When it comes to dialogue with those who believe differently, you’ll catch more flies with honey than vinegar (as the saying goes).
What do you do when you’re a single mother with three young children and a job that doesn’t pay you enough to take care of them?
You go out and get a new job, of course. But what sort of job?
You could try being a doctor. Now, there’s a job that pays pretty well!
This was the thinking of a 31-year-old woman named Sonia, who lives in France. Sonia had no medical degree — only a two-year course in real estate management — but did she let that stop her?
No, sir. Not Sonia. She forged herself a medical diploma from the renowned University of Strasbourg, as well as a certificate from the French Order of Physicians.
Equipped with those sterling — but utterly phony — credentials, Sonia also presented a fake resumé. It combined the identities of two real doctors who just happened to have the same name as she did. Sonia was hired as an occupational medicine specialist and began seeing patients.
In October 2021 — according to the news agency, France Live — Sonia’s employer discovered her deception and fired her. They reported her to the police, who began an investigation. That was three and a half years after she’d begun work.
You can’t make this stuff up.
But hold on. The story gets even better. Sonia didn’t pause to let the grass grow under her feet. A month later, she abruptly pulled up stakes and moved to a town on the far side of the country. Again, she found work as a doctor — this time, as an ophthalmologist.
Incredibly, nobody at her new job seemed to notice that their newest staff member was wearing a GPS ankle bracelet. When the police finally caught up with Sonia a second time, the court sentenced her to three years in prison.1
Like I said: you can’t make this stuff up.
For us or against us?
Impersonating a doctor is no laughing matter.
At least that’s what, in today’s Gospel lesson, Jesus’ disciples think. Jesus has authorized them to heal sick people in his name — and they’re out doing just that when they run across a man they’ve never met. Like them, he’s casting out demons in Jesus’ name.
Now, as strange as those words sound to our 21-century ears, such a thing isn’t that unusual in that place and time. What does seem unusual is that this character, figuratively wearing a lab coat, stethoscope around his neck, is someone the disciples have never heard of. He’s outside the guild. He’s practicing medicine without a license.
But there he is, commanding the demons, “In the name of Jesus, come out!” And they come out. This practitioner’s treatment regimen — as effective as it appears to be — is wholly unsanctioned by the larger organization.
“Stop him, Lord!” the disciples urge. “Call the police! Consult our legal counsel! File an injunction — anything to block this scoundrel from poaching on our territory!”
This is one of those situations that seems made for the phrase, “Cooler heads prevailed.” It’s a good thing the cooler head belongs to Jesus.
Jesus replies, “Do not stop him, for no one who does a deed of power in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me. Whoever is not against us is for us.”
Whoever is not against us is for us. Now there’s a catchphrase, if ever there was one! Those words are especially intriguing because elsewhere Jesus seems to say just the opposite: “Whoever is not with me is against me” (that’s Matthew 12 and Luke 11).2 Is the Lord contradicting himself? At first glance, it would seem so.
But it’s a contradiction only if you take these two phrases out of context. Take a closer look: you’ll see that his advice makes sense in both situations.
In Matthew and Luke, right after Jesus says “Whoever is not with me is against me,” he adds the words, “whoever does not gather with me scatters.” Clearly, it’s an image belonging to the harvest.
In any agricultural community, at harvest time, everybody works. All hands on deck. No one would dare argue that it be any different. There’s only so much time to gather in the crops. Any grain remaining in the fields after the winter rains is going to rot. A boycott of the harvest by just one field hand could be critical in the lean months to come, when the granaries are empty. Anyone refusing to join in harvesting the grain may just as well be scattering it to the winds.
In the parallel situation — the one from Mark’s Gospel we’re considering today — when Jesus remarks, “Whoever is not against us is for us,” he’s speaking not of recalcitrant field hands, but rather of a freelance healer who’s doing considerable good. This unlicensed doctor is energetically casting out demons in Jesus’ name. His patients seem to be benefitting. More than that, he’s honoring Jesus, by invoking his name as a powerful charm to set demons to flight.
It’s only the disciples who feel troubled by what the stranger’s doing. They’re the only ones who feel threatened by this unauthorized franchise.
