26th Sunday in Ordinary Time Year B
Believing and Belonging: "We saw someone who is not part of us..."
(Mk 9:38, and Num 11:27)
Many people believe in God without belonging to a particular institution or religion. Others belong to a particular religion but still don't believe in what the church teaches.
This invites us to ask ourselves – the believers who belong to the Catholic Church - several questions: Why do we belong to this church? How do we look at someone who does not belong – someone who is not one of us? What if this someone-who-is-not-one-of-us believes, shows a greater commitment to Christian values, and even has some visible gifts of the Holy Spirit? Do we exaggerate our psycho-social need to belong by inventing an in-group/out-group rhetoric even in the name of religion and salvation? Do we want to capture the God of the Universe in our little enclosures (both physical and social) and not allow the Spirit to blow as it wills? (see Jn 3:8)
The Liturgy of the Word on this 26th Sunday in Ordinary Time offers us two stories of the struggle between believing and belonging: one from the time of Moses and the other from the time of Jesus. The first story (Num 11:25-29) tells us of two men who had stayed back in the camp while the Lord God descended in the form of cloud on the Tent of Meeting: one was called Eldad and the other Medad. Even though they were not among the seventy elders initially chosen by Moses, the Spirit descended on these two men and they began to prophesy. Moses is magnanimous enough to discern the Will of God here, and add the two to the seventy to make the total number of elders to 72 (six elders each for the 12 tribes of Israel; Jesus in the Gospel of Luke would appoint 72 disciples – Lk 10:1). Through this event Moses is able to recognise the universality of the action of the Spirit. When Joshua wants to see the action of God within the institution headed by Moses, Moses himself has a broader perspective: “Moses replied, 'Are you jealous on my account? If only all Yahweh's people were prophets, and Yahweh had given them his spirit!'” (Num 11:29).
In a similar situation presented in the gospel story of today, when John (an apostle who was close to the heart of Jesus as Joshua was to Moses) says, “Master, we saw someone who is not one of us driving out devils in your name, and because he was not one of us we tried to stop him” (Mk 9:38). Jesus emphatically tells him, “You must not stop him; no one who works a miracle in my name could soon afterwards speak evil of me” (Mk 9:39). Jesus reminds us that his Kingdom is not about territories, it is not about institutions, it is not even about the in-group (the churched) and out-group (the unchurched), but it is about hearts of people. And God has the possibility to work within hearts of people, as He desires. Let us Allow God to be God – even outside the Church we belong to.
In conclusion to our reflection, we could ask ourselves a basic question: what is our attitude towards people who are outside the visible confines of the Church? These people could include those we so pejoratively refer to as “the pagans, the irreligious, the Protestants, and even the un-churched”.
In a sense, who are we humans even daring to say who is saved and who is not saved? What we can meaningfully do is only to keep sharing our own experience of God with others, as we also take time to wonder how marvellously God works even in their lives. Yes, “God is not one to show partiality, but in every nation the man who fears him and does what is right, is welcome to him” (Acts 10: 34-35).
