Listen

John said to Jesus, “Teacher, we saw someone throwing demons out in your name, and we tried to stop him because he wasn’t following us.”

Mark 9:38

Think

In my city, throughout the pandemic, public health and government officials have spent the past 18 months ending speeches and press conferences with a familiar refrain: “We’re all in this together.” That’s what makes the health public, after all. What affects one person affects us all. We can’t, as individuals, escape a public health crisis through making good choices for ourselves. Christians might know the passage where St. Paul writes, “When one member suffers, all suffer with it.” Our destinies are bound up together, and our choices affect one another. We cannot go about in the world thinking only about ourselves; we must remember that we are always, pandemic or no pandemic, all in this together.

Sometimes, however, folks (like the disciples in today’s passage) think that this means we all have to choose the same. If someone is behaving differently than we do, they are judging us for not following them. Only one of us can be right, after all, and it had better be us!

Tomorrow we’ll see Jesus’ response to this thinking.

Jordan Haynie Ware

Pray

Grant, O God, that your holy and life-giving Spirit may so move every human heart, that barriers which divide us may crumble, suspicions disappear, and hatreds cease; that our divisions being healed, we may live in justice and peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Book of Common Prayer (1979)

Go

Breathe upon us, breath of God,

young and old alike.

Send us forth, gifted with your power,

To serve your people.