Scripture: Mark 9:38-50; James 5:13-20 Series: After Pentecost
Preached on September 29, 2024, this sermon pairs Mark 9:38-50 with James 5:13-20 to address denominationalism. Wilson explains the meaning of ‘denomination’ and ‘ecclesia,’ surveys the English-Reformation roots and Oxford origins of Methodism (including the egalitarian Methodist physicians who rivaled Galen), and argues the differences between churches are real but secondary. The Markan text is ‘the most ecumenical scripture’ because Jesus relinquishes control: whoever offers a cup of cold water is rewarded, and the church’s divisions today are really about property and control masked as theology. Yet Jesus raises the stakes by turning the question inward, away from policing others toward one’s own conduct: do not scandalize a child (the millstone), cut off what causes you to stumble, and do not become flavorless salt. The sermon closes in the gospel of grace and incarnation, calling not for the perfect denomination but for repentance and a salted, lived-out faith.
Illustrations: neighboring-churches-on-block, mlb-vs-nfl-sports-orgs, henry-viii-church-of-england, wesley-brothers-oxford-origins, methodist-physicians-vs-galen, ms-brenda-confirmation-class, flavorless-chili-powder, newborn-baby-bundle-of-needs
September 29
James 5:13-20
Mark 9:38-50
Are any among you suffering? They should pray. Are any cheerful? They should sing songs of praise. Are any among you sick? They should call for the elders of the church and have them pray over them, anointing them with oil in the name of the Lord. The prayer of faith will save the sick, and the Lord will raise them up, and anyone who has committed sins will be forgiven. Therefore confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, so that you may be healed. The prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective. Elijah was a human like us, and he prayed fervently that it might not rain, and for three years and six months it did not rain on the earth. Then he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain, and the earth yielded its harvest.
My brothers and sisters, if anyone among you wanders from the truth and is brought back by another, you should know that whoever brings back a sinner from wandering will save the sinner’s soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins.
- James 5:13-20
John said to him, “Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him because he was not following us.” But Jesus said, “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. For truly I tell you, whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you bear the name of Christ will by no means lose the reward. “If any of you cause one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for you if a great millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea. If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life maimed than to have two hands and to go to hell, to the unquenchable fire. And if your foot causes you to sin, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life lame than to have two feet and to be thrown into hell. And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out; it is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and to be thrown into hell, where their worm never dies and the fire is never quenched.
“For everyone will be salted with fire. Salt is good, but if salt has lost its saltiness, how can you season it? Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another.”
- Mark 9:38-50
There are a lot of denominations today in the world. More are being made every year. Denomination just means something that is named. Nomine is the Latin for a name. It refers to churches of different names. Denominationalism seems absurd, right? Like even this block, we have a Baptist church next to us and then, a block later, there is a Church of Christ. And then if you go a little further up, Duval past the Buddhist temple, there is an Imani community church. Four different churches with different missions histories, theologies.
The English word for church comes from the Greek word Ecclesia, which means assembly. It’s an assembly of people. There were ecclesias before the church. The Senate in Rome was an Ecclesia of sorts. It was an assembly. People assembled together. The early Christians used the term to designate the different gatherings of Christians in different towns
So there are lots of different denominations. And one of the questions I often get when people come and visit is: what is a Methodist? What’s the difference between Methodists and Lutherans? Maybe you grew up Catholic or Presbyterian or Episcopalian or any one of these different denominations, these different named religious organizations, and you don’t know what is different about them. It is an understandable question.
Assuredly, there are differences. We can make a long list of what are the distinctive things between them.
On one level, the main difference is organizationally. They are organized in a different fashion. Like the difference between Major League baseball and the NFL? On one level you could say, they’re totally different. They’re playing different sports. On another level, they’re both sports organizations. In some ways they collaborate. In some ways they are rivals; in other ways they are allies.
In October, I’m going to talk about some of the unique aspects of Methodist meditation in a spiritual formation class after worship, but I want to just share a little bit of that here so we don’t come away thinking there are no differences.
Methodists come out of the Church of England tradition. Henry VIII wants to divorce his wife, Thomas Cromwell and Thomas Cranmer want to reform the church, and thus a new church is made based in England upon the divine authority of the king of England.
There are a lot of changes in England over the next 150 years, including a civil war, a regicide, a Calvinist protectorate, the return of the king, a nearly bloodless coup where the the new king’s brother is kicked out in favor of his sister, and bunch of Germans named George eventually taking the thrown, but out of that tradition comes Methodism.
The specific beginning of Methodism was in the 1720s at Oxford. As Ms. Brenda teaches in confirmation class, Methodists started as a group of teenagers who were tired of the hypocrisy around them, that is, people claiming to be Christians, but not acting as such, not living out their faith. And so they looked to an older brother who had already graduated Oxford to help them. The group of teenagers was made up of Charles Wesley and some of his friends, and the older brother was John Wesley. And that’s how Methodists began. They were coming to grips with this question: what if we take these things about Jesus as true and we live our lives as if these are true? Methodist was an insult. It wasn’t an earnest like branding exercise. They weren’t wordsmithing until they came to the right name.
