Mark’s Gospel for today gives us a line that can easily become, in some circles, a cliché: he that is not against us is for us. Every generation has its figures who make this into some version of what we might call why-can’t-we-all-just-get-along-ism. Taken to an extreme, it suggests that the sacraments, and Jesus himself, are not of ultimate importance—they are simply one way to some other reality that can be affirmed or approached in other ways.
Of course, if we take Scripture seriously, we have to think about this in light of the seemingly contradictory statements we hear from Jesus in Matthew and Luke: he that is not with me is against me. And every generation has its figures who make this into some version of sectarianism. In their voyage to the new world, the Puritans apparently referred to themselves as “saints” and to the other people on board as “strangers”—because, you know, he that is not with me is against me.
As with all problems of scriptural interpretation, this is hardly a new discovery. One of the better-known commentators, the eleventh-century Byzantine writer Theophylact, insists that the contrast is in fact between the way Jesus treats humans and angels. This is appealing in a way, because the Matthew-Luke version adds, “He who does not gather with me scatters.” So this could refer to angels and demons, whose loyalties are definitely black and white, unlike human beings.
Bible scholars don’t tend to appreciate that interpretation much. And I think the mainstream Latin interpretation probably follows St. Augustine, whose reading makes sense to me. For Augustine, if someone does something in the name of Christ, insofar as he does something good in the name of Christ, he is for Christ. But if someone does something in the name of Christ while out of fellowship with Christ—that is, out of fellowship with his Church—insofar as he is not with us, he is against us. “Thus,” Augustine says, “the Church Catholic does not disapprove in heretics the sacraments, which are common, but she blames their division, or some opinion of theirs adverse to peace and to truth; for in this they are against us.” Augustine, you may remember, spent a lot of time dealing with schism and heresy in his day, and certain key parts of the Church’s understanding of the sacraments are indebted to him, like the Church’s willingness to recognize the sacraments of baptism and matrimony outside the visible bounds of the Church.
The fact is that the Catholic tradition both is very black and white and isn’t. Good is good, and evil is evil. But there are degrees of good, and degrees of evil, and human beings are mixed all the way down. We can do good things for bad motives; we can do bad things for good motives; we can do good things for good motives in bad circumstances; we can do good things with good intentions in good circumstances but be so weighted down by sickness due to past sin that these actions leave us no better off.
What’s left, I think, in light of our Lord’s teaching, is a certain flexibility and lightness of touch—not when it comes to the nature of reality, but when it comes to how it applies in the moment. You can try to treat the Bible, or the Catechism, as a rule book—which is kind of how I grew up seeing it as a Protestant—but there can’t be a rule for everything. The scriptures aren’t going to tell you when to set your alarm clock or what to eat for breakfast. Nor are they going to provide any concrete judgment on your own actions or another’s. The ways that some Christians try to do that—think of the whole “I’m going to randomly flip open the Bible and that will be God’s word for me today” approach—are fundamentally pagan and fatalistic. Christianity isn’t just a set of rules; it’s discipleship—which means following our Master and shaping our lives after him. I don’t mean to say that there aren’t rules, because any relationship has definite boundaries and expectations to it. But those aren’t the center; they’re the boundaries.
We could take this teaching on being “for” or “against” in several different directions. But here’s what I want to suggest today for how we might hear these statements: (1) When it comes to other people, remember Jesus’ words “whoever is not against us is for us.” (2) When it comes to ourselves, remember Jesus’ words “whoever is not with me is against me.”
In a way, this is just applying the hermeneutic principles of hypocrisy—take the log out of your own eye before removing the speck from your neighbor’s—to these questions of group identity and loyalty. But I do think it’s more than that. You see, the other kernel of these two teachings is that they both hang on Jesus himself. The point isn’t so much that we need to be in the business of going around labeling people as with or against us; the point us that all of us should be in the business of growing closer to Jesus and drawing others closer to Jesus. If we aren’t in that business, we are against it.
There really are two eternal directions: toward heaven or toward hell; toward God or toward the nothingness that we make for ourselves without God. But if this is really what we believe, there’s no time to spend a lot of effort worrying about who our enemies are. Our enemies are God’s enemies, and God can handle them, whoever they are. But there are so many people who aren’t against us who are desperate for God’s love, for the fellowship in his Church, and for the mysteries of salvation known only in the Catholic Church. We are not some fortress for the elect; we are a hospital for travelers and sinners, a refuge for the hungry and the lost.
O Sacred Heart of Jesus, mayest thou be known, loved, and adored throughout the whole world.
Heart of Jesus, burning with love of us, inflame our hearts with love of thee.
Sacred Heart of Jesus, thy kingdom come!