Priority of Place.

What most fascinates me about the internet, is that it can spark dialogue between people who might otherwise never meet.

It happens every so often, that I get the chance to engage in a back-and-forth exchange about beliefs.  These exchanges can stretch our thinking, expose weaknesses in our positions and arguments, challenge assumptions, and can even expose wrong motives, like pride.

Other times, however, it's just one more trip through a well-worn cul-de-sac.  In this case, it was a typical sales pitch for why his denomination was the best one.

Consider, as a backdrop for the conversation, the text in Luke 9:49-50.  Here, the disciples saw someone acting in Jesus' name, and were planning to stop them.  [The conversation is related with some different details in Mark 9:38-41.]  This same  zealous attitude was also seen in Joshua in Numbers 11.

There are two points that Jesus is raising here. Properly held in tension, these two points keep us from going off the rails toward either extreme..

Jesus makes it as clear as one might possibly make it, that there are no gray areas in our allegiances.  You are "all in" or "not at all in" when it comes to your allegiance with Jesus.  This chafes against our post-modern, politically correct attitudes of today.  But then, that ought not surprise us, because "friendship with the world is emnity to God".

When Jesus said that "whoever is not against you is for you", one possible explanation would be to say that tolerance or even indifference is the same as support.  That which doesn't actively oppose you is for you.  -- Can it be shown that Jesus was actually forcing a binary yes/no, in/out choice?

Look at the other things he said.  Jesus threw down the gauntlet when he said "whoever is not with me is against me, whoever does not gather with me scatters."  Matthew 11:30.  He spoke of dead men as sleeping, and unbelieving men as dead, even as they lived.  He berated the leaders of his day in Matthew 23, leaders who bar the way to heaven, and do not go themselves.  They tie up heavy burdens, and do not lift a finger to help.  These he called unclean, making those who trusted them impure, harming those who trusted him.

He called Zaccheaus saved, though he had been lost.  His parables were binary, too: sheep and goats, seeing and blind, lost and found.

Jesus, throughout the gospels, saw our position with God in black-and-white clarity.

What is the counter-point, that is held in tension?

Jesus had a set of followers.  The Apostles.  He had hand-chosen men to do the work of proclaiming the Gospel and building His Church.  Right?  This is true. He did pick them, and that was why.

But at the same moment that Jesus is telling us that there IS a clear and essential difference between in and out, for and against, he tells us something else, as well.

God, in his wisdom, knows fallen man's tendency to became tribal.  It's the same story that we've all heard before:

You are like me, so you are good. but they are "other" so they are 'bad'.

  So, naturally, God, in Scripture, records some people who are not part of Jesus entourage:
 -- The guy casting out demons in Jesus name in the passage we began with
 -- The man from whom "Legion" was cast into the swine?  He wanted to follow Jesus.  But instead, he was commanded by Jesus to 'tell them how much the Lord has done" for him "and how he has had mercy" on him.  So he became an evangelist to the Decapolis.
 -- A Samaritan woman - herself an outcast woman among an outcast people - led much of her village to faith in Jesus.
 -- There was also the small matter of a guy named Saul, who was not one of the original disciples, and specifically disavowed any tutoring by any of the Apostles.


None of these were part of the "entourage".  They were (only some of the) outsiders who had a love and faith in God.  Who proclaimed Jesus, and yet had no connections to the "right" group of believers.

Jesus specifically named the first guy as an ally.  Thus, as part of His kingdom.
The man we identify with "Legion" was commanded to proclaim the good news in Decapolis, as surely as the Apostles were commanded to do so in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the outermost parts of the earth.
The Samaritan woman had the rare honor of having Jesus speak plainly about being the Messiah.
Saul became the Apostle Paul, by whose pen God gave us much of the New Testament.

What is the lesson here?
We must be conscious of where we are finding our identity.

It did not matter to Jesus whether you were one of the "Three" or the "Twelve" or the "Seventy" or the far-flung individuals whose lives he changed that never quite did attach to the 'core group' but instead brought their sparks of faith far and wide to their own corners of the world.  To Jesus, you were not "with my group" or "against it".  You were with ME or against ME.

When we talk about our faith, what do we talk about?

Do we not tire of people trying to win us over to join, or acknowledge the superior claim of another denomination?  Out of the church that 'gets it wrong' and into the church that 'gets it'.  (Whichever one that might be in your case.)

Is not this walk with God more than which position we take on a doctrine that does not touch the essentials of faith?  Whether we are new technology, or old school liturgy?  Chairs or Pews? Organs or Band?

When we speak, what do we glorify?  Is it ourselves?  "Our" church? (As though anyone less than Jesus himself can truly call it "mine".)  Our favourite pastor or author?  Our methods?  Our favourite doctrines?  Our cultural relevance?  Our programs, or Missions effectiveness, or outreach tools, etcetera etcetera etcetera.

Or do we speak of Jesus Christ, first, last and always, with the sort of awe and love that could be expected from a people that claims that he really IS the Great, Good, God and Redeemer of all who will call on His precious Name.

Let us look first to Jesus Christ, and whether we are one in Him.  Let our us-and-them divisions instead be based on whether or not He calls us "His".

We may find that some of our differences are not so big as we thought.