Has anyone ever called you crazy?
A prison chaplain's reflection on Mark 3, June 10 2018
Has anyone ever called you crazy?
Has anyone ever called you a devil, or evil, or hopeless?
Have your own family members thought you were out of your mind?
Have you ever been cursed and slandered by people who you thought were your friends?
Have you ever tried to help someone, and people accused you of just stirring up trouble?
Have you ever had friends undermine or betray you because they were jealous of your success?
Have you ever had to hide or get away because someone was trying to kill you?
Have you ever walked into a room, and it gets silent because you were the one they were all talking about?
"Another time Jesus went into the synagogue, and a man with a shriveled hand was there. 2 Some of them were looking for a reason to accuse Jesus, so they watched him closely to see if he would heal him on the Sabbath. 3 Jesus said to the man with the shriveled hand, “Stand up in front of everyone.” 4 Then Jesus asked them, “Which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to kill?” But they remained silent. 5 He looked around at them in anger and, deeply distressed at their stubborn hearts, said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He stretched it out, and his hand was completely restored. 6 Then the Pharisees went out and began to plot with the Herodians how they might kill Jesus.
7 Jesus withdrew with his disciples to the lake, and a large crowd from Galilee followed. 8 When they heard about all he was doing, many people came to him from Judea, Jerusalem, Idumea, and the regions across the Jordan and around Tyre and Sidon. 9 Because of the crowd he told his disciples to have a small boat ready for him, to keep the people from crowding him. 10 For he had healed many, so that those with diseases were pushing forward to touch him. 11 Whenever the impure spirits saw him, they fell down before him and cried out, “You are the Son of God.” 12 But he gave them strict orders not to tell others about him."
This is the situation we see today in our gospel reading.
Jesus had become a popular figure, he heals people who are sick and deformed, he casts out demons, and the demons try to expose him. The leaders twist the truth saying “it is by the prince of demons that he drives out demons” in order to destroy his reputation, while they try to think of a way to have him killed. “Then the Pharisees went out and began to plot with the Herodians how they might kill Jesus.” (verse 6)
All this because Jesus is confronting and disarming the “demonic” forces of evil, not only by casting out the spirits of disease and sickness, but naming the hidden forces that crush people’s spirit, the deceptions and manipulation used by authorities to keep people in bondage and fear, and the spiritual powers and system of hatred and despair.
That is the meaning behind Jesus line of inquiry and action earlier in verse 4-5: “Then Jesus asked them, “Which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to kill?” But they remained silent. 5 He looked around at them in anger and, deeply distressed at their stubborn hearts, said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He stretched it out, and his hand was completely restored”
As a prophet, Jesus lived in an occupied land, yet he spoke out against the legacies of historical injustice and the systems of violence the Romans and their Jewish collaborators used to oppress, enslave, and terrorize entire peoples, races, and communities. Crucifixions were the direct violence the Romans used to kill anyone they thought might challenge them, but the indirect violence they used was in alliance with the Jewish religious leaders who collaborated with them. That was the why the Pharisees feared Jesus, when they met before his final execution, it was because they were afraid that because of Jesus popular movement of restoration, they would lose their place in power in cahoots with the Roman occupiers.
This was the reality that Jesus was confronting – surrounded by people, yet isolated at so many levels - personal, familial, social and institutional. Thus, “When his family[b] heard about this, they went to take charge of him, for they said, “He is out of his mind.” (verse. 21)
Do we ever feel this way, like we are fighting the world, or fighting ourselves, or our history, and can never win? Or have we just given up and just survive one day to the next? Maybe we just take it out on the people around us, allowing the anger to just bubble over as threats, negativity, insults, violence?
"And the teachers of the law who came down from Jerusalem said, “He is possessed by Beelzebul! By the prince of demons he is driving out demons.”
So how do we get out of this mess, this house of destruction? Let’s go back to our story, to where Jesus is telling a little story to make a point. And he’s doing it in a way so that people have to think about it to get the point. Why? Because he is a prophet and a teacher, and if you think about your best teachers in life, what did they do that helped you learn?
Did they just stand up front and lecture for hours or give you a list of answers? No, the best learning comes through a story, and this is the story he told to make his point,
“If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. 25 If a house is divided against itself, that house cannot stand. 26 And if Satan opposes himself and is divided, he cannot stand; his end has come. 27 In fact, no one can enter a strong man’s house without first tying him up. Then he can plunder the strong man’s house”
So what can we learn from this story? First, we find that Jesus is actually in the house with us already. Jesus is like a rebel or robber who sneaks into the house of the “strong man” and has the power to tie him up so he can take his stuff.
