Luke 9:49-50

Posted by DJL on Sep 27, 2013 in Daily Bread | 0 comments

John answered, “Master, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he does not follow with us.” But Jesus said to him, “Do not stop him; for whoever is not against you is for you.”

It strikes me as curious that John’s statement seems to be a reply to Jesus’ injunction about welcoming children. What on earth does casting out demons have to do with children? Is John just changing the subject? Or is it something else?

What occurs to me is that perhaps John is still interested in the question of leadership. After all, they’d just been talking about who would be the greatest. And, apparently, the heart of the lesson Jesus had just tried to teach his disciples hasn’t quite sunk in yet.

I don’t know this for sure, of course, but it seems interesting to me that after having just been invited to welcome the most vulnerable, John shifts the conversation to who has authority and who doesn’t to cast out demons in Jesus’ name. It’s almost as if John, after having his world slightly blown away by Jesus’ insistence that true leadership rests in caring for the most vulnerable and serving those in need, now retreats to rules. Rules about who can and can’t exercise authority.

How often I’ve felt the same temptation! When I am confused, or when things are changing, or when I feel out of my depth or caught up in something unpredictable and uncontrollable, it’s easy for me to look to rules to restore order and save the day. And perhaps that’s understandable. Rules, at their best, do lend order to our activities and relationships. Yet when we rely on them to impose order, or to make what is creative and living conform to the established order, rules just as often can kill.

And so Jesus responds, once again, clearly and gently: Don’t.

Don’t stop him. Don’t try to regulate either your confusion or wonder away. Don’t fear that you don’t know the way, or that you’re not sure of your place in this new kingdom, or that God’s kingdom doesn’t look like the kingdoms of the world. Don’t fear, for I will be with you.

When we are arrested by our own fears or concerns or confusions as we try to make our way through a changed and changing world, might we hear Jesus say the same thing to us?

Prayer: Dear God, you have called your servants to ventures of which we cannot see the ending, by paths as yet untrodden, by perils unknown. Give us faith to go out with good courage, not knowing where we go, but only that your hand is leading us and your love supporting us, Through Jesus Christ, our Lord, Amen.

Prayer from the service for Matins, Lutheran Book of Worship.