29 September 2024 Mark 9: 38-43, 45, 47-48

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Please read the passage before the homily.

Who is in and who is not is?  Who is insider and who is outsider?  The child is the greatest.  The person who sneaks in and heals in the name of Jesus is for us as much as those enrolled in the Jesus Group.  The one who offers you a cup of water to drink is also in and not out.  All these are insiders.

What about the insiders?  They seem threatened with millstones, amputated limbs and unquenchable fire.  Perhaps the apparent harshness serves as a warning.  It is not in doing great things that we become insiders; it is in the respect shown the weak, tortured and needy people that makes us insider.  It is in the lack of respect shown by the evil things we do to others that makes us outsiders.

God does not expect us to lop off hands and feet.  We are the body of Christ.  To lead a Christian to sin is for us to lop off a part of the body of Christ.  This is painful and crippling.

God wants us to respect ourselves and each other.  We even have to respect nature, the ecology of the planet and all of creation.  This is what we insiders do.

John in the gospel wanted to restrict membership in the Jesus Group to the card-carrying members, the ones who were with Jesus openly and faithfully.  Jesus, however, welcomed all.  We should do the same be they U.S. citizens, people from Haiti, the Holy Land, from below our southern borders.  God’s acceptance has no limits.  Why should we?