Claimed, gathered and sent

This is the sermon I preached on Sunday Sept. 27 at St.Timothy Lutheran Church. The text is Mark 9:38-50. Today's gospel continues where last week's left off. The theme is still that of discipleship. Jesus teaches his disciples that ministry involves service and sacrifice and illustrates this by the disciples' wrong attitude. There are a couple of things going on as background to the disciples' desire to control how God works. Earlier, the disciples were unable to cast a demon out of someone. Then along comes this person whom they do not know. What does he do? He successfully casts out a demon. How do Jesus' disciples respond to this? For one thing, they're jealous. Then just like little children, they go running to Jesus to tell him how this man was not following them. Does the disciples' verbiage strike you as odd? Wouldn't you think that their concern would be whether or not he was following Jesus? The man was not part of their group! The twelv...

Here are a few thoughts on this coming Sunday's gospel. The text is Mark 9:38-50.  I cannot tell you how many times I looked at this passage from Mark before I could make some sense of it. The second paragraph is hyperbole on steroids! But what really made me read and pray and wrestle with the text is the last few words, "...and be at peace with one another." That seems to summarize everything that precedes it. Just before this passage, the disciples were out ministering to people, but they were unable to exorcise a demon. Then, here comes some outsider who successfully exorcises a demon. Look at these words in verse 38, "because he was not following us." There's something wrong with the pronoun us. It says nothing about this man believing in and following Jesus, but the problem was he did not follow the disciples. He was not part of their group! They were jealous! This unknown person did what they could not. Jesus then continues the dialogue, ...