In Group, Out Group
Before living here on the North Fork of Long Island, Kate, the girls, and I lived for 4 years in the Charleston area of South Carolina. Charleston has the nickname “the Holy City” because of all of the churches on the peninsula. Just one look at the city’s historic skyline, and you immediately notice all of the church steeples reaching up into the sky. Before living there, we were in my hometown of Pittsburgh there is a church every couple of blocks. The result of all of the various people groups that came over to work in the mills at the height of the steel industry. SO many churches from so many different traditions and ethnic groups. It’s probably similar in your town. They may not all be as active as they once were, but I bet you have at least a handful of different churches where you live.
Just a casual observer would notice that we Christians are a divided group. We are just like the world around us in that we love to draw lines dividing us from others. We love to operate according to the in-group out-group way of thinking. There are the big categories of Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Protestant, but then there are a bunch of subcategories within those and none more than in the Protestant world. It seems like it is a part of our DNA to find something we disagree over and then separate from each other and start a new church. Anglicans, Presbyterians, Lutherans, Baptists, First Baptists, Second Baptists, Methodists, Mennonites, 7th Day Adventists, Christian Missionary Alliance, Assemblies of God, and on and on goes the list of denominations. And there is a whole other list of non-denominational churches. Thankfully, nowadays we usually have pretty amicable splits that do not result in violence, at least in the Western world. But that has not always been the case. Sadly, we have long history of Christians killing Christians, which was one of the precipitating causes of the Enlightenment and the largely secularized Western world we live in today. People just got sick and tired of all of the religious wars, all of the fighting. And there are places still in parts of Africa and other parts of the world where Christians are still killing each other over tribal divisions.
In our context, it can still be pretty bad though. The relatively recent Episcopal/Anglican split saw Christians suing other Christians, churches dragging other churches into court over ownership of property. The Methodists and Presbyterians have gone through something similar. Not a very strong witness. In fact a very tragic one when you consider Jesus’ words in the Gospel of John, “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” (13:35) No wonder people are leaving the church in droves. Instead of love they see anger, division, and backbiting. I have certainly been guilty of this myself. I have judged sisters and brothers in Christ. I have dismissed people that hold to other expressions of the Christian faith because I didn’t like their emphasis or their interpretation of something. I am guilty of the in-group out-group way of thinking.
It’s because we like to be around people that think like us. We like to hang out with like-minded people. And that’s not all bad. That’s why we have such things as “people groups.” And it can fall in many different ways: nationality, neighborhood, race, gender, religious beliefs, political beliefs, clothing styles, music preferences, even facial hair. Did you know there is such a thing as a “lumbersexual?” Basically, men who sport beards and hairy chests, wear flannels and so on. Think of the Kelce brothers (they’re football players, for those who don’t know…Travis is dating Taylor Swift…to jog your memory). It rose to prominence in 2014 and then fell out of style in 2018, but then came back in 2022. Fads are exhausting, but I digress. A lot of these people groups can simply be descriptive, just a way to talk about different parts of society. The issue is when our differences begin to grow into prejudices. When we begin to devalue people that are different from us, when we begin to marginalize those who are not in our group, then we have a big problem.
Actual Oregon lumberjacks...but interestingly, very few beards:)
This brings us to our text for today. We are going to continue our look at Mark 9, specifically verses 38-50. And if in reading this section you thought to yourself it seems a little disjointed, not as tied together as other parts of Mark’s Gospel, you are right. In these verses we find a miscellaneous collection of Jesus’ sayings that are distributed in various forms and different contexts in the other Gospel accounts. Mark kind of assembled them here editorially, which means he is not saying that they all happened on the same occasion. He thought they were important things that Jesus said and made sure to put them in here, but he did not worry about giving us the full context. That is especially true with the second part of this section where Jesus is talking about cutting off those parts of us that cause us to sin. It is part of Jesus’ famous sermon on the mount in Matthew 5, but Mark tacks it on here because many assume he thought it was consistent with some of the other teachings about discipleship found earlier in the passage, but he does not give us the rest of the sermon on the mount. SO, it’s loosely related but not directly.
I want us to focus on the first part of the passage. This is where we see Jesus’ disciples using some of that in group out group thinking. Just before this the disciples were caught up in the game of comparison with one another asking the question, “Who is the greatest amongst them.” They were still operating with a theology of glory. They believed it was all about being the best, about getting to the next level. It’s very familiar to us because it is the way the world around us thinks. Just think of your average hip hop artist or think about Charlie Sheen. It’s about winning, right?
But instead of a theology of glory, Jesus presents us with a theology of the cross. He had come to die, to go to the cross for the sins of the world, for our sins. It’s not about being the best, the first, the strongest, successful, etc. He said, “If anyone would be first, he must be last of all and servant of all.” Jesus shows us that God comes near to us, to serve us, in our brokenness. He meets us where we are right now. He doesn’t wait for us to continually improve until we are able to ascend to where he is. He doesn’t wait for us to work our way to him, to earn our way to him. He breaks into our lives and works through our pain, suffering, and death to bring new life out of it. He is a God of resurrection and re-creation. SO Jesus gives the disciples a new paradigm of servant-hood, a paradigm of death and resurrection instead of glory.
