Are you with Jesus?

 

Are you “with Jesus”? Jesus assures his disciples that what matters is service, not status. Indeed, Jesus gladly welcomes the good work of a stranger, someone the disciples don’t even know … or recognized as following ‘us’. 

Including in the kingdom, not sorting people out, is what Jesus is all about. The disciples fret over control of the power of the Spirit, but it flows where it will and will not stay put in any narrow channels. 

Meanwhile Jesus warns that to cause anyone - a new believer, a child - to stumble or fall away from the grace of the Kingdom is a woeful and dangerous thing. 

We are to discard whatever hinders us from fully living into the good news of the kingdom that Jesus brings.

Jesus uses extreme metaphors to wake us up and drive this point home. For it is not physical but moral injuries that hold us back, and parts of ourselves - our behaviors, our attitudes - that we clutch onto when we could be free if we gave them up. 

Remember how quickly Blind Bartimaeus cast aside his begging cloak, or Matthew his tax tables, when Jesus called. Remember also how Judas clutched to the purse and his narrow idea of a Kingdom and a Messiah rather than opening to the new reality.

We hear in the letter of James that this Kingdom message is about more than individual behavior. The epistle exhorts us to remember we act as part of a community, in solidarity. Our prayers for one another, and our confessions of our faults - our sins - to each other, build up that unity, so much in contrast to competition or status-seeking.

Remember the warning to seek not too high a place at the common feast but take one even so low the host makes you move up? Remember how that heaven-sent host himself did not sit at all but served? That is the way to be great.

One comic example of invoking status by invoking a name comes from the movie “Shakespeare in Love” where toward the end the censorious killjoy Mr Tillney - despite his title, Master of Revels - is seeking to shut down a shocking shocking display on stage of the theatre during a performance of “Romeo and Juliet”, and bellows out, once too often, “In the name of the Queen…”

Only to be brought short by the sovereign herself, rising from her inconspicuous set in the audience: “Have a care with my name, Mr Tillney: you’ll wear it out.”

Oh dear. Truly no man knoweth the day or the hour.

Better seek to serve than to be served, to understand than to be understood, to praise than to be praised, to obey the law of love than to enforce the letter of the code of fear.

The passage from Numbers also exposes the unregulated quality of the Spirit Worrying Joshua is the discovery of two actively prophesying inside the camp, that is, outside the circle of those present with Moses.

Joshua implores, “Lord Moses, forbid them!” But Moses ripostes, “Are you jealous?” and goes on to exclaim,

“Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets!”

Again, the work of God, the power of the Spirit, includes - not excludes - beyond our comfort, and often and beyond our control.

I totally understand their concern, Joshua and the disciples, but keep in mind that the crazy fiesta of the Spirit at work happens in accordance with the will of God and the advent of his Reign.

When we pray “on earth as it is in heaven” do we expect it to go so far as this? How do we test it, feel confident that we are indeed “with Jesus”? 

The radical welcome of the kingdom of God is to all who do the work of mercy and justice , all who exercise a ministry of compassion.

Nobody has a corner on the ministries of healing and liberation. None of us has a cause to “scandalize” - to lead astray, or reject, or make unwelcome - any “little one” that belongs to the Lord: child, newcomer, or stranger. 

What we learn from the ‘unauthorized’ exercise of a ministry in Jesus’ name is that healing comes from faith and prayer, not some special power or status.

God’s power is inclusive and open to cooperation, not restricted to an inner circle. It is a mighty force, and does not always go through the ‘proper’ channels … at least not ones we recognize.

What sets apart the followers of Jesus is their “saltiness” - their lives of purified righteousness, hindrances cleared away; their humility, service, hospitality to outcasts, 

-- and the audacity and faith to claim even a crucified Lord. May we welcome him even as we open our arms to the least of his children, and the most audacious.

 

Amen.