Let us tell the story here.

Imagine the scene. There is a rich young man. He has made his fortune. Footballer. Every time he gets his hair cut, it makes the front page of the tabloids. You know his face. You know his wife?s face. She is a pop-star. They have a couple of beautiful children. They move here, to Bridge of Allan.
They come here and decide to settle in the village. They buy a big house. They move into the community. Henderson Street is full of talk of nothing less. People find paparazzi in hidden in their gardens. The rich young man and his family have moved to town.

Picture the scene. It has been a big service here in St Saviour?s. Something like the harvest last week. Plenty of people spilling out of the church and standing around talking outside. I?m standing in my vestments saying goodbye to people.

Someone nudges me and says ? look who is coming. Some people have such charisma. The whole of the street is watching who is coming down the road. It is him. The rich young man.

He comes along the pavement and stops in front of us. Starts to chat. He says, ?Wow, what a great place. What a nice church. Can I come and join it.?

You can imagine what is going through the minds of those standing around.

Young church getting all excited about who they might have as a young church leader. Vestry members thinking that we will never need a stewardship campaign ever again. People standing around with their mouths open in surprise.

?What a great place.? He says. ?What a nice church. Can I come and join it.?

And I reply. ?Yes. Of course you can. Just go off and sell everything you have and give it to the poor and then come round for a chat.?

I would not last long as the rector of this church, would I? No wonder Jesus got himself crucified in the end, if he went around making that kind of blunder.

Now think back to the gospel story. Think back to the way Mark tells it about Jesus. Was it really so different? Maybe. Maybe not.

As you think yourself back into Mark?s version of the story, who are you there?

Are you the young man, trying to do the right thing? The one who came with a serious question, who went away so very disappointed. The one who fulfilled every criterion for being blessed by God that his culture could give him. (For being prosperous was a sign of God?s blessing then).

Or can you picture yourself as the Saviour? Saying surprising things to the world around you. Treating a young person more seriously than expected. Looking with compassion written on your face and love, deep love in your heart.

Or are you one of the disciples. Horrified at the unfolding drama. Sorry for the man. Angry with the teacher. What are you thinking? If so much was asked of a stranger, how much more will be asked of me.

Or are you just a bystander ? watching the strange religious group, with its odd relationships ? the disciples at once intimate with the teacher and also so very far from him. What do you think about this story as an outsider. As someone who doesn?t quite belong? Do you want to join their circle. Or not. Or do you just want to watch and wait for now?

Or are you Mark, the storyteller. So full of faith in the risen Lord after his death that you have to pass on these breathless stories. Remember the time when Jesus met that young man. Remember the day he said this. Remember the look he had on his face. That was the Lord. He was tough, but he was kind.

Conclusion

Here is another story ? a story about gift giving with world-wide significance.

I heard this told as a true story, but I don?t know where it came from.

It is a cross-cultural story about gifts and giving.

Once there was a man who went exploring and visited a distinct tribe of people. He lived with them. Learned their language and their customs. They were a tribe which had little of value in the world, except that each family had ceremonial jewel encrusted garments. He learned, so far as he could, what it meant to be one of them. The months passed. A year passed. It was time to return to the west.

The village held a great feast and in the course of the feast, one of the older villagers came up, carrying one of the special garments. An old jewel encrusted jacket that had come down through the generations.

He offered it to the Westerner. The westerner knew its value. He shook his head and smiled. And said ?No, I would never take something so precious away?.

The villager shook his head and frowned and said, ?Well, you did not have to keep it ? you could have enjoyed giving it away too.?

At this time in the world?s history, much has been taken from native peoples. Land. Oil. Rainforest.

The wealth of Britain was build on slavery. The colonies, which people from this church ran, took the jewel encrusted resources from people and brought them back here.

We became young. We became rich. And we live in a village again.

Now we live in a global village. Now we have contact with peoples from all over the world. Instant communication can bring us face to face with people whom we might otherwise forget.

People. Individuals. Other members of the village. Perhaps we can find our way to the village where the westerner lived for months and years, learning the language, learning the customs, but never learning the real culture of generosity.

Perhaps if we go looking, we can meet the man who said. ?You didn?t have to keep it. You could enjoy giving it away yourself.?

Amen.

Where are the boundaries of God?s community?

Who draws the lines which decide who is part of God?s realm of justice and joy?