And on the heels of this we hear John tell Jesus about a guy they saw exorcising demons out of people in Jesus’ name. They tell him that they tried to stop him because he was not following them. He was not a part of their group. Maybe they should stop comparing themselves to one another and stop worrying about who was the greatest among them because they were all Jesus’ chosen group, his chosen in group, but when it came to somebody outside of their little clique, the rules were different. In their minds, this guy exorcising demons wasn’t allowed to do that kind of thing because he was not a part of the disciples and on top of that he was actually doing a good job at it, which probably made them even more upset. Earlier in this chapter the disciples had failed to exorcise a demon out of a boy that was brought to them and Jesus ended up having to do it. That was most likely very fresh in their minds when they saw someone else doing it in Jesus name that wasn’t even one of his close followers. Who does that guy think he is? SO they were not healed of all of their comparison habits even after Jesus just taught them. They still were worried about being important. They still were feeling inferior and insecure. They wanted to protect their exclusive status as Jesus’ crew, his homeboys as the T-shirt says, and they tried to control this guy, they tried to censor him.
Isn’t it funny that they did not try to welcome this guy in? They didn’t try to invite him into their group. They didn’t say, “Wow, that guy is great! He’s doing a great job and he’s doing it in our guy’s name. He should be a part of our crew.” They didn’t say that. They said, “That guy is breaking the rules. He’s on our turf. We better put him in his place.” This is what we do. Think the Jets and the Sharks from West Side Story. We create dividing lines; we make them stronger instead of tearing them down, instead of softening them, especially when someone is not one of us. The difference becomes a threat that must be controlled. That’s how we often operate as people. And it’s how we often operate as the church. We have a defensive stance, a threatened stance, instead of one that is more open, one that is more charitable, one that is more secure.
In Jesus’ response we see the unthreatened position. We see someone who is unafraid. Jesus tells the disciples not to stop this person. He says, “The one who is not against us is for us.” This person may not be part of our particular group, he may not be familiar to us or someone that we fully understand, but he is certainly on our side. He is ministering to people in Jesus’ name. He says, “No one who does a mighty work in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me.” In saying this Jesus gives us the true line. As I said earlier, we like to find things to divide over. We can get so nit picky as people that we begin to split hairs and get defined by our differences and our prejudices. We may want to dismiss someone like the pope because he is not Protestant or because he’s not Anglican (which I am), although the wonderful thing about Anglicans is we have such lowly origins that we often don’t get too picky about the rightness of our denomination. After all, our church did start because good old King Henry VIII of England wanted to get a divorce and the pope wouldn’t let him. SO, we don’t have much of a leg to stand on.
Anyhow, we may want to dismiss someone because he’s a Roman Catholic or someone else because she is a Methodist or a Baptist. But Jesus tells us that what matters most is that people believe in him. He is the cornerstone upon which the structure depends as it says in Isaiah. Jesus refers to himself as the cornerstone in the Gospels. He is the central piece over which we are united or divided. Nothing else. It is our faith in Him that matters most. Whether we are doing great acts like exorcising demons or small ones like bringing someone a cup of water all that matters is that we do it in his name, that we believe in Jesus alone as Lord and Savior. Do you remember his question to Peter and the disciples? “But who do you say I am?” He is what matters.
This is why we say the creed so often in church. It is our statement of faith. It is the thing that aligns us with all of the other believers in Jesus Christ throughout the world across denominational lines, across national lines, political lines, racial, economic, sex, gender, etc. This does not mean that we don’t have differences. This does not mean that we don’t have disagreements or differences. Not at all. That’s a part of life. I have a wonderful counselor friend who likes to say, “If everyone were like you wouldn’t that just end up being really boring?” When we are clear about what unites us, faith in our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, that sets us free to acknowledge and sometimes even celebrate our differences instead of being afraid of them and trying to control them. We can know that God is using all of us for his purposes even when we don’t fully understand it. We can also have that more open stance, that unthreatened position, toward each other. We can have relationship. We can be charitable and maybe even learn from each other.
The fruit of such a way of thinking is that we can be united in our witness together. I can be glad that my non-denominational friend is being used by the Lord to serve and lead people that I cannot. She is reaching people that I can’t and vice versa. I can pray for her that Jesus would accomplish what he wants through her. I can pray that the Holy Spirit would be the one that corrects all of us where we are off because we all are off somewhere. We can affirm God’s truth where we see it, ask for his mercy as he corrects us, and trust that He will keep his promise to lead us into all righteousness. The main issue is Jesus. He is the one non-negotiable. Do we believe in him as Lord and Savior, that he died and rose again to forgive us our sins, or not? If we do, then we can rest a little bit. We can stop worrying about the dividing lines a little bit. We can stop trying to protect our group so much and stop circling the wagons. Maybe we will even begin to have some new conversations with someone who is different from us. And if we meet someone that does not believe in Jesus as Lord and Savior, then we have the great opportunity to talk with them and maybe build a relationship in which we can share about His grace in our lives. We can be messengers of His great message of forgiveness and love. And we can praise Him for using us in the way that He wants.
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