No creature has total control over the way God is telling God’s story to the world. The Spirit will blow where the Spirit wills. And if we shut ourselves off from people who are different from us, who think differently than we do, who disagree with us – even about things of prime importance, then we might miss something important that the Spirit is doing back in the camp and not on the mountain top. We might miss the chance to participate in healing the world’s wounds because we don’t think that sort of person should be doing the sort of thing that we believe belongs to us.

Does this matter? Well that’s kind of what the much of the Gospel reading is about. Who is Jesus referring to when he talks about one of these “little ones”? We tend to imagine it’s the child of last weeks Gospel. But this is a different scene. And Jesus is speaking to the disciples – who have been speaking about the people doing mighty works in the name of Jesus outside of the imagined boundaries of the community.

Augustine of Hippo wrote that Jesus is warning the disciples here (and by extension, the whole church) not to be too zealous to draw a line between who is in the Kingdom and who is outside. St. Augustine says we must must not hurry the time when the wheat is separated from the tares. That’s the work of the angels at the close of the age – not the work of the Church while we wait upon that day.

You can view the sermon directly at this link.