Those other people
One of the thorniest problems for Christian churches today, in this religiously diverse society, is how to behave towards those who don’t believe as we do — be they fellow Christians from other traditions, Christians who say they’re non-denominational or even followers of other religions. When the beliefs of others differ from our own, do we immediately strive to convert them to our way of thinking, to try to make them just like us? Or do we take time to listen as well as talk, to learn from them what we don’t understand, to seek out whatever it is in their way of thinking that has value, and affirm it?
Based on Jesus’ response to the unauthorized healer in Mark, Chapter 9, it seems that, were our Lord walking among us, he just might be inclined to take the latter course: to say, “Whoever is not against us is for us,” and approach the others with open hands and open heart.
He’d do that, provided there’s something worth affirming in the other tradition. In the example in Mark, it was the fact that the healer was having some success. He was actually curing people’s illnesses. In his case, he was doing it in the name of Christ, demonstrating that he was one of the family — although, perhaps, a distant relation.
Besides, even in the case of cross-cultural evangelism, all the experts affirm that a conversion that truly means something, a conversion that will last, is one that’s been carefully considered over time, one that’s been built on a foundation of dialogue and understanding.
Sometimes we American Christians, who have such a love for anything “instant,” like to imagine that evangelism happens that way, too. You know, just add baptismal water, and Presto: instant Christian!
It may sound like it happened that way in biblical times, based on some of the accounts of the apostles’ missionary work in the book of Acts. But it probably didn’t happen quite as instantly as it sounds. The Gospel-writers focus on reporting the results. It's possible they were not so interested in the process that produced those results. Human nature being what it is, however, Peter, Paul and their companions didn’t just show up in some Greek or Roman city, call out “Who wants to be a Christian?” and the crowds came running.
Listen before speaking
There’s a great deal more that has to take place first. You need to take the time to truly listen to the stranger’s story — and to share something of your own in the process. Mark doesn’t fill us in on the details, but it’s likely Jesus took the time to sit down and have a heart-to-heart talk with this man who was casting out demons in his name. Maybe it was an encounter like his famous nighttime meeting with the Pharisee, Nicodemus, from John’s Gospel. Maybe the unauthorized healer came to understand, after talking to Jesus — as Nicodemus likely did, eventually — what it means to be “born from above.” But Jesus’ disciples’ rush to judgment, their jealous passion for protecting the brand, does no one any good. What’s more, it does the gospel no good.
When it comes to non-Christian religions, life gets even more complex. There are many things in other religions of the world that we must undoubtedly turn away from. Yet there are also great, commonly-held truths that can be affirmed. Most every religion has something similar to the Golden Rule, for example. Most everyone also has an ethical code, with some similarities to the Law of Moses, the Ten Commandments. Some other religions offer wonderful resources, in terms of meditation and other devotional practices, that we’d do well to study in our own lives of discipleship.
There’s a great passage in Paul’s letter to the Philippians that goes like this: “... whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.”3
Some biblical scholars think these words refer to the Greek and Roman cultures of that day, honoring their loftiest philosophical principles. Paul’s instructing the Philippians, there, not to close themselves in with other Christians in a sealed enclave. Rather, he’s encouraging them to engage their world — both inside and outside the church — to seek out those things that are excellent and worthy of praise, and to affirm them.
It’s just another variation of “Whoever is not against us, is for us.”
The great Spanish novelist Cervantes wrote, “Many are the roads by which God carries [God’s] own to heaven.” In more recent times, the theologian Karl Rahner has coined the phrase, “anonymous Christians.” That label describes those who somehow seem to have Christ living in them, though they may be unable or unwilling to articulate that they are his followers.
Clearly, the Spirit of God ranges far and wide in this world of ours — farther than we can sometimes imagine. Let’s all bear that in mind as we encounter other children of God whose ways are different from the ways we know so well!
1 “This pseudo-doctor will have practiced for 3 years with a BTS in real estate management as her only diploma,” France Live, April 4, 2022. www.francelive.fr/article/france-live/cette-pseudo-medecin-aura-exerce-pendant-3-ans-avec-un-bts-en-gestion-immobiliere-pour-seul-diplome-7364496/.
2 Matthew 12:30; Luke 11:23.
3 Philippians 4:8.
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