“What’s The Difference

“What’s The Difference?”

Text: Mark 9:38-48

© October 1, 2006 by C. Edward Bowen

In Greek mythology, there’s a rather interesting story about a man named Procrustes. According to that myth, Procrustes was an innkeeper – he basically ran a small motel along a heavily traveled road. And each day he would sit out on the front porch of his establishment, rocking in his rocking chair, waiting for guests to arrive. Procrustes was known far and wide for having an especially neat and tidy inn. And so almost every night he had at least one or two guests. And after feeding them dinner, Procrustes would take his guests to their rooms and show them their beds, beds that Procrustes said were unique in that they were designed to exactly fit the size of the person who slept on them. But what Procrustes didn’t tell them was how that was so.

You see, each night after his guests fell asleep, Procrustes would sneak into their rooms. If someone was short, he would take them and stretch them on a rack until they exactly fit on the bed. For a tall person, though, whatever part of their arms or legs that hung over the edges of the bed, he cut them off so that they too would exactly fit on the bed. In other words, through stretching and through amputation, everyone was made to match the precise dimensions that Procrustes wanted them to be – no one taller, no one shorter, everyone exactly the same.[1]

The myth about Procrustes, of course, invites us to consider how we react when we encounter people are different from us in some way. Do we accept them as they are, or do we try to change them so that they become like we want them to be, so that they become just like us? That’s basically the question that this reading that we just listened to in the Gospel of Mark is dealing with. What do we do with people who are different from us in some way?

Here in the Gospel of Mark, one day the disciple named John ran up to Jesus with a big smile on his face and said, “Guess what, Jesus? We saw some guy out there who was healing people and telling people about you. But we told him to knock it off. Since he’s not a part of our group, we told him to stop.”

But to John’s surprise, instead of Jesus congratulating him for what he had done, Jesus scolded him and told him that what he did was wrong. Jesus essentially said, “John, you don’t understand. Just because someone’s not a part of your particular group, just because someone might do things in a different way than you would do them, that doesn’t mean that they’re evil. No, as far as I’m concerned, everyone who is not against us is for us.”

And then Jesus went on to speak those rather graphic warnings to his disciples, where he said that if your eye causes you to sin, you should rip it out; or if your hand causes you sin, you should tear it off. No, Jesus doesn’t want us to follow those instructions literally so that we all end up crippled and maimed. Instead, the reason that Jesus used such shocking images was to get our attention and make us realize that we need to take a good look at how we’re living our Christian lives, because if we do a bad job of following Jesus, who knows what kind of effect that might have on other people? Because a lot of people are going to decide what they think about Jesus based on what our lives look like.

And if our lives are to resemble the kind of life that Jesus wants us to have, then welcoming people who are different from us has to be at the heart of who we are, because welcoming people who were different from him was at the heart of Jesus’ life. Just look at all those stories in the Gospels of how Jesus welcomed and befriended the poor, foreigners, children, the sick, people from different nationalities – no matter how different someone was, Jesus didn’t let those differences stand in the way of him developing a relationship with that person and helping them to see the love that God has for them. And so if we don’t do that, if we don’t welcome and accept those who are different from us, as far as Jesus is concerned, that means we’re putting a stumbling block up in front of other people. If we don’t welcome and accept those who are different from us, as far as Jesus is concerned, that means we’re giving people a warped and distorted view of what it means to be a Christian.

But dealing with people who are different isn’t an easy thing for most of us. For instance, shortly before the Revolutionary War began, in Virginia most of the people there were Episcopalians. And as far as the leaders in Virginia were concerned, when it came to religion, they didn’t want there to be any differences, and so they passed laws to make sure that no one would be different. And so in 1772, for example, a number of Baptist ministers were arrested and thrown into jail for preaching without a license – and the reason they didn’t have a license is because Virginia would only give licenses to Episcopalian ministers. A Baptist church member was even arrested just for praying in a private home.[2] Instead of acknowledging that Baptists were Christians just like them, the Episcopalians in Virginia focused on the ways that Baptists were different from them and did their best to eliminate those differences.

