One of the new and baffling features of today’s social-media-driven political campaigns and protest movements is that they’re no longer centrally organized. Gone are the days when major events were organized from the top down, with a campaign director heading a staff that sweated all the details. Now, as often as not, someone puts out a call to assemble using Facebook or Twitter, and a short while later, supporters start arriving.

            “Who’s in charge here?” is the question that could well be asked. In a broadly dispersed grass-roots organization, no one’s quite so sure anymore.

The competing franchise

            There was a time when Jesus’ disciples felt much the same way. Today’s passage from Mark tells how several of them notice a man who’s casting out demons in Jesus’ name. Now, as strange as those words sound to us, such a thing isn’t unusual for that place and time. What does seem unusual is that the healer is someone the disciples have never heard of.

            Yet there he is, commanding the demons, “In the name of Jesus, come out!” He isn’t a card-carrying member of the traveling band of disciples. He has no license, no seminary degree. What this man is doing is wholly unsanctioned by the larger organization.

            “Stop him, Lord!” the disciples urge. If it had been today, they might have continued, “Call the legal department! File an injunction! Charge him with copyright violation, patent infringement — anything to block this scoundrel from poaching on our territory!”

            This is one of those situations that seems made for the phrase “Cooler heads prevailed.” The cooler head in question belongs to Jesus.

            Jesus says, “Do not stop him; for no one who does a deed of power in my name will be able soon af

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