Text: Mark 9:38-50
Beloved
in Christ, there are a couple billion people currently alive who claim to be
followers of our Lord Jesus Christ. There are some additional people who can’t
quite bring themselves to call themselves “Christians,” but nonetheless admire
Jesus and think of themselves as friendly to Him. But if you look at everything
people say about Jesus, it is clear that at least some people have gotten His
message garbled. Or, put another way, everyone cannot be right in what they are
saying about Him, since some people state things about Him that contradict what
others say.
People
tend to solve this dilemma by saying one of two things. They may say that only
those people who belong to their corner of the Christian world are Christians,
and that all people outside of their fellowship will perish. Or they may say
that it doesn’t really matter what you teach or believe about Jesus. As long as
you say the name magic word “Jesus” in a positive manner, everything is okay.
Our
Lord doesn’t approve of either of those solutions in today’s Gospel. When the
disciples saw someone casting out a demon in His name, they got upset because
that person was not part of their organization and didn’t even want to be part
of it. That individual had recognized that Jesus had some kind of supernatural
power, and he decided to invoke it when he was doing an exorcism. He probably
threw in the name of Jesus after invoking the names of Moses, Elijah, Elisha,
and every other prophet he could think of. He didn’t necessarily think of Jesus
as the Messiah, let alone as the Son of God, but he thought that the demons
would tremble when the name of Jesus was mentioned. This irritated the
disciples, who rightly wanted our Lord to be given more honor than that. And so
they told him, “Either honor Jesus properly or stop using His name!”
But
Jesus took a different tack. “Do not stop him,” our Lord said, “for
no one who does a mighty work in My name will be able soon afterward to speak
evil of Me. For the one who is not against us is for us.” In other
words, the man may not have entirely understood the truth, but there was the
possibility that he would come to know Jesus more deeply as time passed and
that he would become a disciple. At the very least he wouldn’t go around
blaspheming Jesus. And our Lord further noted that those who honored His
disciples without being disciples themselves would be honored appropriately,
for He added, “Whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you
belong to Christ will by no means lose his reward.”
Therefore,
it is not necessary that every person know everything about the Scriptures and
its teachings in order to be a Christian. Granted, it does not help to be
ignorant, as we will talk about shortly. And you certainly do not want to go
against the clear teachings of the Scriptures, for you do so at great peril.
Nonetheless, we have brothers and sisters in Christ who do not fully understand
or profess everything that they ought. We pray that they will come to know more
about God and will be corrected over time. In fact, we want to discuss God’s
Word with them and help them to come to a clearer understanding of it. But we
will not quickly dismiss them as being outside God’s kingdom, for we know that
God is at work far beyond our congregation and beyond the churches that share
our confession of faith.
But
that does not mean that every Christian gets to believe whatever they want and that
every notion anyone has must be accepted as completely good. Our Lord warns us
that there is also a danger in living and teaching in such a way that the weak
and the unlearned are led away from the Christian faith. A false teacher who
would lead others astray would find swimming with a millstone as a life
preserver preferable to the fate that awaits them. Even in our own lives, we
should look to see if there is anything that we hold dear that is separating us
from God. Be it ever as precious to us as our own eye or hand or foot, we
should not cling to it, but yield instead to God’s Word.
Thus,
our Lord shows an appropriate balance. He gives people grace to grow in their
knowledge so that they may come to a clearer understanding of the truth and
embrace it. And He warns people not to assume rather lazily that His grace
means they can say, do, and teach anything they want. Instead, we should use
God’s grace as an opportunity to delve deeper into His Word, not as an excuse
to sin all the more.
