Wednesday in the Seventh Week of Ordinary Time, May 22, 2024

Mark 9, 38-40

John said to Jesus, “Teacher, we saw someone driving out demons in your name, and we tried to prevent him because he does not follow us.” Jesus replied, “Do not prevent him. There is no one who performs a mighty deed in my name who can at the same time speak ill of me. For whoever is not against us is for us.”

St. Mark tells us that Jesus called James and John, the sons of Zebedee Boanerges, an Aramaic word meaning “the sons of thunder”, presumably for their extraordinary zeal, which John displays here.  We can imagine the scene.  John and James are in Galilee with the Lord and they hear from the people they encounter that someone is attempting to exorcize demons in the name of Jesus.  Now, we should not pass over this news without thinking about it.  This person was using the name of Jesus in place of the name of God at a time before the Lord had suffered and died on the Cross and risen again.  He was acting boldly, even outrageously, in doing so.  His act verged on idolatry, to all appearances.  Now, whether the man succeeded in driving out demons in this way does not appear clear.  What does appear clear is that the very name of Jesus was thought, even before revealing himself as the Son of God, to possess great power.  And the man who was attempting to tap into its power could not even be counted among the Lord’s chosen followers.

So John, and most likely his older brother James, went and found this man.  We do not know from the text whether or not they broke up the exorcism, but they accosted the man and sought to prevent him, probably with threats, from doing this.  They acted in this out of their desire to protect the name of Jesus and to guard his prerogatives.  John reports what had happened to Jesus in order to let him know (as he thought) how people were attempting to horn in on his glory.

“Do not prevent him. There is no one who performs a mighty deed in my name who can at the same time speak ill of me.”  The Lord’s response must have left John confused.  For John, the would-be exorcist was an imposter.  For Jesus, he was a route be which others might come to him.  St. Paul knew this situation in his own life when he was on trial and his enemies were proclaiming Jesus in a way which would antagonize other Jews against Paul.  Paul’s reaction: “Some proclaim Christ out of partisanship, not sincerely but thinking to afflict me in my imprisonment. What then? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed; and in that I rejoice” (Philippians 1, 17-18). 

“Whoever is not against us is for us.”  This seems to contradict what the Lord says in Matthew 12, 30-31: “He who is not with me is against me: and he who does not gather with me, scatters.”  This is explained by context.  “Whoever is not against us is for us”: the man was not actively working against the Lord Jesus as were the Pharisees and the Sanhedrin, but through him the name of Jesus and the fact that he had authority over demons was being spread.  “He who is not with me is against me, and he who does not gather with me, scatters”: the Lord is here speaking of those who accused him of casting out demons by the prince of demons (cf. Matthew 12, 27).  Perhaps this becomes clearer if the Greek text is translated as: He who is against me is not with me, and he who scatters does not gather with me.

We ought to show great respect for the most holy name of Jesus, which the demons fear and by which they are dispersed.