I asked your disciples to cast it out, but they couldn’t. (Mark 9.18)

Failure, if taken rightly to heart, is an education in humility, in self understanding, an opportunity to grow. But not for the disciples in Mark’s Gospel. Having failed to exorcise an evil spirit themselves, they then become the self-appointed Regional Quality Assurance officers for Exorcisms. Not surprising, that desire to regulate others, control the boundaries,  – they’d just been having an argument about who is the greatest. A kind of Blair Brown ambition-fest as to who would be the leader of the disciples. And Jesus had just given the kind of answer that only works in the politics of the Kingdom of  God, ‘Whoever wants to be first , must be last of all and servant of all.’ And like the self-preoccupied movers and shakers they believed themselves to be, they didn’t, as John Reid would say, ‘get it’.

So failed exorcists with a lust for leadership, presume to disqualify others from their ministry, and they do it in Jesus’ name, and so unwittingly disqualify themeselves. The not so Blessed John Reid would say, ‘Disciples not fit for purpose’. The whole scary story forced the question, "How dare any of us erect boundaries around compassionate ministry exercised in Jesus’ name?"

And Jesus reply was generously inclusive, ministry affirming, welcoming compassion wherever it rears its beautiful head …whoever is not against us is for us.

Such radical open-mindedness implies an ecumenicity of the heart, only possible when being first is an irrelevance, and being servant of all is a priority. Whoever is not against us is for us – this inclusive principle, gives not only the benefit of the doubt, but the benefit of trust. To live with such an attitude of openness to goodness, to see each act of kindness as Christ-serving, to believe each costly casting out of evil wherever it lurks collaborates with God’s Kingdom, to recognise, acknowledge and celebrate compassion wherever it radiates into human lives, is to take on the generous inclusiveness of Jesus who welcomes all the help the world needs.

The text critiques our motives and self image- there is uncommon honesty in any of us who can identify that part in each of our hearts, that leads us to say, without thinking clearly what we mean, ‘we tried to stop him because he was not following us’ – as if our kind of discipleship could ever be normative!