Then he
went home, and the crowd came together again, so that they could not even
eat. When his family heard it, they went
out to restrain him, for people were saying, “He has gone out of his
mind.” And the scribes who came down
from Jerusalem said, “He has Beelzebul, and by the ruler of the demons he casts
out demons.” And he called them to him,
and spoke to them in parables, “How can Satan cast out Satan? If a kingdom is divided against itself, that
kingdom cannot stand. And if Satan has
risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand, but his end has
come. But no one can enter a strong
man’s house and plunder his property without first tying up the strong man;
then indeed the house can be plundered.
“Truly
I tell you, people will be forgiven their sins and whatever blasphemies they
utter; but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit can never have
forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin” - for they had said, “He has an
unclean spirit.”
Then
his mother and his brothers came; and standing outside, they sent to him and
called him; and they said to him, “Your mother and your brothers are outside,
asking for you.” And he replied, “Who
are my mother and my brothers?” And
looking at those who sat around him, he said, “Here are my mother and my
brothers! Whoever does the will of God
is my brother and sister and mother.”
Have
you ever been embarrassed by someone in your family? Embarrassed by something they’ve done,
embarrassed by something they’ve said, embarrassed on general principle simply
because you’re related to them and there’s nothing you can do about it? Since today is Father’s Day, let me ask it a
bit more pointedly. Anyone ever been
embarrassed by your dad?
I
love to people watch, and airports are one of the great places to watch the
human drama unfold. You ever watch a
family traveling together and realize that nothing is more embarrassing to the
typical American teenager than their dad?
I don’t know what it is - wearing sandals and socks together, the fanny
pack around their waist, the visor, the flip-up sunglasses, the shoulder bag
that is actually the old diaper bag, or the guidebook in the left hand stuffed
with maps and receipts - honestly, I just can’t figure out what these kids are
embarrassed by!
OK,
more truth-telling: if you are a dad, have you ever intentionally done
something because you knew your teenager would be embarrassed or utterly mortified
to be seen with you? My theory is that
fully half of the embarrassing airport dads you see have deliberately chosen
their attire based on maximum embarrass-ability for their children. Embarrassing your children is, after all,
chief among a father’s God-given rights!
What’s family good for, anyway, if not embarrassing us?
No
one can embarrass us quite like family can embarrass us, and in our Gospel
reading for today, Jesus is proving to be quite an embarrassment to his
family. “But who is my family?” (v. 33)
Jesus wonders aloud, and by the time it’s all said and done, Jesus will have
forever given a new definition to “family,” at least how it’s accounted in his
kingdom. May we pray.
Jesus
is ticking off religious people and embarrassing his own family. Most concerning of all to religious
people? The common people love Jesus and
his free-spirited style. Consider: only
three chapters into Mark’s Gospel, Jesus has not only preached that God’s
radical kingdom of unconditional love is coming but has enacted what that
kingdom will look like by driving out demons and healing all kinds of people
who have been ill. All of this has led
him to become so popular with the crowds that it’s hard for him to enter the
towns and even find time to grab a bite to eat (v. 20). Let’s face it: Jesus is a rock star.
Unless,
of course, you’re one of the people who doesn’t like Jesus. The religious crew advances their own
conclusions about him: Jesus is possessed.
They don’t like him or what he’s doing or what he stands for; the power
within him must be evil. “He has
Beelzebul,” they say in verse 22.
Beelzebul
is a deity worshipped by the Philistines whose name literally means “Lord of
the Flies.” In later Christian sources,
it became another name for Satan or the Devil.
Jesus is in league with Satan, they say.
The religious people were so busy passing judgment - a favorite
past-time of many religious people, by the way - that they are blind to the
Holy Spirit in their midst. They see and
hear what Jesus does - and they are horrified because the work of the Holy
Spirit fits neither their preferences nor expectations, and the only conclusion
they can come to is that Jesus is possessed by the devil.
