God On Our Side
Rev. Mark Schaefer
Kay Spiritual Life Center
September 28, 2003
Esther, Mark 9:38-50
I. INTRODUCTION
As I have no doubt told you before, I am a Boston Red Sox fan. I should probably save that fact for a sermon about enduring suffering or hope in the face of a history of despair, but that’s how it goes. In 1986, when I was a freshman in college, the Red Sox were in their first World Series in 11 years against the New York Mets. I was in college at the State University of New York at Albany, 80% of whose student body was from the five boroughs of New York City and Long Island. Needless to say, with that many downstate New Yorkers, there weren’t a lot of Red Sox fans in the dorms during the Series. In fact, I think I was the only one in my residence hall—at least, it seemed that way.
I remember one night watching the game with some of the guys in my hall. At one point, I discovered that I was not alone in cheering for the Sox. I turned to the person who had rooted along with me and I asked him, “Are you a Red Sox fan?” At which point he told me, “I’m a Yankees fan—I hate the Red Sox. But I hate the Mets even more.”
Ah, so it goes. There we were, allies in sport, united in our hatred of the Mets. Following in the words of the old maxim: “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.”
II. THE TEXT: WHOEVER IS NOT AGAINST US
I wonder: is there something like that in the words of Jesus that we read tonight? “Whoever is not against us is for us?” It’s an interesting story. John (the same John who with his brother James was vying to be Jesus’ right hand man, and was undoubtedly one of the ones arguing over who was the greatest) tells Jesus that they saw a man casting out demons in Jesus’ name and they told him to stop. This is one of the earliest examples of franchise and trademark protection.
John is expecting to be praised for this, but instead, Jesus rebukes him and tells him that anyone able to do a deed of power in his name can not speak evil of him, and thus be an enemy. The disciples had been concerned because this exorcist/healer had not been following them, and so they assumed, he must be against them. Jesus corrects them by saying, “Whoever is not against us is for us.”
III. ALLIES
The disciples are naturally perplexed. But their predicament is not theirs alone. We all want to know who’s for us and who’s against us. And it’s important to have allies. Certainly that is one of the messages of the story of Esther, from which we read tonight.
A. Esther
According to the Book of Esther, Esther was the Jewish queen of Persian King Xerxes. Her Uncle Mordecai had uncovered a plot to kill the king. But one of the king’s ministers Haman, resented Mordecai because he would never stand at attention when he walked by. So Haman conspired to murder Mordecai and all the Jews in Persia. He even built a gallows specifically for Mordecai.
One night, Xerxes can’t sleep and he is reading from the royal chronicles and realizes that he has never rewarded Mordecai. He asks Haman what he should do for a man the king favors. Haman thinks it’s him he’s talking about and describes a lavish honor, which the king then bestows on Mordecai. Haman is livid. Later on, Esther is able to present a petition before the king in which she reveals that her people are under threat from Haman. When Xerxes realizes that his beloved Queen is among those targeted by Haman, he issues a decree which allows for the defense of the Jews, who ultimately prevail, and Haman eventually hangs from the gallows that he had built for Mordecai. Mordecai (and the Jews) had a valuable ally in his niece Esther, and Queen Esther had a valuable ally in her husband King Xerxes.
B. God on the Side of the Israelites
Now, the rabbis debated long and hard over whether this book should make it into the Bible. Because even though it forms the basis for the Jewish holiday of Purim, it doesn’t mention God even once. But the rabbis saw that the hand of God was active in the story anyway. There was certainly an air of providence in Esther being selected as queen, as evidenced in Mordecai’s statement: “Perhaps you have come to royal dignity for just such a time as this.” And so, the story of Esther and Mordecai entered scripture because it was seen as a story, not only of Xerxes being on the side of the Jews, but of God being on the side of the exiled Jews, and of his deliverance.
In short, even though the book never mentions God, the story became one where the exiled Jews could say, “We survived because God was on our side.”
IV. GOD ON OUR SIDE
I guess if you’ve been delivered from genocide by a series of unlikely and remarkable events, you can be forgiven for thinking that God is on your side. Unfortunately, it’s not only in those circumstances that we are inclined to think that way. It’s like Bob Dylan sang in his song:
Oh the history books tell it/They tell it so well
The cavalries charged/The Indians fell
The cavalries charged/The Indians died
Oh the country was young/With God on its side.
The First World War, boys/It came an’ it went
The reason for fighting/I never did get
But I learned to accept it/Accept it with pride
For you don’t count the dead/When God’s on your side.
The Second World War boys,/It came to an end
We forgave the Germans/And then we were friends
Though they murdered six million/In the ovens they fried
The Germans now too have/God on their side.
I’ve learned to hate Russians/All through my whole life
If another war comes/It’s them we must fight
To hate them and fear them/To run and to hide
You never ask questions/When God’s on your side.
Sadly, claiming God on your side and then unleashing all kinds of attendant horror is not confined to any one group over history.
A. The Civil War
During the Civil War, each side believed it had God on its side. Each side was praying to the same Protestant God for victory. We lost more than half a million people in that God-sponsored war. It’s hard for us to imagine. And it’s hard for us to imagine how crushing the defeat of the South was for Southerners. It was as if God himself had abandoned them.
B. The Nazis
Bob Dylan’s lyrics suggest that after the Germans lost World War II and became our allies they now had God on their side. It shouldn’t surprise us to learn that they had thought they had God on their side during World War II. In fact, one of the most prominent banners that hung in Germany in those days had the inscription “Gott ist mit Uns”—“God is with us.” We’re so accustomed to thinking that the Nazis were evil that we forget that they didn’t think they were.
