GREAT THINGS ENTERPRISE
CLAUDE BLACK
Mark 9:38
Don’t Fail This Lesson
For fifth grade at Emerson Elementary School in Granite City, Illinois, my teacher was Mrs. Miller. I did not apply myself to my schoolwork, and she did not believe I had adequately learned the fifth-grade material, so she failed me. (Those were the days when teachers could still fail students.) It was a salubrious—a word I like—shock and a wake-up call. In my second year in Mrs. Miller’s fifth-grade class, I applied myself to learning and passed, but I remained a year behind all the way through high school. After that experience, I resolved never to fail another class. In a sense, I have to grudgingly thank Mrs. Miller.
St. Mark wrote that Jesus took a young child, hugged him, stood him in the midst of the disciples, and used the child’s presence to teach his students/disciples about the importance of accepting others as little children do—openly and unquestioningly. In the following verse, however, Mark wrote, “John said to him, ‘Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him because he was not following us.’” (Mark 9:38)
Scholars note that John compounded his misunderstanding by saying, “He was not following us.” He did not say this minister was not following Jesus; rather, he said he was not following “us.” The goal of a follower of Christ is to direct others to Him, not to oneself. It seems John still had more to learn from the Teacher.
If Mrs. Miller had been the teacher, the class would have failed for failing to understand Jesus’ lesson. Whoever this unnamed evangelist was whom the disciples objected to, he was doing Jesus’ work in Jesus’ name.
The leader of a faithful, supportive family went to his pastor and told him that his family would begin attending another church closer to home. The pastor was deeply disappointed until he read this story and realized that the more important issue was to follow Jesus. The unknown evangelist in John’s account was following Jesus, not the apostles; he was honoring Jesus’ name, not theirs. This remains an important lesson—one that should not be failed.
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