Be at peace with one another

Mark 9:40

⁴⁰Whoever is not against us is for us. 

The primary identity of the disciple is that of a person who changes themselves and the world that they come into contact with through the life transforming power of caring. We tell others what we value, our attitudes and beliefs through what we directly care for. Jesus teaches His disciples that they are to be characterised by promoting the health and wellbeing of others not as a profession but as a way of life. When we come across others who also practice this way of life, but we do not know them personally, we are not to discourage them and treat them as outsiders; if they act in the interest of the poor, the marginalised and disenfranchised then they should be encouraged. There is a saying: ‘If you can’t help? Don’t get in the way!’ Sometimes we let things like denominational differences and differences over religion get in the way of helping people; we can become a hindrance not a help and people can lose out and their situation be made worse than it need be. I have seen this in the locality where I live. The fracturing of efforts to provide care and help for the vulnerable through safeguarding differences and distinctiveness in preference to united action results in the marginalised being deprived again of yet another opportunity to change their lives. We seem to forget so easily that Jesus came to set the captives free and once free to serve in helping other experience freedom from life controlling issues also. Do we remember being captives to our life controlling issues? To forget what has been done for us, to fail in sharing the promise and possibility of freedom with others, to undermine the efforts of others and to prevent others from caring is to become the source of the problem. We become the life controlling issue! Jesus gives stern advice that we should cut ourselves off from sectarianism and divisiveness and encourage interdependence and mutual respect.  Encouraging caring relationships is not an optional extra, it is fundamental to promoting peace and reconciliation in a world torn apart by divisiveness. Mark 9: 49-50 reminds us of the transformative teaching of Jesus of the Nazareth sermon in the Sermon on the Mount: ‘⁴⁹ ‘For everyone will be salted with fire. ⁵⁰Salt is good; but if salt has lost its saltiness, how can you season it? Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another.’’