C. Al Qaeda
Al Qaeda has made no secret of its belief that God is on their side. They believe that they are waging a holy war, that they are proxies for the Almighty. That because God is on their side, they will ultimately destroy us.
I suspect that much of our hatred of Al Qaeda comes not from the despicable murderous deeds that they have perpetuated on our people, but because of the sheer audacity to claim that God is on their side when we know that God is on our side!
Is God on our side? Certainly we live in a land of blessing: Our wealth unimaginable, where even the poor have cars and color televisions. Certainly our society is free to an extent unrivaled in history. Our power unchallenged. Our history and traditions an inspiration to the world. If ever there were a nation that could claim that God was on their side, it would be us, right? I mean, unlike poor hapless Israel of the Bible, things actually go right for us. On the empirical evidence, we have a lot more claim to be a chosen people than they do, right?
God is clearly on our side. When we’re thinking about whoever is with us and against us, it’s clear that God is not against us, but is for us.
Right?
V. WHOSE SIDE ARE WE ON?
It’s important to know who’s on your side. We’ve got to figure out who our friends are and who our enemies are. And surely knowing whether God is on your side is the most important thing to know.
A. Whoever is not against us
You know, on second thought, it occurs to me that Jesus’ saying “Whoever is not against us is for us” is not really saying the same thing as “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.” No, I think he’s challenging us to think in ways outside of our usual patterns. We’re much more accustomed to thinking that those who are not with us are against us.
Often, those who are quick to divide the world into “for us” and “against us” camps are reminded that the world is a lot more complex than that. That there are vast areas of gray in the middle. Certainly two friends can find themselves opposing each other in some area. Two people who are very much “for” each other, can be “against each other.” Indeed, the very idea of a “loyal opposition” embodies the notion that one can be both “for” and “against” at the same time. There are an awful lot of people who forget that these days.
But Jesus doesn’t take that tack. He doesn’t say to the Twelve, “Well, you have to understand, it’s a lot more complicated than that.” No. He flips the situation around and says “Whoever is not against us is for us.”
B. Jealous of Grace
It’s hard for us sometimes to remember that. We can often be jealous of grace and of our relationship with God. This healer that the disciples had encountered was from outside their community. He wasn’t “inside”. Jesus is telling his disciples that God’s work can be done by others. Not simply the group close by. If the Presbyterians have opened up a hospital downtown, there’s no need for the Methodists to open up one right across the street.
That’s something we try to remember here in our community. Our Baptist, Episcopalian, Lutheran, Presbyterian, and UCC chaplains are all offering programs and opportunities for discipleship. It’s not my job to have redundant programs in place, rather to promote the work being done by others. Nor is our good faith limited to Protestants. By way of a preview: when Reformation Sunday rolls around this year, we are going to have a number of activities with our Catholic brothers and sisters. And then Father Woods is going to join us in worship for a service of reconciliation.
Nor is it limited to Christians. Next week, out of solidarity with our Jewish brothers and sisters, we will yield the chapel for the holiest day of the Jewish year: Yom Kippur, and we’ll meet instead in the chapel of Wesley Seminary next door. And later this year, we’ll be planning an alternative spring break as a vehicle for people of all faiths to serve together.
Sometimes our sectarian impulses can be strong. We can forget that we are all in this together. Whoever is not against us is for us.
C. Inverting the Question
So we start to have a sense of who our allies are here. But it still leaves that other question open: is God on our side?
Maybe that’s the wrong question. Listen for a moment to these words from Psalm 146:
Psa. 146:7-9 [The Lord] executes justice for the oppressed; who gives food to the hungry. ¶ The LORD sets the prisoners free; the LORD opens the eyes of the blind. The LORD lifts up those who are bowed down; the LORD loves the righteous. The LORD watches over the strangers; he upholds the orphan and the widow, but the way of the wicked he brings to ruin.
Theologians are fond of saying that God has a “preferential option for the poor”. We Christians needn’t turn to that kind of theological language to understand a simple truth. In Christ, God declares his solidarity with the lowly and the oppressed. By taking on our flesh, Christ takes on our sufferings. Christ identifies with the downtrodden, the poor, the sick. God watches over the strangers—the immigrant—the orphan, and the widow. The “least of these”. If God takes sides—it’s on the side of those.
But, the healer wasn’t concerned with who was on his side. He was concerned with whose side he was on. The healer had claimed the name of Christ and was concerned with ministering to those who were suffering affliction. The healer whom the disciples encountered was ministering to the ones with whom God through Christ has declared solidarity. In that, he declares his alliance with God.
VI. CONCLUSION
We should be a little less concerned with whether God is on our side. It seems to me that we get nothing but trouble from worrying about that question, whether we ask it in Latin, Arabic, German, or English. Perhaps if we try to remember to serve those with whom God has declared solidarity—if we remember the immigrant, and the prisoner, the brokenhearted and the downtrodden, the orphan and the widow, the poor and the hungry— if we concern ourselves with whose side we are on, we might discover that there are many more on our side than we thought. If all those who claim to have God on their side actually focus on being on God’s side, we might soon discover, as I did in that dorm room all those years ago, that we have more friends than we expected. And we might come to understand the power of the words of Jesus: “Whoever is not against us is for us.”
