bible
 
«He is not following you…He is not following us»  
Luke 9,49, Mark 9,38  
   
In the Gospel of Luke, we see John, the apostle, answered and said; “ Master, we saw somebody casting out devils in your name and we wanted to stop him because he does not follow you” Jesus said: “ Don’t stop him because he who is not against us is for us” (Luke 9, 49-50).  
   
This short episode of the Gospel tells both the open mind of Jesus and what an intolerant disciple can do when he has his own idea how to follow his master. The equivalent text in Mark is even clearer: “…we wanted to stop him because he does not follow us “ The “us” has even erase the reference to Jesus himself.  
   
The group considered itself like a close system in which the essential of the message of Jesus is forgotten: do the good rather than the evil, give life rather than bringing death… and so much better if it is done by people of a different religion or culture, without any official label of orthodoxy! What is important it is to liberate people from all that are oppressing them: hunger, racism, sexism, religious fundamentalism…
regard clos
 
   
It is probably the meaning of the answer given by Jesus to John: “Who is not against you is for you” He may not be in your group of the twelve but from somewhere, he is casting out devils. Is he not closer to the Master and his Gospel than the disciples, blind to him, who want to stop him? And that is good news!  
   
il faudra du temps It will take time for the apostle John to be able to follow the views of Jesus. At the end of his long life, his words will have changed a lot, in his letters he does not keep repeating: “Love one another” However during Jesus’ public life, John was not exactly like the image of the beloved disciple bending on Jesus’ shoulder during the Last Supper. He was rather a zealous young man, who was seeing the world in black and white without any nuance. We saw him for instance when the people from a village of Samaria refused to receive Jesus. Then, his brother James and he were ready to send the thunder on these heretic people. Once more Jesus stopped them and continued his way, without violence, towards another village.
 
   
And then, who will cast a stone to this ardent disciple, with his ambiguous adolescent manners although able to show wonderful and generous actions? He left his father and his job to follow Jesus, on a single call! John is really a son of his people. In his time, to choose God meant the rejection of God’s enemies. This hatred towards the opponents to the only God was even in the psalms prayers: “How do not hate the enemies of the Lord? I hate them with a perfect hatred, I count them as my own enemies” (Ps 138, 21). With such a teaching and in full sincerity, John could not escape to react like his contemporary fellows. All the patience of Jesus was necessary to change his reactions of fundamentalism.  
   
In our time, unfortunately, we are not exempt of such attitudes including those among the Christians. From the top to the bottom, there are some right-thinker Christians who would like to prevent the others, specially the women, to “cast out old devils”, and proclaiming that only themselves are following the apostles: “ They are not following you because they do not follow us” They do not follow us on some aspects of the dogma, of the morals, on the way to celebrate the Last Supper of the Lord, on the understanding on what is essential and what is secondary, and so on…Can such censors open their mind? Seeing how John has evolved, we may hope.
empêcher par la doctrine
 
   
Jesus does accept John as he is, he loves him anyway and this love moves the heart of the disciple and manages to change him at the end.