26th
Sunday of Year (B)
(Numbers 11:25-29; James
5:1-6; Mark 9:38-43, 45, 47-8)
==================================================================================================
My dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ: in today’s Gospel reading we were offered wonderfully comforting teaching, a promise, and a warning. Which should we look at first? As is usually the case with Jesus, let us consider the teaching to which all else is directed.
He who is not against us is for us.
In
the first reading from the book of Numbers we were told a remarkable story of seventy
elders being enrolled and endowed to help Moses. We do not know what can possibly have
hindered or prevented those two elders Eldad and Medad, who had indeed been enrolled,
from going with Moses and all the other chosen elders to meet the Lord at the
Tent of Meeting? Nevertheless, despite
their absence from that official gathering, we are told that, because they had
been enrolled with the rest who prophesied around the Tent of Meeting, they
themselves:
Prophesied
also in the camp when the Spirit came to rest on them.
And
so, all those chosen to help Moses were given the Spirit, and the sign of that gifting
was that they all prophesied, even those not present around the Tent of
Meeting; however, since they were only to be helpers, not prophets like Moses, therefore
we are told that, all of them, whether present at the Tent of Meeting or not:
When
the Spirit rested upon them, they prophesied, but they never did so again.
The
Spirit was manifestly given that these chosen elders might be acknowledged and
accepted as divinely-appointed helpers of Moses, God’s prophet for His People;
they themselves did not become prophets, they were simply God-chosen helpers of
Moses the Prophet.
Perhaps
that was in Jesus’ mind when the disciple John told Him of a man performing
miracles in Jesus’ name:
Teacher,
we saw someone who does not follow us casting out demons in Your name, and we
forbade him because he does not follow us.
Whereupon,
Jesus answered with those memorable words we are considering:
Do
not forbid him, for no one who works a miracle in My name can soon afterward
speak evil of Me. For HE WHO IS NOT
AGAINST US IS FOR US.
Let
us now look more closely at those words, ‘who is not against us, is for
us’.
Notice
that this man who is ‘for us’ is, nevertheless, not one of those to whom
Jesus relates Himself when saying ‘us’.
If you remember, Jesus was, at that time, walking with His disciples as a
private group through Galilee trying to avoid being recognized by the crowds;
He was using this special opportunity to give His disciples fuller
understanding and guidance concerning the nature of His mission and their
calling, and it was this chosen group of disciples, walking together and bonding
so closely with Him in order to face the future together, to whom He was
referring when He said:
He who is not against us is
for us.
The
unknown miracle-worker was ‘for us’ indeed, Jesus said, but not ‘one
of us’. What a privilege it was for
the Twelve, to have Jesus thus speaking of Himself and of them as ‘us’!
In
our first reading, the Spirit had been given to the seventy elders to enable
them to be of suitable help to the great prophet Moses, and also as a public
sign of their authority before the people. They themselves had indeed prophesied in the
power of the Spirit gifted them, but only once; never again, because they were simply
very privileged helpers of Moses, nothing more. Likewise this stranger, whom
John the beloved disciple had noticed performing a miracle, he too was a privileged
helper of the Lord, thanks to the Spirit given him to thus glorify the name of
Jesus, but he also, was not -- for all that -- one of the group Jesus
called ‘us’. The Spirit had not been
given him in the manner and fullness He would ultimately be given to the Twelve,
making them one with, like, Jesus as members of His Body, become -- by that Gift
of the Spirit -- sons of God in the only-begotten, supremely beloved, Son of
God.
So,
People of God, be well aware of what and where your treasure is: the
pearl of great price that you have received, is the Gift of the Spirit
of Jesus Who enables you to love Jesus and, by obeying His commandments and
answering His calls, live as a true disciple of His and hopefully die as a child
of God, our Father in heaven. That, dear friends in Christ, is the
treasure you have to protect above all and make full use of while you can.
So
great is that dignity bestowed upon all made one with and in Christ, that Jesus
went on to say, as you heard:
Whoever
gives you a cup of water to drink in My name, because you belong to Christ,
assuredly, I say to you, he will by no means lose his reward.
