Today's gospel reading (Wednesday of the 7th Week in Ordinary Time) is taken from Mark, chapter 9, verses 38-40. John says to Jesus that they saw someone casting out demons in Jesus' name and that they tried to stop him, "because he was not following us" - as if it is about "following them", and not Christ, or acting in the name of the Person of Christ. Jesus tells them straight out: "Do not stop him; for no one who does a deed of power in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me. Whoever is not against us is for us".
It continues to puzzle me that this reading continues to fly over the heads of so many Christians today, including Catholic prelates, clergy, and very traditional Catholics who are thoroughly sectarian or tribal in their thinking. If there is one section of the gospel that rails against Catholic tribalism, it seems to me that this is the one. Had the hierarchy taken the path laid out by Pope Gregory the Great, a pastoral and administrative genius, rather than the authoritarian approach of Pope Leo the Great-not to mention Innocent III - , the history of Christianity would have looked very different than what it is now.
When I study such great theologians as Jurgen Moltmann, or G. Studdert Kennedy, Sergius Bulgakov, or Vladimir Solovyov, Christoph Blumhardt or Gerhard O. Forde, Robin A. Parry, F. D. Maurice, James Cone or George MacDonald, etc., I lose all awareness that these people belong to another "tribe", a different denomination, that is, that they are "Protestant". All I sense is that we are of the same family; we are "of the same mind", which is the mind of Christ Jesus (Phil 2, 5).
The first reading from Sirach (4, 11-19) is also very revealing: "Wisdom teaches her children and gives help to those who seek her. Whoever loves her loves life, ...Whoever holds her fast inherits glory, and the Lord blesses the place she enters. Those who serve her minister to the Holy One; the Lord loves those who love her." My last 20 years of teaching were at a school in which close to 50% of my students were non-Catholic; many were Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, and Buddhists, and many of these were genuine seekers of wisdom, lovers of wisdom, and they recognized wisdom whenever they encountered her. The Lord loves those who love her, and one cannot love her without divine grace, which is a sharing in the divine life. So much for Catholic triumphalism, Muslim tribalism, or any tribalism for that matter.
I would not say that these people were "anonymous Christians", a term made popular by Karl Rahner in the early post-Vatican II period. The best criticism of this apparently inclusive way of regarding those who are not explicitly Christian comes from Hans Kung, who writes:
Karl Rahner's theory of the "anonymous Christian" is in the final analysis still dependent on a (Christian) standpoint of superiority that sets up one's own religion as the a priori true one. For, according to Rahner's theory, which attempts to solve the dilemma of the "Outside the Church" dogma, all the Jews, Hindus, Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists are saved not because they are Jews, Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists, but because in the final analysis they are Christians, "anonymous Christians," to be precise. The embrace here is no less subtle than in Hinduism. The will of those who are after all not Christians and do not want to be Christians, is not respected but interpreted in accordance with the Christian theologian's interests. But around the world one will never find a serious Jew or Muslim, Hindu or Buddhist, who does not feel the arrogance of the claim that he or she is "anonymous" and, what is more, an "anonymous Christian." Quite apart from the utterly perverse use of the word "anonymous" - as if all these people did not know what they themselves were - this sort of speculative pocketing of one's conversation partner brings dialogue to an end before it has even gotten under way. We must not forget that followers of other religions are to be respected as such, and not to be subsumed in a Christian theology (Theology for the Third Millennium: An Ecumenical View. trans. Peter Heinegg. New York: Doubleday, 1988. P. 313).
My students may not be "anonymous Christians", but if they seek wisdom, love wisdom, and in serving her serve the Holy One who loves those who love her, then they are moved by grace, which is the indwelling of the Trinity. To be in such a state does not depend upon adopting a certain terminology or conceptual frame of mind, but on the love of her (Sophia). All things came to be through the Logos (Jn 1, 1ff), and all were created for him. Just as I can learn so much more about the Person of Christ, the Logos, by contemplating the cosmos that came to be through him and for him, so too I can learn so much more about the Person of Christ by contemplating the ancient wisdom of those who seek, love and live for the wisdom spoken about in the book of Sirach, the Sophia through whom and for whom all things came to be.