Tonight, only on Fox 6, News at 6.
Exclusive Interview.
You can see this only on NBC.
We have the real thing.
Everything else is imitation.
We have the corner on the market.
Only at ________. You’re in good hands with__________.
Sounds like advertizing doesn’t it? Companies love to offer “the one and the only,” the “true blue,”… “you can only get it here” – the exclusive line on the products that they sell.
But I am here to tell you that companies and businesses are not the only ones who like to make exclusive claims…for themselves.
Four little words, will tell you exactly what I am talking about. Four descriptive words that are known world – wide…the world over…
If I say, “It’s the Real thing” – who am I talking about?
It is trademarked. It is owned.
It is one of a kind. It is exclusive.
Try another – Toys R ___ . Slogans work. See slogans sell. Slogans are remembered.
You would think the world of Christianity would be free from this kind of rhetoric or boasting, wouldn’t you?
“Jostling for position” or “berating the competition” seemingly is not proper or fitting for a group of people who claim to be followers of Jesus.
One would think the church would be humble and of a kind and loving and gentle spirit. You would think that churches would never berate or cast stones at one another. And yet, 2000 years into Christianity – we know better.
We point fingers, we cast stones, we act and have acted in non-Christian ways…
The thing that I think is cool is that our gospel text for tonight has some insight to share in the strife between churches and religious communities.
And it all started with: “Teacher we someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us.”
Jealousy, envy, discrimination, exclusionary, restrictive, narrow, clannish, prohibitive…I could go on and on…
He wasn’t one of us. He was different. He was not one of the 12, he was not one of the 70…as best as we could tell – we never saw him before…
He is a renegade…a loose canon.
And the worst thing of all: this unnamed exorcist, was being successful and had no inclination – whatsoever, to stop!!! We could not stop him. We tried.
Why the nerve of him, he was doing good work, healing and teaching in your name. So what if he was a godly man. There was no good reason to stop him…and yet they tried. The disciples were on shaky ground. They were jealous and envious.
The disciples were being way to territorial. This belongs to us. This is ours. No one else has any right to it all. We have staked our claim. We have the corner on the market. They felt like their own personal space or turf was invaded. They had exclusive rights, or so they thought!
And perhaps, “if” the truth-be-told, this individual was successful in an area where maybe, quite possibly, they were not. Ouch!
I remember in John’s Gospel – where John records Jesus as saying, “I am the way, the truth and the life…”
They way I see it is most division comes in the church or between churches or between “people of faith” …when someone says, “My way is the way to the way.” Or “our way” is the only way. Or we are right and everybody else is wrong!
All faiths may not be the same. We are different. And therefore, so many different denominations. We think differently, we worship differently…there is a cultural diversity…and none of that is bad.
But the point is: there is but one God and Father of us. It is our sinfulness that gets in the way. It is our attempt at being totally and completely exclusive…in a church that was never meant to be.
Going back to John’s Gospel one more time, ever-so-briefly, early Christianity wasn’t called “the way for nothing!”
There are “other ways” …ours is not the only or the exclusive way…it is one way…and for now, it is our way, until one day, when there will be no ways, at all – and all will be united and joined together as one. Pray for that moment in time!
Amen.