Down to the Core

Mark 9:38-41, 50; James 5:13-16

James 5:13-16

¹³ Are any among you suffering? They should pray. Are any cheerful? They should sing songs of praise. ¹⁴Are any among you sick? They should call for the elders of the church and have them pray over them, anointing them with oil in the name of the Lord. ¹⁵The prayer of faith will save the sick, and the Lord will raise them up; and anyone who has committed sins will be forgiven.

¹⁶ Therefore confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, so that you may be healed. The prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective.

Mark 9:38-41, 50

³⁸ John said to him, “Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us.”

³⁹ But Jesus said, “Do not stop him; for no one who does a deed of power in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me. ⁴⁰Whoever is not against us is for us. ⁴¹For truly I tell you, whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you bear the name of Christ will by no means lose the reward…

⁵⁰ Salt is good; but if salt has lost its saltiness, how can you season it? Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another.”

The Sermon

We walked into the nursing home, my two older brothers and I, young men, each married and on the way to starting our own families. We were there to see our grandmother, the woman who came from Serbia in the early 20th century as Zagorka Josifovic, had her first name Anglicized to Cora, and took her husband’s new last name when he was adopted at the age of 30 by an American farmer named Dan Grogg. We knew her as Maw-Maw.

We also knew her as the person who, from our earliest childhood memories, had been the embodiment of unconditional love.

Well, unconditional love for us. I have said before, in some jest, that Maw-Maw was the most loving person in the world, had her arms wide open for absolutely everyone except for Croatians, Turks, Russians, Gypsies, Albanians, Slovenians, Macedonians, Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, Hungarians, Romanians, Greeks, Ukrainians, Uzbeks, Germans except for Lawrence Welk and those she knew personally, and almost all women. Other than that, she was an unfailingly open and loving person.

Again, I say that in some jest. But now, as we entered the sterile facility and made our way down the hall, we knew that this would not be like all those Christmases around the tree, the long summer days on the farm in Indiana, or any of the countless times that, more recently, we had gone over to her place for Sunday dinner and she had fed us like kings while we deferred to her as the empress of the world.

The Maw-Maw we knew was slipping away, and you can never really be ready for that.

It wasn’t a particularly good visit and we left in silence. After a few minutes, Tom, the eldest, said he’d gone alone to visit her recently, and when he got to her room and told her who he was, she looked at him without recognition for a second before turning away and saying, “I don’t know you—you’re not one of mine.”

Ouch.

Of course, we knew that wasn’t Maw-Maw. We could expect that woman to sit up and celebrate our presence about as much as we could expect somebody with two broken legs to run up and give us a hug. The essence of who she was was not reflected by the dimming mind of a woman in her late 90s who seemed to have lived a lot more years than that.

Still—and I hear this from people all the time—it hurts a little when one to whom you are in reality so close doesn’t even recognize you as one of their own.

One of the disciples came to Jesus and said, “Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us.”

Somebody outside our familiar circle—notice how "familiar" is rooted in the word "family"—someone from outside our family was claiming to stand for exactly what we stand for, and we weren’t going stand for it.

I suspect the disciples weren’t trying to be deliberately snooty or overly paranoid. I suspect they were concerned about the purity of the message that was coming from the people they saw casting out demons in Jesus’ name.

A couple months ago I began my sabbatical at a Catholic retreat center in Durham. I was there for a week-end conference, and we had a blast. The event was led by a great priest, 77 going on about 50. He told more filthy jokes in 36 hours than I have ever heard from any religious figure—just a marvelous, wise, funny guy.

At the end of the event, we were going to celebrate mass, or as we call it, communion. Of course, everybody knew that a Presbyterian minister had infiltrated the ranks, and as you know, Catholic doctrine does not allow non-Catholics access to the table.

Most Catholics I know are not especially fond of that rule, and it is usually gracefully overlooked by almost every Catholic priest I have the privilege of knowing. But you never want to make it more awkward than it has to be for him, so in the afternoon, I went up to Father John and I said, “Listen, about mass tonight: I can sit this one out, if that would be better.” And to his eternal credit, he didn’t want any part of that. He said, “Do you believe that Jesus Christ is in some way present in the bread and wine?” I said, “Absolutely, yes.”

That was all he needed to hear. And so, after a week-end of the sustenance of our fellowship, we now had the nourishment of the sacrament.

