Us and Them

Mark 9:38-50

^"Teacher,” said John, “we saw someone driving out demons in your name and we told him to stop, because he was not one of us.”

To a statement like that, I can imagine Jesus saying “O John, my dear John, I have called you in to my inner circle.  With Peter and James, you have seen things that others have not.  You were there when Jairus’ daughter was raised as I decreed, “Talitha Koum”.  You were there with me in the radiance on that mountaintop with Moses and Elijah.  Beloved John, you will see more still to come.  Yet you argue with your brothers as to who will be the greatest among you.   You and James, so keen to sit at my right and my left in my glory; I tell you, you will be seated next to me at table very soon ...stay with me to the end. 

“Teacher,” said John, “we saw someone driving out demons in your name and we told him to stop, because he was not one of us.”

“Do not stop him,” Jesus said. “For no one who does a miracle in my name can in the next moment say anything bad about me, for whoever is not against us is for us...”

John, the apostle, privileged to be with Jesus in many special miraculous moments, is given an answer from Jesus making it clear that building his kingdom is not meant to be an exclusive operation.  Jesus never asks for the credentials of the one who’s been driving out demons – what matters is that it’s being done in Jesus’ name.  

The words and deeds of Jesus, and indeed the gospel message itself, points to the need for his followers to consider carefully the boundary lines that we tend to draw, and to actively dismantle the wall of ‘us’ versus ‘them’ that too often builds up.  From the beginning of the church, there have been rivalries between different groups.  Remember in Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians where the people had become divided into factions, some following Apollos, some following Paul, some following Cephas and some following Christ – the people were boasting about which one they followed, and the walls were being built up.

I’m also reminded of the misunderstandings between the various Christian traditions, pitting the ‘super-spiritual’, the ‘liturgical’ and the ‘rigidly dogmatic’ against each other.   Our allegiance must be to Christ first, and to our extended Christian family of believers.  Who is in this family?  Jesus said whoever does the will of God is included in His family (Mark 3:31-35). And the family of Christ are called to ‘love one another’, that’s the way Jesus said we are to demonstrate that we are Christ’s disciples. Through our Scriptures, Christians are urged to consider one another; to be kind to one another, to value others more than ourselves, to bear with each other’s burdens - to forgive as we’ve been forgiven – ‘to make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bonds of peace’ (Eph 4:3).

And in the absence of unity, where there are alienated feelings and bitterness, not only do we become poor witnesses for Christ – at the same time we invite the enemy to gain a stronger foothold among us.  James 3:26 says ‘For wherever there is jealousy and selfish ambition, there you will find disorder and evil of every kind.’ And when seekers observe God’s family fighting, they not so likely to want to become a part of God’s family. So as we recognise the tendency to put a wall between ‘us’ and ‘them’, how can we move on to dismantle the wall? The Lord’s Prayer is a GREAT place to start.  The Lord’s Prayer doesn’t belong to any one tradition – and so, along with the Creeds, the Lord’s Prayer is a potent way for us to express our unity:

You cannot say the Lord’s Prayer,

And even once say "I".

You cannot pray the Lord’s Prayer,

And even once say "my".

Nor can you pray the Lord’s Prayer

And not pray for another.

For to ask for "our" daily bread,

You include your sister and brother!

All God’s children are included

in each and every plea.

From the beginning to the end of it,

it does not once say "me". 

Yesterday some 40,000 Christians from all denominations and traditions met in Wembley Stadium to pray for the nation. Among the 40,000 was a coach full of people representing different Churches in our community. At the heart of the prayers at Wembley was The Lord’s Prayer, being offered for this nation. We’re going to use that same prayer as a blessing now.  And as we pray the Lord’s Prayer together in a moment, I invite you first to think of a brother or sister in Christ with whom you might need to be reconciled, and include that person with yourself as you pray ‘Our Father’; ‘our daily bread’; ‘forgive us our trespasses’; ‘deliver us from evil’. 

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name.  Thy kingdom come; Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.  Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.  And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.  For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory, for ever and ever.  Amen.

One of the strongest areas of division into ‘us’ and ‘them’ can be between churches. Relationships may be better than they were in the past, but many of us still find criticism comes easy – and the criticism is a form of rejection.

There is a story of a World War I soldier who died, and his friends desperately wanted to give him a decent burial.  They found a cemetery in a nearby village.  It happened to be a Roman Catholic cemetery, and the dead man had been a Protestant.  When the friends found the Priest in charge of the burial grounds, they requested permission to bury their friend, but the Priest refused because the man had not been a Catholic.  The Priest saw their disappointment, and said he could arrange for them to have some land outside the churchyard fence to bury their friend. This was done.  Some time later, they returned to visit the grave but couldn’t find it.  Their search led them back to the Priest and, of course, they asked him what had happened to the grave.  The Priest said that he had been unable to sleep because he had made them bury their friend outside the fence.  So he had moved the fence to include the dead soldier. 

In Christ, God ‘moved the fence’ to include the undeserving – you and me.  His love is all embracing.  As we endeavour to honour Christ’s name, and we begin to recognise that our identity is found in Christ, we too are called to move the fence.  Then we realise our identity in Christ isn’t threatened by any group or individual, and we are set free to move from the position of ‘us’ versus ‘them’, and to love as Christ has loved us.

