“For and Against”
Are you a Cubs fan? A Sox fan? (A moment of silence if so.) It is possible to be for the Cubs and not against the Sox, unless they’re playing each other. Although it’s not possible to be for the Cubs and not against the Cardinals, who have been pounding on the Cubs for too many years for it to be otherwise.
Most of our choices are not binary. When we choose something for dinner or something to wear or somewhere to go on vacation, the choice is usually for a preference at that time, and not against all other choices for all time.
I believe that one of the things that we are losing by considering so much of our shared life to be binary, insisting on an “against” opposed to every “for,” is a healthy respect for preference, for nuance, for ambiguity, and for internal critique.
Even more, though, is that if even small things get defined as “for” or “against,” we lose sight of the big things that truly are. We keep our commitments or we don’t. We care for our families or we don’t. We speak the truth as we believe or we don’t. It’s not about how we feel about commitments or families or honesty, it’s about actions taken or not taken toward them.
In the Gospel reading for Sunday, September 29th, Jesus’s disciples encounter someone casting out demons in the name of Jesus, and they try to stop him, because he wasn’t one of Jesus’s chosen disciples. But Jesus takes a different approach. He says that no one who can accomplish a deed of power by the power and authority of Jesus will then speak against Jesus. He summarizes by saying, “Whoever is not against us is for us.”
In both Matthew and Luke, Jesus says what sounds like exactly the opposite thing, “Whoever is not with me is against me.” But the context is very different. The people in question here have accused Jesus of casting out demons by the power of Satan. They are rejecting the means of Jesus’s saving work. Here is a true binary choice; one cannot be for Jesus and neutral toward Satan. There is no nuance or ambiguity to this.
Few of us find ourselves in position to exorcise demons. But there is much that Jesus commends, including giving a cup of cold water to his followers, that demonstrates a “for” or “with” choice. Sports fans wear jerseys to show the world whose team they’re for. As followers of Jesus, it is our actions that demonstrate it. May it be unambiguously clear whose team we are on.
Grace and Peace,
Pastor Don