Mark 3:20-35
Our gospel passage begins, “And the crowd came together again.” This time Jesus is coming home. We will be spending a fair amount of time on Mark’s gospel over the next six months, and even though we are only in chapter 3, much has already happened.
He has been baptised at the Jordan, the Spirit has alighted on him, his opening words announce the presence of God’s kingdom and call to repent; he has walked by the sea of Galilee and summoned fishermen to follow, who fairly leapt from their boats in response, and he teaches with astounding authority in a synagogue.
Welcome to the gospel of Mark!
So now Jesus comes home. He has just appointed the twelve, and, earlier in this chapter (3:6), we read that the Pharisees and Herodians (followers of Herod Antipas) were already conspiring on how to kill him.
So when at the beginning of today’s reading we join the crowds, packed together so tightly that they can’t even get their arms free to grab some food, we sense that somebody has to do something to restore some order.
It’s his home-town, what about his family and friends he grew up with? Maybe they can restore some order. But they come to constrain him and don’t support him because they don’t understand.
People are saying, “he’s out of his mind” (v.21). Don’t listen to him. And the scribes from Jerusalem add a serious religious stamp to the charges by claiming that Jesus is actually in league with the demonic powers. (my paraphrase v.22).
So what will Jesus answer to these charges from the people he lived with most of his life, and his church?
At first he seems to offer a comfortable parable on his original theme of the Kingdom of God, and about who has authority and power. But as usual his words cut right to the chase, even if they seem incomprehensible to those without ears to hear.
But to those who have ears to hear, (perhaps, we hope, especially to us), his parable makes sense.
They call us to consider deeply just what is going on here — to rethink what the story of this Jesus might have to do with how we imagine our world and the ways of God with us and among us.
What is it that God is calling us to see and hear in this Jesus? Who is it that has the power to change our world, and how is that power going to be exercised in those of us who are called by Jesus to follow him?
The answers to these questions are not always so clear. We need to be a people who are aware of the risk of listening to the wrong sources, who are aware of the risk of joining in the wrong words whose error becomes actual blasphemy.
The promise is that in this journey of life, God will be actively at work in our lives. To reject that presence and the signs of this kingdom is to risk missing out on the good news that God has in store for us in the person and message of Jesus.
There are no guarantees in what we hear from anyone at all apart from Jesus. Even those who have all the proper credentials — Pharisees and followers of King Herod, wise people of our community, family members themselves! – are at risk of missing out on this wonderful journey with Christ Jesus.
Jesus puts it very directly. It is not who you are our your status, but action in response to the call of God in Christ Jesus, that marks what it means to belong to his “family.” That would seem to sum it all up simply.
Relationships in this family are dynamic; they flow from the encounter and response to Jesus.
Now, a response is required! From the beginning of his ministry in Mark, Jesus has been dealing with divided houses and kingdoms. He has cast out demons, healed Peter’s mother in law, cleansed a leper, and caused a paralytic to walk.
The houses and kingdoms of these people were divided. Jesus describes it like a strong man had staged a home invasion. Their lives were not their own. They lived with inner conflict and turmoil, constantly battling.
That battle, this interior conflict, this dis-ease, has been around since Adam and Eve separated themselves from God and hid amongst the trees of the garden.
It is seen in today’s Old Testament reading from 1 Samuel in Israel wanting a king so it can be like all the other nations; forgetting that it has a unique calling, that it is to be different from other nations, that it is through Israel, the people of God, that God will act for the benefit of all people.
Just as it is through today’s body of Christ, the Church. That God will act to benefit all people.
This division and inner conflict is a reality of today’s world and our lives. A marriage divided is a divorce. A nation divided results in vitriolic politics and in the extreme, civil war. An economy divided yields poverty and injustice.
A community divided becomes individualism and tribalism, prejudice and violence. Humanity divided is all these things on a global level.
Faith divided is sin.
We all know what it is like to live divided lives. You know those times when your outsides and your insides don’t match up? That’s what it means to be a house divided. We’re one person at work another at home. We act one way with certain people and a different way with other people.
Life gets divided into pieces. Behaviour, beliefs, and values suddenly become dependent on who is in the room, not the truth of Christ.
There is the work life, the family life, the prayer life, the personal life, the social life. Pretty soon we’re left with a sort of life in pieces, not at all whole and undivided.
It seems that we are forever trying to put the pieces of our lives together. That’s why the crowd has gathered around Jesus. That’s why the religious authorities oppose him. That’s why his family tries to restrain him.
In their own way each is trying to put the pieces of their life together but it’s not working.
They won’t fit. They have been found out. Their life and their world are neither what they thought they were, nor what Jesus knows they could be. One reality has fallen, and a new one is ready to rise.
Jesus always stands before us as the image of unity, wholeness, integration and fullness. He is the stronger one. He does for us that which we cannot do for ourselves. He puts our lives and houses back in order.
Jesus offers a different image of what life might look like, and the way he does so is by revealing the division in our lives, the houses that cannot stand, and the crumbling of our kingdoms.
“He has gone out of his mind,” the people say. The religious authorities accuse him of allegiance to Beelzebul, the ruler of demons. They project onto Jesus their own interior conflict and division.
They have declared that which is holy, sacred, and beautiful, to be unclean, dirty, and bereft of God. This is the one and only mortal sin that cannot be forgiven for it is blasphemy against life. Blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, the Lord the giver of Life itself.
Their accusations reveal the depth of the conflict and division within them. Their accusations are a way of avoiding themselves.
There are all sorts of forces, things, events, sometimes even individual people, by which and whom our lives are broken, and through which we are separated from God, others, and our selves.
Jesus is so very much (infinitely) stronger than anything that fragments our lives. He binds the forces that divide, heals the wounds that separate, and refashions pieces into a new whole. There is nothing about your life or my life that cannot be put back together by the love of God in Christ Jesus. Amen.