And throughout our country’s history, dealing with differences hasn’t always been our strong suit. For example, before the United States got involved in World War I, there was a rather sizeable segment of the American society that was strongly opposed to the country getting involved in the war in Europe. But once the nation’s leaders decided to enter the conflict, differing opinions about the war weren’t tolerated. In fact, laws were passed here in the United States making it a crime for anyone to publicly express any negative sentiments about the country’s involvement in the war, claiming that anyone who did so was guilty of espionage, guilty of aiding and abetting the enemy. And those laws were backed up with stiff penalties, whereby anyone who spoke out against the war could be sentenced to as much as 25 years in prison. But by the time the war was over, 142 Americans had been sentenced to life in prison, and another 17 had been sentenced to death – all because they had dared to express a viewpoint that was different from the viewpoint of the government.[3] That’s not something that happened in the Soviet Union or in communist China or in Nazi Germany – that’s something that happened less than a hundred years ago right here in the United States.

Dealing with differences isn’t an easy thing to do. It wasn’t an easy thing for the first disciples to deal with. And for the most part, it’s not an easy thing for us to deal with, either.

Over in the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus tells a parable that’s often called the Parable of the Wheat and the Tares, or the Parable of the Wheat and the Weeds (Matthew 13:24-30). And in that parable Jesus says that the kingdom of heaven is like a farmer who planted good wheat seeds in his field; but then, while he was sleeping, someone came along and planted all kinds of weeds in the field as well. So, pretty soon the good wheat seeds started sprouting up, but the weeds came up too. At first, the farmer’s helper said, “Let me go out and get rid of those weeds for you.” But the farmer said, “No, because if you do that, you might accidentally pull out some of the wheat. No, let’s let both the wheat and the weeds grow, and at the end of the season, when it’s harvest time, then we’ll separate out the weeds and burn them.”

Do you see what Jesus was getting at with that parable? Our temptation is often to be like that farmer’s helper. We want to rush in right away and yank out and get rid of anyone who’s different, anyone who’s not quite the way we think they should be. But Jesus tells us to not be too hasty in doing that. Because in that parable when Jesus speaks of waiting until the harvest time, that’s his way of telling us to be patient and to wait for that final day when Jesus will return, when he’ll be the judge. In other words, right now our job is to welcome those who are different from us, to get along with those who are different from us, to love those who are different from us. And if there’s to be any judging about who’s right and who’s wrong, that’s not for us to do – that’s for Jesus to do.

Back in the 1700s, Benjamin Franklin wrote a story that many people mistakenly thought was a story from the Bible. In that story, that he called the “Parable against Persecution,” Benjamin Franklin told about how once upon a time Abraham, the great hero of the Old Testament, was visited by a man who was 198 years old. When evening came, it turned out that the elderly man didn’t have anywhere to spend the night, so Abraham invited him to stay with him.

But about midnight God appeared to Abraham and said, “Abraham, where is that stranger who came to you?” And Abraham said, “Lord, as he and I were talking this evening, I found out that that old man is different from me. He doesn’t believe in you and he doesn’t worship you and he doesn’t pray to you. So I kicked him out of my home and drove him out into the desert.” But God said, “Why did you do that? If I’ve put up with that man for 198 years and have nourished him and clothed him, despite the way he is, couldn’t you have put up with him and got along with him for just one night?”[4]

When people are different from us, that’s a challenge for us. When people look different, talk different, act different, think different, or believe different, often our first reaction is to label them as being wrong, to maybe even label them as being evil. But whether we like it or not, the truth is that when it comes to judging other people, Jesus is not the least little bit interested in what we have to say. Because as far as Jesus is concerned, if there is any judging that needs to be done, it won’t be us doing that judging – it will be Jesus, and Jesus alone.