, will be used to do his work. And the Lord and his Church is blessed when we do.
When someone comes up to you and asks: who is your minister at Church of the Redeemer, don’t point at one of the priests. We work here, we are the coaching staff, don’t point at someone else, say I am a minister in the kingdom, how may I help you, and see how God might use you. Every believer here is a minister. It’s a reality we even recognize in our strategic plan; remember take your place? You are a minister, so how is your ministry going?
Another aspect we might consider is that the Kingdom of God is bigger than our particular ministry area in church, it’s bigger than the Church of the Redeemer, bigger than the Episcopal Church.
We tend become myopic about our own ministries, our own parish, or denomination. We can have a false pride about who we are and what we do. We tread on dangerous ground to think that our brand of ministry is somehow more acceptable, more important, more authoritative to the Lord than others. Kingdom ministry belongs to all who profess the name of Jesus. And we should be beware of judging other churches, other ministries, other ministers.
And we should never discount the quiet disciple, the simple disciple that no one seems to know or acknowledge, the fringe disciple, the different one because God will use them for great ministry in the kingdom. We should be looking for those who are on the fringe, encourage them in their gifts, bring them in from the fringe.
Having made clear who are allies in the kingdom, Jesus goes on to be clear who the enemy is. That simple three letter word: sin.
I asked my computer to define sin: it stated sin as any act that violates God’s will, or anything that violates or disrupts the relationship between God and a person. I have a pretty theologically smart computer.
Anything that violates God’s will. We can know those specifics through the bible. Things are stated pretty clearly there about how God wants us to behave, what is right and what is wrong. The Ten Commandments, the Beatitudes, the moral instructions from both the Old and New Testaments – the Church has known what violates God’s will for millennia. God is pretty clear about his will but we have to read it.
If we have questions or don’t understand we need to ask. When I had more specific questions about sin when I was a kid, my dad always told me to ask my mother. In this case if you have more specific questions, ask a priest. If you have questions about right and wrong and scripture is not clear to you, come and talk.
Sin is also anything that violates or disrupts our relationship with God, and we can know that through our conscience, that wonderfully mysterious part of our soul that, when it is working properly, tuned into the Lord gives us a warning when we are in the near proximity of sinning, and convicts us with guilt if we ignore or miss those warnings.
Jesus seems pretty serious about this. He says if someone causes one of his little ones, any believer, but especially children and new Christians to do something that is against God’s will or disrupts their relation with him it is better for them that a millstone be put around his neck and thrown into the sea.
And in our own lives, if our hands – what we do, our feet – where we go, or our eyes – what we desire or seek, cause us to sin, it would be better for us to cut them off.
Now Jesus is using a bit of exaggeration here because if he had a literal meaning you would be listening to a one-armed, one-legged, one-eyed preacher today. But Jesus uses strong language here about sin, sounding more like Al Capone than the Messiah.
But why? Because hell, a place of punishment, is real and he does not want us to go there and if we believe Jesus, we don’t want to go there either. Sin is a real enemy, it has real consequences, and it requires diligence, courage, and discipline to avoid.
Jesus is concerned that his disciples know who their friends are and know who their enemies are. Because just like it was for my dad after he crash-landed behind enemy lines, so it is for us knowing who your friends and enemies are is a real matter of life and death.