Moving the fence can be a source of joy and healing. So let’s do this.  Let’s share in The Lord’s Prayer once more; but this time, we’ll take a moment and allow God to bring to mind any church, congregation or minister that we may have criticised or regarded as not quite up to the mark.  Ask God to forgive, and then hold them in mind and ask God’s blessing on them by specifically praying the Lord’s Prayer for them. 

 Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name.  Thy kingdom come; Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.  Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.  And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.  For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory, for ever and ever.  Amen.

Sermon for Choral Evensong

Exodus 18:13-26 & Matthew 7:1-14
Critics of the bible might enjoy pointing out that our two bible readings this evening appear to present a contradiction: in the Exodus passage Moses is serving as ‘judge’ for the people who come seeking God’s will in their disputes. But in the gospel reading from Matthew 7 we hear Jesus saying ‘Do not judge’. So what’s going on here?

People today like to declare the well-known saying, ‘judge not, lest ye be judged.’ Our postmodern culture is anti-judgmental and tolerant of everything but intolerance. Relativism is another typical postmodern view - that there is no absolute truth by which things can be judged. So is Jesus promoting relativism here? Absolutely not!

There are many places in the Old Testament where God entrusts people to pronounce judgment. The book of Judges, for example, presents twelve leaders raised up by the Lord, who judge the tribes of Israel (my personal favourite is Deborah, and you can read about her in Judges ch. 4 & 5).

In the New Testament, it’s remarkable what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 6: ‘If any of you has a dispute with another, dare he take it before the ungodly for judgment instead of before the saints? Do you not know that the saints will judge the world? And if you are to judge the world, are you not competent to judge trivial cases? Do you not know that we will judge angels? How much more the things of this life!’

If this is the case, why then does Jesus say, ‘Do not judge’ in the beginning of Matthew 7? Well, there’s a difference between types of judgment. The judgment that Moses and Deborah carried out, and the judgment which Paul refers to, is judgment between right and wrong; between truth and falsehood. That kind of judgment is our duty, and it should be done with wisdom, honesty, common sense, and discernment. But the kind of judgment that Jesus speaks against, in Matthew 7, is about condemning people. It’s judgmentalism; it’s superficial, self-righteous, dishonest, and hypocritical.

Throughout the gospels Jesus condemns hypocrisy - pretending to be something that you’re not, or pretending to be better than you are. Matthew 7 verses 3-5: “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in someone else’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? …You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from the other person’s eye.”

Christianity itself is often judged by those outside the Church. Their verdict is that the Church is full of hypocrites. Some people outside the Church believe that Christians think they are ‘perfect’ people, or ‘superior’ in some way. It’s not really true that the Church is full of hypocrites. The truth is that the Church is full of sinners. The hypocrites in the Church are those who would deny that fact, or who don’t include themselves in that fact, but they do love to condemn other people. And for some reason, we are quick to identify hypocrisy in other people, but not so quick to recognise it in ourselves.

American telly-evangelists seem to be particularly prone to hypocrisy - of not practicing what they preach - which has led to the public downfall of many. But at least as far back as 2 Samuel 12, there’s a good example of King David being called on self-righteous hypocrisy, when Nathan the prophet tells David a story of a rich man who steals a poor man’s precious lamb and kills it for his own use. David pronounces sound condemnation on the rich man in the story, while Nathan’s intention all along was to point out David’s blindness to his own sinful behaviour with Bathsheba.

In Matthew 15, Jesus says to the Pharisees, “You hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you, [saying] ‘these people honour me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.’’ In the gospels, Jesus reveals many ways in which the Pharisees practiced a hypocritical religion - ways which are sometimes practiced by people today who deceive themselves and others into thinking they are Christian.

Here are a few examples from Matthew’s gospel, ch. 23: ‘everything they do is done for others to see; they love the place of honour at banquets and the most important seats in the synagogues; ‘Woe to you… you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices… but you have neglected the more important matters of the law – justice, mercy and faithfulness… You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel… You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside you are full of greed and self-indulgence… on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.’

This is especially challenging for those who are called to lead by example: “The teachers of the law and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat. So you must obey them and do everything they tell you. But do not do what they do, for they do not practise what they preach.” But aren’t ALL of us Christians called to practice what we proclaim? By our fruit we shall be known.

Christianity’s claim that there is an absolute truth and an ultimate judge is not popular today. But God’s judgment is righteous, just and merciful. And that is how he wants us to judge. In the letter of James ch 2 v.13, we read that ‘judgment will be merciless to one who has shown no mercy; [and] mercy triumphs over judgment.’ And similarly in Matthew 7 v. 2, ‘For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.’

There is no contradiction here. Yes, we must judge between right and wrong and between truth and falsehood. In 1 Corinthians 14 Paul advises to ‘weigh carefully what is said’. And in 1 Thessalonians 5 he says to ‘Test everything. Hold on to the good. [And] avoid every kind of evil’. But we should not be judging the status of other people, and especially their status before God. Romans 14:4 – ‘Who are you to judge someone else’s servant? To his own master he stands or falls’. And verse 13: ‘Therefore let us stop passing judgment on one another. Instead, make up your mind not to put any stumbling block or obstacle in your brother's way’.

Jesus tells us the gate is small and the road is narrow that leads to life. Many obstacles can block that gate and divert people from the road. God forbid that we should be that obstacle for another person.