“What’s
become of our world?” they say. “People
being healed and made whole? Sins being
forgiven? Reconciliation taking
place? Hope being proclaimed for all
God’s people - including tax collectors and prostitutes and other sinners? Rules being put aside so lives can be
transformed? I don’t like it one bit - must
be Satan!” The Holy Spirit at work they
decry as the spawn of Satan.
Jesus
refutes this accusation with a parable that, in trademark style, uses his
attackers own words against them. “How
can Satan cast out Satan?” he asks. “If
a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand” (vv.
23-24). Being simultaneously filled with
Satan and trying to cast out Satan would seem a counter-productive strategy, he
argues.
Jesus’
ministry is about liberating people from the powers of sin and death promulgated
by Satan, who rules in people’s lives simply by letting them run according to
their own harmful desires, binding them, like Jacob Marley in Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, with chains of their
own making. The genius of evil’s hold on
our lives is that the only thing holding us in its clutches are our own
desires.
Perhaps
you have heard about Stockholm Syndrome, a psychological phenomenon in which
hostages bond emotionally with their captors.
Victims of Stockholm Syndrome often defend their captors, feel empathy
for their captors, or otherwise see things from the perspective of the very
people who are intent on doing them harm.
So it is for the hold of sin and death upon human lives. We participate in holding ourselves captive
and think we are getting just the thing we want. We are getting the things we think we desire,
and so we live in prisons of our own construction, willing contributors to our
own captivity. Without Jesus, our vision
is distorted and we see the world from evil’s perspective, which is right where
Satan wants to hold us.
In
the parable, Jesus likens Satan to a strong man (v. 27), who has held people
hostage, possessed by all manner of things that have prevented them from
experiencing the abundant life God desires for them. Yes, Satan is strong, but Jesus is stronger.
“I
have bound the strong man,” he says. “I
have bound the strong man, I have plundered his household, and the spoils and
riches I have taken are the lives of the people who were under his control.” Jesus takes that most precious possession -
human lives - and says, “These no longer belong to you. These belong to me now.”
God’s
liberation movement takes place one-by-one, heart-by-heart, life-by-life, as
the kingdom of Satan and this world crumbles and a new kingdom - the kingdom of
God - is taking its place. Jesus binds
the one who had bound us, and sets us free, which is why we so often sing,
“Satan had me bound, Jesus lifted me.”
And when Jesus lifts us, we catch a glimpse of the world that is no longer
distorted by our self-made smog of sin and death, and we behold all that is
around us through God’s eyes of love, and everything looks so different from
the way we’ve always seen it, and for the first time in our lives, we are
seeing the world clearly and truly as it really is. That’s what happens when we stop looking
through the eyes of the world and start looking through the eyes of the Spirit.
And
yet, there were those in our text who did not see things this way. They apparently included both the religious
leaders and members of Jesus’ own family.
Both groups saw the work of the Holy Spirit and they attributed it to
Satan, because they were still looking through the distorted eyes of the world
rather than eyes of the Spirit.
Looking
at the world in this way caused them, and us, too, to look at the things of God
and think they are evil, and Jesus, in verse 29, had a stern and harsh
description for such faulty perspective: blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, or
your translation may say grieving the Holy Spirit, but either way, Jesus names
it as an unforgivable and eternal sin.
If
that doesn’t put us on notice, I don’t know what will. I don’t know about you, but that makes me
very cautious before I too quickly or readily label something or someone as
evil, because if that’s the judgment I make and it turns out that I was looking
through worldly eyes rather than spiritual eyes, and my vision is so distorted
that I have named as evil what is actually the work of God, or if I have named
someone as evil through whom God is at work, then I’ve committed a grave
offense - an unforgivable sin, according to Jesus.
If
we are so blinded by a worldview of sin and death that we think God and the
things of God and the people through whom God is working are evil, then we have
withdrawn ourselves from God’s family.
In the immortal words of Michael Corleone in The Godfather, “never take sides against the family.” When we grieve the Holy Spirit, we take sides
against Jesus’ family.