That
is a measure of your dignity, People of God!
A dignity not given, of course, to enable you to boast before men; but
one that should impel you to most sweetly give thanks, constant thanks, to God,
whilst, at the same time, helping you to acknowledge, wholeheartedly before Him,
your unworthiness.
Such
is your dignity; what then is your worth?
Listen again.
Whoever
causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to stumble, it would be
better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck, and he were thrown
into the sea.
‘One
of these little ones who believe in Me’: that is what I just mentioned when I
spoke of the Gift received pushing you to wholehearted awareness of your personal
unworthiness, because, in that awareness, believers become humble as little
children before God. Jesus gives a most
dire warning to any who would harm, bring down, such humble believers: that
is your worth in His eyes.
But
now it is time to give our attention to the warning given, not to others, but
to ourselves, because, as I said, this gift of the Spirit making you one, in the
group of whom Jesus speaks with the word ‘us’, is not only a pearl bestowed,
given, but a treasure entrusted, to be guarded, protected, and used for the
purposes and glory of Him Who bestows it on us.
Therefore, Jesus warns us, and all of His disciples, that each of us can
become an obstacle to ourselves if we do not exercise proper self-discipline:
If your hand, if your foot,
causes you to sin, cut it off.
And if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it
out.
And
the reason He gives for this is well known: It is better to enter into life,
into the Kingdom of God, maimed or lame, than to fail to enter there; because
nothing on earth could possibly compensate for such a failure, such a loss.
Notice,
however, People of God, that here, Jesus does not speak directly about the joys
or the blessings of heaven, He limits Himself to warnings against possible failure
to attain them. Today, warnings are
interpreted as threats, and no irreligious worldlings or non-practicing
Christians or Catholics want to consider Jesus as anything but loving and kind
in a most sentimental or even mawkish way.
But Jesus, we should note, is not interested in the opinions of men, He
is entirely centred on the facts, the realities, involved: the facts of life,
both earthly and eternal, and the fact of His eternal Father’s loving will that
earthly beings such as ourselves – made by Him in His own image and likeness – should
actually become His children in heaven by earning the right to become such by loving-and-living as Jesus' true
disciples here on earth. Therefore, Jesus
does not try to cajole us with flowery words and sentimental pictures unable to
help us triumph over the earthly, and compelling pleasures offered by sin. Jesus speaks in the way that penetrates
deepest into the psyche of all human beings, who, despite all their aspirations,
are weak and short-lived: He speaks of the one supreme threat to our well-being,
both spiritual and physical, that is, hell.
And He does not just leave open the possibility of that which moderns so
fear to mention or think about that they can only scoff whenever it might be
forced upon their attention, no, He emphasises its very nature, not only once
but twice, with words that paint an indelibly powerful and dreadful image for
all who consider them seriously and humbly, by telling us that it is indeed possible
for men and women:
To
go to hell, into the fire that shall never be quenched, where 'Their worm does
not die, And the fire is not quenched.'
People
of God, whatever moves and guides you along the right way, whatever serves to
protect you in the love of God, is good;
be it the message of the treasure that has been given you whereby you are one
with Christ, a message able to provoke gratitude in every warm and humble
heart; be it the consoling message of the great dignity and worth of all children of God that inspires you with a
confidence and trust; or be it finally, if you are undergoing great trials and
temptations that would clamp you to sin, the awesome warning of Jesus (Matthew 10:28), a
message that should sink into the depths of your mind and heart:
Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. But rather fear Him Who is able to destroy both soul and body in Hell. And then St. Luke adds (12:5) Yes, I tell you, be afraid of Him!
The people of this world hate such warnings and to bolster themselves scoff most loudly at them; nevertheless, for a sincere Christian they can be a source of securely and advancing steadfastly along the way of Jesus, despite the Devil’s deceits and the many trials of life.
How
blessed is the man who fears (the Lord) always, but he who hardens his heart
will fall into calamity. (Proverbs
28:14)
