“Teacher,” said John, “we saw someone driving out demons in your name and we told him to stop, because he was not one of us.”

It was a statement, not a question. John was telling Jesus about the loyalty of the disciples, of their commitment to protect the identity of this small group known as “the Twelve.”

They were sitting in the safety of the courtyard of a house, breathing hometown air, forgetting that Jesus had told them twice in recent paragraphs that he was going to die.

Jesus answers John by suggesting “whoever is not against us is for us.” That’s the answer that is recorded and passed down to us.

What isn’t recorded is whether Jesus started laughing when John spoke so earnestly. A chuckle that turned into the kind of laughter where you repeat each word and laugh again.

Six paragraphs before this statement, depending on your translation, these same disciples were inside a house with Jesus. And they said “Why couldn’t we drive [the demon in the boy] out?”

John says the disciples who had been unable to tell a demon to leave stopped a man who was successfully, in the name of Jesus, telling demons to leave.

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We don’t know whether Jesus laughed. We don’t know how much time passed between these two stories. I’m uncomfortable teasing the disciples for not understanding the story they were still in the middle of. I’m aware that until Jesus actually died and rose again, they had no way to understand that he was deadly serious.

What I do know is that humans since that conversation with Jesus have been adept at drawing lines that included themselves and excluded others. And that Jesus is far more adept at reminding us that though there are lines, he, not we, draws them and, more importantly, draws people to himself.