Though his superiors in Rome evidently disagree with this truth, the fact is that that table did not belong to that priest, or that group; it certainly didn’t belong to me; it didn’t even belong to the retreat center. It belongs to Jesus Christ, whose only doctrine is: “Feed my lambs; tend my sheep; feed my sheep” (John 21).

One of the things I had really wanted to do over those eight weeks was delve into some serious, classical theology, and almost as soon as I had started that, I found myself swimming out into treacherous waters, including other philosophies from well outside the confines of my comfort zones.

But even the Christian theological philosophies made for intensive, extremely challenging reading, and sometimes it was hard going.

So I went to a midday Eucharist at an Anglican church. I noticed, as I dipped the wafer into the chalice and then touched it to my tongue—the wine was strong—how visceral the sense was of the strength of Christ nourishing, feeding, sustaining me. This was not just wine, it was hope; it was promise; it was part of the ongoing revelation of a God whose will is light and life and bread—in a word, love—for us all.

And so, strengthened by the bread I had received, I went back into the depths of theology and philosophy, taking with me the nourishment of the body and blood of Christ.

The next morning I went to a large, venerable Catholic church for 7:30 mass, feeling the same requirement as before.

The liturgy was refreshing and comforting and strengthening. But I read something in one of the worship books that made it clear that Protestants were not to come to the table expecting to be fed.

I happen to know and love the priest there; he is an outstanding, wonderful man, a passionate, devoted servant of the Word, and just a great guy. I think he probably would allow me to receive communion if I presented myself for it. And as I looked around the majestic, old sanctuary that morning, I imagined that very few, perhaps none, of the 35 or so people there would have any problem with me receiving communion.

But I knew the rule. And just in case I didn’t, it was printed right there in the service book.

And I started to hear those bagpipes in the back of my head, and I began to get that Scottish Presbyterian burr under my saddle, and I started to think, “Just when I need it the most—the nourishment, the encouragement, the strength in the name of Christ to go and engage with the world, just when I’m starving for it, you tell me it’s not for me!” And recognizing the mood I had got myself into, I didn’t even go forward for the blessing. I didn’t want that blessing; I needed the bread and wine: I needed the body and blood.

That was on the front end of sabbatical, and as I’ve mentioned repeatedly the last couple of weeks, I had a lot of amazing opportunities to worship in a wide variety of churches and contexts. Sometimes, Catholic and otherwise, I was given communion by people who knew very well that I was not one of theirs, and yet I was made to feel entirely welcome. Other times it wasn’t offered, and other times I didn’t even try.

But by the time I was at my last Sunday morning in another Christian denomination, and I looked at whatever they had that said “Communion is only for those in our tradition,” I was so sick and tired of Christians telling me that the body and blood of Jesus Christ were not available to me, I almost stormed out of there and just came stomping back into Carolina Beach Presbyterian Church, where we say the exact opposite.

Jesus’ disciples said, “Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us.”

Somebody outside our familiar circle was claiming to stand for exactly what we stand for, and we weren’t gonna stand for that.

But Jesus said, “Do not stop him; for no one who does a deed of power in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me. Whoever is not against us is for us."

The question for all disciples—those around Jesus and those gathered in his church today, or I should say gathered in all his many churches today, is this: down to the core, what do we believe? What is the essence and meaning of all this that we say and do? Is God real? Are you for real? What is the essential difference that that makes in your life?

When we’re suffering, we pray. When we’re cheerful, we sing. When we’re sick, we call for the elders and ask the church to pray.

God will not forget the sick, and anyone who has committed sins—anyone—will be forgiven.

If you believe that, and I believe that, then whether you look like me, or think like me, or your politics are like mine, or your family is friends with mine, or whether we understand each others’ moral compass, or whether we have the same orientation…

None of that makes any difference.

Who on earth is in a position to say that he died for some but not for others?

Those others may be all but unrecognizable to us, but they’ve found a spring of cool water under the blistering sun, and they’re trying to share a cup with you, because you are as parched as they are—are you then going to say, “Well, I’m not sure it’s really appropriate?”

Down at the very core of our beliefs, the essence of Christian behavior is not for me to prove how much more worthy I am than you are, or how much less doctrinally correct one church family, or one kind of ministry, or one way to worship is than another.

The essence is: love one another, just as I have loved you. Feed my lambs, tend my sheep, feed my sheep.

“Pray for one another, so that you may be healed.”

And may our righteousness be filled with the same gracious mercy that God has already shown to us.