My homiletics professor used to exhort us repeatedly to choose only one text for preaching, and to "give them one good thought to take home." In other words, go for the single-point homily. While I confess to sometimes adding a point or two, I still try to remain focused on a single lection, and I strive to find a single theme to build on. "Four-leaf clover" sermons drive me to distraction -- and probably just confuse the listeners.

So it is some dismay that I turn to Sunday's Gospel (Mark 9:38-50) and find in that one lection four distinct themes. The various sayings are scattered throughout Matthew and Luke, suggesting that Mark has assembled them in this setting as a kind of handbook of discipleship.

The four themes:

1. Who is with us and who is against?
2. Hospitality
3. Be careful of the faifth of new converts.
4. The disciple is called to a moral life.

Can they be unified? Ought they be unified? Or should we just take a walk through the forest of discipleship?