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Belonging - whoever is not against us is for us
SERMON – 10.15am, Emmanuel Church, Pokfulam, Hong Kong
Sunday 27th September 2009
Revd. Canon David Pickering
Mark 9.40 whoever is not against us is for us.
Belonging is very important.
What does it mean to us to belong to a city like Hong Kong?
What does it mean to belong to a club, a society or an organisation?
Today, especially in a large city like Hong Kong, there are many clubs, organisations and societies to which to which one can belong.
Some clubs seek to make their members feel very special by putting limits on who can and who cannot join. Some are for men only and others may be for women only.
Some clubs are for a special activity or particular interest.
Often the organisations we belong to say something about us and the people we like to mix with, If you don't belong or don't feel you fit in, then you soon leave are even asked to stay away.
Members, however are always welcome.
William Temple, a former Archbishop of Canterbury, once wrote: "The Christian Church is the one organisation in world that exists purely for the benefit of non-members."
Our Gospel today picks up a number of issues of what it means to follow Jesus rather than the benefits of just belonging to his close circle of friends.
Mark in recounting this saying, Whoever is not against us is for us seems to give it a positive and open meaning. This may reflect that Mark belonged to and was perhaps writing for an open and inclusive Church community.
By contrast Matthew's account of this saying places it in a more exclusive situation. Matthew gives us the negative version,
He who is not with me is against me. As opposed to Marks' Whoever is not against us is for us.
So often, down the ages and even today, the Christians and the Church have seen those who are not part of them, not part of the "in crowd" as being against what the Church and the Christian faith proclaims and stands for.
So often we can think that we in the church are the sole agents and workers for God.
What matters in the end is not church allegiance, but allegiance to Jesus.
Jesus is not the sole possession of the church. He does not belong to the church.
Rather the church belongs to him. The church is there to witness to him and proclaim him to the world.
What matters is not that we are followers of the Bible but of Jesus to whom the bible witnesses.
There are two important implications here.
1. There is room for everyone in the Church. The Church is not an exclusive club. I am sure we would all agree with this. But perhaps we need to take it a stage further. That is to say that we are not here just because it is an inclusive club - that we like everyone here - that it is a good place to be.
We are here for no other reason that we want to follow the way of Jesus Christ. We want to show that he has the meaning of life for us. That it is in him we see how and what God wants us to be, and we celebrate this through the worship of the Church, so that inspired by our worship we can go out into the world to love and serve him among and with our fellow human beings.
Thinking of William Temple's words we are here for all those who are not here with us this morning, who we will meet throughout the coming week, and be called to serve in our relationships with them.
2. The second implication is that we are here with our fellow human beings. Through our worship we should be equipped to see where and how God is at work in others in the world around us.
If the work of God was just left to Christians, very little would get done.
Fortunately for us, God lives and works through all sorts of people,
Probably most of whom don't know it, and certainly don't recognise they are the instruments of God.
So let the words of Jesus, according to Mark, ring in our ears and sink into our hearts and minds, whoever is not against us is for us..
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