You
see, family for Jesus is not a matter of biology and kinship. When the crowd tells Jesus that members of
his family are summoning him from outside (vv. 31-32), he responds with a
rather shocking statement: “Who are my mother and my brothers? ... Look, here
[these people seated around me, with whom I am united not by blood but in
mission] are my mother and my brothers!
Whoever does the will of God is my mother and my brother and my sister”
(vv. 33-35). Jesus’ family is defined
primarily in terms of who does God’s will, not people who share similar DNA.
So
much for “traditional family values,” a phrase as foreign to the ministry of
Jesus as it is to the personal lives of politicians and pundits who thunder it
across the airwaves. And it’s just too
much for some. No wonder some people are
bent on killing Jesus in this book!
The
radical, barrier-busting, broad-reaching, grace-filled reach of God’s kingdom
goes too far for the comfort and preference of some. “Must be a demon,” they say. “Work of the Holy Spirit? Looks more like the work of Satan, to me.”
“Wait
a minute,” says Jesus. “That’s my family
you’re messin’ with.” Michael Corleone
was right; never take sides against Jesus’ family. When Jesus is talking about his family, he’s
not talking about his biological family, he’s looking around the table at those
who are earnestly following him and trying to pattern their life on him, which
I certainly hope includes all of us, Jesus is looking us each in the eye and
saying “You are part of my family. And
you are part of my family. And you are
part of my family. And you are part of
my family.” In fact, right now, turn to
the person on your right and on your left and tell them, “You are part of
Jesus’ family.”
Jesus
isn’t down on family here. He’s not
rejecting the family who were once his entire world. Rather, Jesus is expanding the definition of
family to be a web of relationships that opens up places at the table for a
whole host of others. Jesus is drawing
his family tree with an increasing number of branches, branches that reach out
to gracefully cover more and more people - you and me, included - in their
shade. This is, Jesus teaches, a view of
life in the kingdom of God.
For
Jesus, the home is simply too small a space to contain God’s family. His own family have come out of their home
and gone to where Jesus is, and are pleading with Jesus to come back home with
them. What they must now understand is
that Jesus is adding members to the family left and right. It’s not just about one mom and one dad and
2.7 children and a dog and a white picket fence. Family is bigger than that, now. His sense of family is no longer bound to the
home, but to the will of God.
Further,
he sets the example for us that our home, our family, is too small to contain
God’s family. As Jesus has lovingly and
gracefully reached out to us and named us as brother and sister, as he has
welcomed us into his new family, as he set for us a place at the family table,
so too are we to reach out and embrace each other, and invite those who are
still outside. Our sense of family is no
longer bound to our individual homes, but to embracing each other with the love
of God, which is the will of God.
Jesus
has already told us that a house divided against itself cannot stand. A family - Jesus’ great big embracing family
- won’t make it divided against itself.
We have to embrace each other with the love of God. It’s the only way we’re going to make it, the
only way God’s kingdom will come and God’s will be done on earth as it is in
heaven.
In
our text, they accused Jesus of being possessed, and perhaps he was - possessed
not by Satan but by the Holy Spirit.
Only the Holy Spirit would be crazy enough to give Jesus the notion that
love could bring together such a diverse and disparate group of people, make us
his followers, and name us his family.
You’d have to be crazy to try a stunt like that! Not only that, but Jesus keeps showing that
love in word and deed through his whole life, and is willing to do whatever it
takes to keep showing and sharing that love, even if it meant being
killed. Talk about crazy – Jesus is it!
What’s
more, we’re just crazy enough to believe him.
Possessed by the Holy Spirit and crazy enough to believe that we are Jesus’ brothers and sisters. Jesus is creating a new family, and we’re in
it. “Who is my brother and sister? Those who do the will of my Father.” The Father’s will is that we love – at all
times, in all places, to all people. How
well we do that will show whose family we belong to.
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