Thought for the week - 29 September 2024

In today’s extract from St Mark’s Gospel John, one of the inner circle of Jesus’ disciples, complains about the success of an unauthorised person who has been driving out demons in Jesus’ name and he speaks for the rest of the disciples. ‘We saw a man who is not one of us casting out demons in your name.’ He uses the words ‘we’ and ‘us’; why are they so put out at this man’s good work? A few verses earlier in the Gospel a man had brought his son who was possessed by a demon to Jesus for healing. He said that he had earlier brought him to the disciples, but they were unable to cast out the demon. The success of the unauthorised man had shown up the earlier failure of the disciples. He was able to do what they could not. They felt this failure keenly. Somebody who did not belong to the inner circle was successful where they had failed. John says, ‘we tried to prevent him because he does not follow us.’ They had tried to stop him doing good because he did not follow them. They seem to be having some leadership problems here. They had started their journey with Jesus. He summoned them to follow him, now they think that people who hear the word of the Lord are being called to follow them.

The disciples are taken up with their own power and authority. Power is given them to serve the kingdom, but it is easy to divert that power and authority to self-serving purposes and this is what the Gospel is partly about: how to use the authority given by God in his way not in our way.

He tells his disciples that they should not try and stop this man. In fact, they cannot prevent him because the man has been casting out demons in the name of the Lord. Speaking the name implies faith. The man has acknowledged the power of Jesus in his own life and now he is bringing others to the knowledge of that name. There is no magical property in the name. The man could not have exercised this authority without it being given to him. Why it was given to him is not clear. Jesus is telling the disciples that if they try to prevent it they are acting as obstacles to the unfolding of the kingdom. The Lord chooses his own instruments for the growth of the kingdom and to act as agents of his power. The grace of God is not confined in its operation to the college of the apostles or to the sacraments or to the Church itself. It can operate outside all of those instruments. When it does, it is always with a view to bringing others into communion with the Body of Christ. The grace of Christ is always directed to unity. It is designed to bring about communion, of becoming what we are called to be.

We should not be so much concerned about whether God is doing his job properly, as Joshua in the first reading and John in the Gospel were, but whether we have cleared away the obstacles to his grace working in our own lives. John has forgotten the reason for which he was called. In Jewish tradition the various parts of the body were associated with sinful actions. So, theft would be associated with the hand for example, or covetousness or lust with the eyes. What Jesus is talking about is the comprehensiveness of sin, how it affects the whole of your life. If you have something wrong with your hand the whole of your body is affected.

Living the life of Christ involves a reconstruction not only of our life story, but also of our whole way of being in the world. The way we are involved in the world is through our bodies and the disorder of sin has a kind of physical effect on us. We do not function in the right way. The answer to this is not self-mutilation but understanding what our life is for. Jesus says we must have a broader and more generous vision of what life is about not a narrow vision such as John and the disciples seem to possess. He is saying that if certain aspects of our life seem to exceed our control. If we lose the harmony of the proper functioning of the whole of our existence then we have to undergo painful realignment. He uses the metaphor of amputation. Sometimes a diseased member of the body threatens the health of the whole and we have to do without it.

The beginning of the answer is the one he gives to John ‘stop worrying about whether God is doing his job. You are not God.’ Adam and Eve had started off by wanting to be gods and the consequence was a form of amputation, separation from the friendship they had enjoyed with God in the garden from which they were cut off. Jesus is saying ‘do not make that same mistake again.’ The path of return is a hard one. It is no easy journey, but it is much easier if you just leave behind what in fact you do not need. The vanity of John and the disciples was wounded by the success of the unknown, believing man in casting out demons. Jesus tells them they were so intent on seeing their own authority that they had failed to see the power of God acting for good in the lives of the needy. Their eyes had offended them since they had failed to see. Jesus says learn to see again and then you can walk in his ways.