Midweek Mass, June 10 (Fr. Roberts)

The disciples had just failed. A father had brought his epileptic son to them and they could not heal him. Jesus had to do it himself. The failure was still fresh when John spoke up. He had seen a man casting out demons in Jesus' name and he had tried to stop him. The reason, in John's own words, was that the man was not following us. Not "not following you." Following us. Somewhere in the last few weeks the disciples had quietly slid from being those who follow Christ to being the criterion of following. They had made themselves the gate. And a stranger had walked through the wall.

Do not stop him, Jesus says. No one does a work of power in my name and then turns and speaks evil of me. The disciples have read the report one way. Jesus reads it another. Where they see a trespass, he sees the Name doing what the Name does. The Name they invoke does not belong to them. It belongs to him. It reaches further than they reach. It works through people they have never met. And it does something to the one who calls upon it. A man cannot speak that Name and curse it in the same breath. To pronounce it is already to be drawn into its orbit. The Name binds the tongue that calls upon it.

Long before, in the wilderness, the spirit of God had come down upon the seventy elders of Israel. And it had also come down upon two men, Eldad and Medad, who were not in the tent with the others. They began to prophesy in the camp. Joshua came running to Moses and asked him to put a stop to it. Moses had one question for him. Are you jealous on my account? 

Would that all the Lord's people were prophets. Joshua wanted to keep the Spirit close. Moses knew the Spirit was not his to keep. John wants to keep the Name close. Christ knows what Moses knew.

Moses and John are doing the same thing in two different centuries. Both are trying to keep their master's power inside the company they belong to. Both are told no. The Spirit came down on Eldad and Medad, and Moses would not call it back. The Name came down on a stranger casting out demons, and Christ will not call it back. The power belongs to the one who gives it. It does not belong to those upon whom it has been placed. This is who God is, in both Testaments and on every page. He is not jealous on our account. He is not small. He gives his Spirit and his Name where he wills, and he does not ask his disciples for permission. What this means for us is plain. We are not to set limits on where God is at work. We are to become better at seeing where he is already at work. The casting out of demons, the naming of evil and the sending of it away, this is the work of our God. And we are to welcome it wherever he chooses to do it