Our Gospel reading this morning takes up from the gospel readings that we have had over the last couple of Sundays. The disciples are squabbling. They don?t seem to have been a very nice bunch really. Last time they were falling out over who was the greatest. This week, they are trying to deny that God is at work in someone who was not immediately part of their circle.
Someone was going round healing people – and remember that often in those days, healing ? oil, prayer, laying on of hands, exorcism etc was not an adjunct to medical intervention, it was all people had. And the person who was offering hope and healing to people was doing it in the name of Jesus but was not one of the group of disciples. He was not one of them, so they tried to stop him.

How exasperated the Lord must have been at that. Perhaps that explains his outburst about cutting out eyes which cause us to sin and cutting off arms that cause us to stumble.

If the Lord was exasperated then at the jealousies which exist amongst his followers, then how much more must he be exasperated that it still continues today.

The disciples were simply jealous that someone had been able to heal people whom they had been unable to reach. The same kind of petulant pettiness infects God?s people even now.

And so we get

? Turf wars between parish churches
?
? Bad blood between sister denominations
?
? War between God?s Islamic children and God?s Christian Children
?
? Liberal Christians jealous of the apparent success of evangelical congregations.
?
? Evangelical churches jealous of any liberal who comes to power or prominence (eg Rowan Williams).
?
These are all the same kind of thing. Petty petulant jealousies about which the Lord has rather strong words.

He says ? ?If any of you put a stumbling block before one of these little ones who believe in me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea?

Sometimes people have thought that this is about children ? particularly, over recent years when the terrible child abuse scandals have hit the churches, this verse has been much quoted.

I don?t in fact think that that is what it is about at all. All through this passage, Mark has Jesus using some pretty sophisticated figures of speech.

In this one, the little ones are, I think, the ones who are new in faith. The word that Mark uses for stumbling block is skandalian the word from which we get scandal. And the scandal is the very behaviour of the disciples. They refused to accept that the alternative healer was really on Jesus?s side. And Jesus is saying that this is a scandal which will affect those who are young in faith.

How true.

And yet still people want to draw lines around God?s activity. Still there are those who want to say that God?s activity can only be found with their clique, group, denomination, faith group etc. They draw a line around themselves and believe that they have Jesus Christ the Lord within their boundaries.

It was a scandal to the Lord then and it is a scandal to the Lord now.

And he adopts typical Jewish hyperbole in his teaching. (It is common for this kind of teaching to overemphasise for effect). None of this is literal teaching. We know that not least because of the bit about salt loosing its saltiness. Salt does not ever loose its saltiness ? chemically is cannot. Jesus is using another figure of speech, as he does throughout this paragraph.

Over-emphasis was the way in which teachers taught in those days.

The key to this is that Jesus new that God was at work outside the immediate sphere of his disciples.

And he knew that partly because he was steeped in stories from the Old Testament, like the book of Esther.

Where is God at work in this story? Amongst the people? In the hidden Jewish life of Esther the Queen? In the Gentile King Xerxes? You will find that if you look carefully, there is little mention of God in the story of Esther helping to free her people from persecution. The assumption is, that God is there, because God?s people are there. God is in the midst because God?s people are present. And you will find that freedom, liberation, hope and justice can be found in the actions of the Esther the Jewish queen. (which is what we might expect). And God?s actions can be discerned in the collective will of the people being the salt in their society. (which we might hope for). And God?s justice can be discerned in the Gentile King Xerxes. (Which we might not expect at all).

Being salt in our society means joining in with the will and action of God wherever God is at work. And accepting that God is at work where God wills. Accepting that the winds of the spirit of God blow wherever they want, not wherever we think. Accepting that if we get involved in the pettiness of drawing lines between God?s people and trying to decide who is in and who is out of the will and works of God, then God will whoosh on. Others will find themselves being used to bring about the freedom, liberation, hope and justice which are the distinctive signs of the new realm of God.

Jesus wanted his people to work together to bring in the kingdom by working together to make it happen. And he seemed unable to recognise as real the things which divide us.

Let me end by misquoting a small poem. (which some of you might have heard Richard Holloway use ? it is something which he misquoted often).

There are far too many people drawing lines in the sand these days and pretending that the one true God lives only with themselves.

This little rhyme is about the inclusiveness of love, the driving force of the new kingdom of God that Jesus himself came to proclaim.

They drew a circle that shut me out–
Heretic, a rebel, a thing to flout.
But Love and I had the wit to win:
We drew a circle that took them in!

(Edwin Markham)

Amen