The snobby boys at Oxford called people Methodists in order to compare them to this ancient group of doctors who were rivals of Galen. Galen was the ancient doctor whose theories held sway even up until the 18th century. Galen thought doctors should be of a certain quality of family that it mattered where they came from. But the Methodists had a different view of medicine. Methodists thought that anybody could be a doctor and they had a method to teach them medicine, It didn’t matter if you were the child of slaves or even a slave yourself, you could be a doctor. It didn’t matter if you were Roman or Scythian or Gaul, you could be a doctor. And it was that sort of solidarity that sparked the Methodist movement. They were called Methodists at Oxford because all these rich people were like, wait, you guys think you can be holy? You all aren’t rich, how could you be special. The Wesleys and their friends thought, “The Holy Spirit could do amazing things. Even I could be holy. Let us live lives set apart for God now, not based on what are bullies say, but based on what God says to us. Let’s spend our weekends in the jails and our mornings feeding the hungry. Let us pray and talk and live as if these things are true.”
Mark
In the Gospel of Mark, the disciples come up to Jesus and say, people are casting out spirits in his name, but they’re not his followers. I think this passage points directly to the challenge of denominations today. It is the most ecumenical scripture because Jesus lets go of control. Jesus is not seeking control and he is not asking the disciples to have control. Instead of being frustrated or saying, oh, they need to pay their licensing fee. Oh, they need to do this. Oh, they need to do that.
Jesus says, “Great, if they’re doing the things.” And the example Jesus gives is perfect. He’s not saying that they’re only doing spiritual actions. He gives the example of giving a cup of cold water to a little one in my name. If someone does that, they have received their reward. That’s the example. Jesus offers A cup of cold water in my name. We should find common ground like that in what we’re doing.
We’re not trying to be in control because cynically, the divisions of the church today are so much about control, so much about property. Who owns the buildings? Theology is often used as a scapegoat for control.
But Jesus goes one step further. This isn’t just a kumbaya moment in Mark where it doesn’t matter what you do. I Jesus stops the disciples from trying to seek control, this is true, but then he says, There are stakes involved in this thing of faith. The issue is not what they are doing in my name. It is what you are doing. And that is why one of the least Christian things you could possibly be is be a busy body and be concerned with the behavior of others. At least if you’re reading the gospels. Jesus is concerned with your behavior right now. You Y O U? You. How are you living? How are you acting?
If any of you trip up a child in their faith, in their life and they fall, it would be better if a millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea. You can trip ‘em up in a lot of ways, if you act like a hypocrite, if you don’t care for them, if you ignore them, if you dismiss them, it would be better for you that a great millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea. A millstone weighs over a ton. If a millstone is on your neck and you’re in the sea, you are drowning. You are dead. You are dead from drowning. And Jesus says that this is the better result than if you trip up a child. The consequences and stakes of tripping up a child, of scandalizing a child is monumental. And then he goes into this detail. If your eye causes you to stumble, pluck it out. If your foot causes you to stumble, pluck it out. There are stakes and involved in following Jesus.
And he finally ends with this description of seasoning salt which has lost its saltiness. What use is it? If you claim to be my follower and you’re not? It’s like salt that has no flavor, that has been completely dried out. I think today Jesus would use the metaphor of chili pepper. chili powder if chili powder has lost its flavor so that it’s no longer spicy. And we all have been in those situations where we’ve had a jar of chili powder in our kitchen for five years And you sniff it and there’s nothing, nobody sneezes. There’s no spice. The capsicum is gone. Sometimes the recipe says chili powder. This is chili powder. You put it in, it adds nothing.
The stakes are high. God throws out useless, flavorless powder that trips up children.
My brothers and sisters, this point is that the issue with denominations is not what are the differences between them, but how are you following Jesus? How are you receiving the call of Jesus? How are you realizing that your life has been redeemed by God?
So live different now. It’s not about maximizing different organizations that follow in Jesus’ name or criticizing or tearing down. Are you offering a cup of cold water? Great. Are you tripping up a child? You better stop. It’s not about what they do, it’s about what you do. But thanks be to God. There is grace this day. That is not the end of the story. Even if you have been tripping up children all your life, hopefully not, but if you have, there is grace and mercy offered by God. But you need to repent. You need to repent of that, not seek the perfect organization, the perfect denomination, but repent and believe in the gospel of Jesus Christ. That God saw us in this broken state. A broken state evident in how the followers of Jesus have been disagreeing about how to follow him for two thousand years. A broken world where so many Christians have claimed Jesus with their lips and tripped up children with their lives. Nevertheless, God who created everything, saw us and did not leave us to have, but sent his son, who emptied himself of his divinity to take on our humanity being born as a child, being born in the most vulnerable position possible. There’s nothing needier in this world than an infant. They’re all, it’s the bundle of needs. There’s nothing less productive than a newborn baby. They never get work done on time. They never do any chores. Newborn babies are horrible workers, horrible soldiers, horrible football players. They can’t sew. That is how God came into this world, that humbly, so that even if you have been in a state of despair, you may find hope in God. You may find hope in Christ because the despair did not end. The moment Jesus was born. He bore our despair. He took it upon himself. He took upon the hatred of the world. He loved and they killed him for it. But that did not end his story, nor does that end our story. For three days later, he rose again opening the gates of heaven to all who seek him. This is offered for you this day, so don’t seek out a millstone. Don’t trip up a child. Don’t block the cold water from those in need. Don’t let your hand or your eye cause you to stumble, repent and believe the good news of Jesus Christ. You are loved, you are forgiven. God has offered his life for you. Take it, live it, and then give it. Give that life to others. Don’t let the saltiness lose its salt. That’s what Jesus is talking about too. You need to live it out. That is how you keep the flavor. Use it, live it out, and God will be with you throughout.
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Amen.