For Sunday, September 27, 2015 – Mark 9:38-50
What causes us to compete and measure and calculate, even when God doesn’t seem overly concerned about such things? Questions like who is ahead and who is behind, who is doing God’s work (whatever we determine that to be) and who is not, cause the spirit to yawn in boredom and long for something more. To enliven the spirit, we reason that we will get busy and do something. If it is good to give a cup of water to a child, then how much better it will be to give thousands of cups of water to thousands of children, more cups than anyone else has ever given before. Let’s keep track! Let’s prove we are excelling and have earned our place among the greatest of the great. Let’s stand out and be noticed and be deemed worthy.
So innocently it creeps in, this competitive, striving nature. Reinforced in us as a reasonable response since childhood, what feels natural now becomes a stumbling block. The “little one” within me—my true desire to give myself freely without calculating the cost or measuring the results—is diminished by tracking preconceived standards. What sorts of demons might we be able to cast out if these competitive voices, both outer and inner, did not feel compelled to stop us? What might be possible if we could believe that whoever is not against us is for us?
Instead we put stumbling blocks before ourselves and one another. We let one hand confuse the other. In one we carry a simple desire to love and serve; in the other we grip the fear that we will never accomplish what we intend. We face defeat long before we begin. Jesus urges us to make peace with ourselves. Better to have half of our life fully engaged and dedicated to bringing God’s spirit into the world than to be wholly made up of accusations and doubt. Better to do what we can than to fault others for what they are doing.