Has anyone here ever stolen anything? Breaking and entering? Theft? So maybe we can relate to this.
What is this “house” Jesus is talking about? This house of the strongman is the violent, sick and dying reality that is our world. It’s everything that Jesus was working against and confronting on that day when his own family thought he was crazy, and the authorities wanted him dead. It’s all that stuff – that terror, oppression, deception, pain, hurt, anger, fear, loneliness – that Jesus experienced and was fighting against, but in a different way.
Who is the Strongman? Satan is the strongman who has been tied up and made powerless by the truth of the Holy Spirit, that is the word of God, spoken and lived out by Jesus. It is by his words that Jesus, healed the sick, delivered those under demonic possession and raised the dead. So we see in the story that Jesus claimed the truth and exposed the deception of those who tried to destroy him by pointing to the Holy Spirit as the source of truth and the antidote to “blasphemy” of the Pharisees.
"Truly I tell you, people can be forgiven all their sins and every slander they utter, but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven; they are guilty of an eternal sin.” He said this because they were saying, “He has an impure spirit.”"
The unforgivable sin he was pointing out was simply that if we try to rely on our own spirit or the spirt of the world rather than the spirit of God, we can’t be saved – we can’t save ourselves. The eternal sin, or blasphemy against the spirit, is the truth of our prideful spirit, of relying on ourselves and the power of the strongman, Satan, to rule our lives. He directed this as a warning to the pharisees, who were attacking him, that they were in great danger to reject his mission and distorting his message by saying "he had an impure spirit". So it is not that we ever need to be afraid that we have committed an unforgivable sin. God's gift is forgiveness for all sins, regardless. But if we, like the Pharisees, reject him, than we are rejecting the one person who can help us out of the mess we're in.
But we are in luck! We don’t have to submit to that reality, to that dead-end lies or fake truth. Jesus is the like a “divine robin hood” or guerilla fighter who sneaks into enemy territory to rescue the people who are suffering under the occupation forces because the bad guys took over and ruined everything and so everyone is just doing what the bad guys’ leader, the strongman, says to do.
But Jesus, he snuck, and he’s trying to “steal” us – you and me – out from Satan’s house, and he has already tied him up and made him powerless, all we have to do is walk out the door of the house of destruction with Jesus and start the journey of faith back to the homeland of God’s love. But if we refuse that, then we are stuck in the house of death, and that is a sin that God “can’t” forgive, because God won’t force us to accept his freedom – he would be going against his own nature, which is love.
And that’s why he points out, that if the rebel used the same methods as the strongman, then his effort would fail. That’s what he means by saying, “a house or kingdom divided against itself would not stand.” And so it is not just that this power used by God in Christ and through the Holy Spirit to bind up the strongman is greater power than Satan’s power, but it’s a totally different kind of power.
And what do you think that power is?
I already mentioned it, its the power of love, because God is love. So through the power of the Holy Spirit of love, Satan’s power of hate has been made powerless. If we try to manipulate or hate our way out of the mess we’re in, without relying on God’s power of love and wisdom, we’re not going to get anywhere. We will only be repeating the same mistakes that caused things to go wrong in the first place.
That’s why Jesus points out the contradiction of the Pharisees accusation – you can’t defeat hatred with hatred, violence with violence, oppression with oppression, deception with deception, slander with slander, insults with insults, depression with depression. The Romans and the Pharisees stayed in power by killing others to save themselves – that is the logic of violent power. Jesus did the opposite, and sacrificed his own life to save everyone else – that is the logic and power of sacrificial love.
Jesus is offering a totally and radically new way of life. That’s why he says it is like being born again, you’re coming into a new world, and the old rules don’t apply because the guy (Satan) who made those rules has been cuffed and locked up and has no power in this house of love.
And the next thing he points out, is that leaving the house of the strongman means being part of a new family, so that if your old family thinks you’re crazy to escape with Jesus, it’s because they have not yet realized that they are still living in the house of the strongman.
“Who are my mother and my brothers?” he asked. 34 Then he looked at those seated in a circle around him and said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! 35 Whoever does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother.””
So the question is, will you accept that power, that love in your life. If you’ve been living in the house of hatred and destruction, or you’ve wandered back into that house even after you had left already, do you want to be free from that reality sickness, depression and hopelessness?
It’s an utterly lonely place to be, disconnected from God, disconnected from others in ways that are life giving, it is the house of death. Jesus has gone into that house, through his death on the cross, incapacitated the strongman, and wants to take you into the new house of life and love and freedom.