This
is exactly what we teach as Lutherans. Our statements of faith have been
gathered up in a book called the Book of Concord. We recite part of it
every Sunday—the Nicene Creed—and everyone who has been confirmed knows another
part of it, the Small Catechism. The preface to the Book of Concord gets the
balance exactly right, as it condemns false teaching that would lead people
astray, but also emphasize that there are many Christians outside of our
fellowship. The authors state, “It is not at all our plan and purpose to
condemn people who err because of a certain simplicity of mind, but are not
blasphemers against the truth of the heavenly doctrine. Much less, indeed, do
we intend to condemn entire churches that are either [in our nation] or
elsewhere. Rather, it has been our intention and desire in this way to openly
criticize and condemn only the fanatical opinions and their stubborn and
blasphemous teachers….We have written condemnations also for this reason: that
all godly persons might be diligently warned to avoid these errors. For we have
no doubt whatsoever that—even in those churches that have not agreed with us in
all things—many godly and by no means wicked people are found. They follow
their own simplicity and do not correctly understand the matter itself….We are
also in great hope that, if these simple people would be taught correctly about
these things—the Spirit of the Lord aiding them—they would agree with us, and
with our churches and schools, to the infallible truth of God’s Word.” (Concordia: The Lutheran Confessions: A Reader's Edition of the Book of Concord [St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 2005], Preface to the Book of Concord, paragraph 20.)
In
other words, we are concerned about false teaching and that is why we do not
enter into fellowship with everyone and anyone who purports to be a Christian.
We do not want to approve those teachers who cannot confess the Christian faith
properly. But we acknowledge that there are many sincere believers in Christ to
be found in other confessions of faith, for they cling to God’s Word and don’t
understand that their pastors are teaching error along with the gospel. I am
reminded of what a parishioner (who is now with the Lord) told me many years
ago. He had grown up in a church that taught that Christ’s body and blood were
not present in the Lord’s Supper, but that it was all symbolic. He was dating a
young woman who was a member here and whom he eventually married. The pastor
here at the time asked, “What do you think you receive in the Lord’s Supper?”
“Christ’s body and blood,” he replied. The pastor then asked, “Do you know
that’s not what your church teaches?” The man was taken aback a bit, because
that was news to him. But when he went back to his home congregation, he
discovered that that was indeed the case. Here was a genuinely Christian man,
who believed Christ’s words about the Lord’s Supper. He had been taught false
things about it, but the false teaching hadn’t stuck because in the simplicity
of his faith he had rightly clung to God’s Word. There are plenty more people
like him spread across Christianity.
But
as we are grateful to God that His Word has that effect and as we are gracious
to those fellow believers, allowing them time to grow, we also take seriously
the call not to cause someone to stumble in their faith, either by our wicked
living or by false teaching. We do not want our selfishness, our egos, our
penchant for the pleasures of the world, our lust, our greed, and the like to
get in the way of others coming to faith or to lead others into the same vices
so that they lose their faith.
By
the same token, we also don’t want any false ideas about God to destroy our
faith or that of others. We want to worship the true God—the blessed Trinity of
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in one Godhead—not some idol or some figment of
our imagination. We want to be saved by Jesus Christ, true God and true man,
united in one person. We don’t want a Savior who is a mere human or a distant
God, but rather someone who is true God getting into the midst of our earthly
problems by taking on our flesh. We want a Redeemer who saves us by living a
holy life in our place, then dying to atone for our sins, and then rising again
to impart forgiveness and new life. We want to find the Holy Spirit at work in
the Word, baptism, and the Lord’s Supper—rather than think that they are merely
empty symbols. We want to know that the Holy Spirit works amid our sufferings
and uses them for our good and God’s glory. We don’t want to be misled by those
who teach that Christians never have grief or disease and thus drive those who do
have them to despair. We want to cling to this blessed hope throughout our life
so that we will die a godly death and then rise again on the Last Day and
receive eternal life. We don’t want to be led astray by thoughts that say that
this is the only life we will ever know and that dead is dead.
And
thus we will be gentle toward those who are still in ignorance, even as we take
care not to allow false teachings to creep in and corrupt things. In short, we
will do what Jesus says: “Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with
one another.” We will have salt, that is, we will go against the
countervailing forces of this world that would lead it to destruction. We will
teach sound doctrine and strive to live godly lives. But we will also be at
peace with each other. We will not make it our goal to pick a fight with everyone.
We will gently guide and teach the ignorant and patiently admonish the
recalcitrant. But our goal is to bring people to know our Lord Jesus Christ and
God the Father who sent Him. In Jesus’s name. Amen.
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