Readings
Numbers 11:4-6,10-16,24-29
Psalm 19:7-14
James 5:13-20
Mark 9:38-50
I think many of you already know this, but I was once the Rector of a church in Salt Lake City. It was, to say the least, a challenging environment. The obvious and most glaring example of that was living in a population that was overwhelmingly Mormon, or as they call themselves “Latter Day Saints.” You see the official teaching of the Mormon Church is that only they are truly Christian and the rest of us are “gentiles.” The theological reasons for this are unimportant for my example today, but needless to say, it was strange to be a priest in the Episcopal Church and to not be validated as a Christian minister. The other challenge, however, was that most of the people I knew who were not Mormon thought that Mormons weren’t Christians either. There was in this silent war of identity a recognizable flaw. Namely, that both groups were actually Christian in some way. Both groups did good works in the name of Jesus. And in fact, based on my experience, I might argue that in some ways Mormon folks do a better job living out the model of being a community of care than the rest of Christendom.
Today’s Gospel reading has something to say about all of this. In it we hear Jesus’ disciple, John, tell him that he saw someone casting out demons in his name. We also hear that the disciples tried to stop this person because he was not “following us.” But Jesus responds by telling the disciples to not stop him, because “no one who does a deed of power in my name will be able soon afterword to speak evil of me.” He then expands on this saying that anyone who offers one of his followers a cup of water to drink will “by no means lose the reward.”
This Gospel exposes a central theme of Jesus’ teaching. Namely that, for Jesus, what we do is far more important than what we think. Jesus is inviting his disciples to understand that getting it right intellectually, in other words being a part of the in-group (the right thinkers), is far less important than getting it right in terms of how we behave.
You all have probably heard the term “orthodoxy.” It means to think rightly. It is a term we, as the church, have been obsessed with since about the 4th century, and perhaps even earlier. For centuries we have argued, fought, and even killed because someone didn’t agree with our assertions of truth about God and Jesus. We battled over whose thinking is right. It is because of an obsession with orthodoxy that the church split between East and West in 1054. And it is because of this that the protestant reformation resulted in so many new and diverse denominations. And the pattern of schism over how one thinks about God and Jesus continues to this day. How many times has someone left a congregation because they didn’t agree with the preacher?
But the idea of behaving rightly, which is called “orthopraxy,” is something that both Jesus and St. Paul are concerned with, and something we are beginning to recover in the present age. Orthopraxy is all about how we behave with one another in relation to God. Another way of saying this is that our relationship with God is about our relationship with others. This is why Jesus could overlook someone doing miracles in his name, even when he didn’t know the person. This also is why he can assert that someone who does an act of kindness will “by no means lose the reward.”
In both cases Jesus understands that how we behave shapes not only our relationship with God, but also our relationship with all of humanity and even all of creation.
If we behave in a way that alienates, isolates, belittles, or diminishes another then our capacity to experience the sacred in this life is greatly diminished.
On the other hand, when our relationships are marked by inclusivity, tolerance, respect, and the deep valuing of others, then our capacity to experience the sacred in this life is increased. We become open to what Jesus calls “The Kingdom of God,” which is nothing less than a big, inclusive life of love.
Going back to my time in Salt Lake City, the truth is that much good was done (and continues to be done) by the Mormon Church. Moreover that work is done in the name of Jesus. It strikes me that even though we may find their theology strange, or even bizarre, the good of what they do in regards to the poor and those in need cannot be diminished, nor can their deep ability to share care and love to those suffering from life’s circumstances. This is why Jesus didn’t teach right thinking. He taught right relationships. He taught right behavior.
What does it look like for us to abandon years of instruction over right thought and move to our Lord’s pattern of focusing on how we behave? And I don’t mean shifting from theology to moralism either. I mean taking a serious look at ourselves and finding the good and the able within us and turning it towards relationships that are marked by inclusivity, tolerance, respect and a deep valuing of the other.
It won’t be easy to do this. It’s not easy for me. But it is absolutely necessary to move from an exclusively thought based faith to one that is more focused on how we behave. Will the shape of our life match the shape of Jesus’ life? Will we not simply think about God in one another but actively seek God by how we treat each other?
Examples of behaving this way abound. We have examples in our midst with the St. Laurence Ministry, Lunches to Go, and our weekly Soup Kitchen. It also shows in the work of organizations like the Mission to Seafarers who provide necessary supports to ship workers who are far from home.
But while those are valid examples they are still distant from the lives we live everyday. We are still left with the question of how we implement this in our own lives. Well … what might it look like to look in the face of someone you know well, whose sentences you can almost anticipate and see the mystery present? See that they are more than you have presumed before? See that within them is a universe waiting to be discovered? What if you took what you saw and honored it in a new way that attempted to respect and love them? What if you did that for a neighbor? What if you did that for a stranger? What if you did that for someone you don’t get along with? What about an enemy?
Today, Jesus calls us into the Kingdom of God … into a big, inclusive life of love. We are being called to set aside our intellectual assumptions and debates, and embrace a life that is marked by inclusivity, tolerance, respect, and the valuing of the other. By doing so we open up the possibility of seeing the sacred in our lives, we open ourselves to the mystery of those around us, we create the potential of changing our own small part of the world.