Receiving Jesus – Threat or delight Sunday 9th June
20 Then Jesus entered a house, and again a crowd gathered, so that he and his disciples were not even able to eat. 21 When his family[a] heard about this, they went to take charge of him, for they said, “He is out of his mind.”
22 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.”
23 So Jesus called them over to him and began to speak to them in parables: “How can Satan drive out Satan? 24 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. 28 Truly I tell you, people can be forgiven all their sins and every slander they utter, 29 but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven; they are guilty of an eternal sin.”
30 He said this because they were saying, “He has an impure spirit.”
31 Then Jesus’ mother and brothers arrived. Standing outside, they sent someone in to call him. 32 A crowd was sitting around him, and they told him, “Your mother and brothers are outside looking for you.”
33 “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.”
What do you think? Do you have to be a little crazy to be a Christian? We today that some thought Jesus was crazy!
Right from the start, Jesus did not seem to fit in with people’s expectations. Some thought he was crazy. Others thought he was worse: that he cunningly deceptive – even satanic.
Jesus has been on a pretty successful preaching tour. Jesus has not only talked about the new creation of God; the new kingdom here now, but he has done it. He has enacted this whole new way of being in relationship to God and shown them what this new life looks like. He has pushed back evil, driven out demons and healed all kinds of sicknesses.
As a result, Jesus is now a rock star! It’s hard for him to enter the local towns now. He is finding it difficult to even find time to grab a bight to eat.
It is all getting a bit ‘crazy’. And as is often the case in this hyper kind of ‘Taylor Swift Effect’ environment, the person at the centre of it can seem very ‘other-worldly’, as if they have beamed in from Mars. To the rest of us mere mortals, the star of the show seems to living on another planet.
21 When his family heard about this, they went to take charge of him, for they said, “He is out of his mind.”
Maybe this was a gracious thing. Maybe they were saying, ‘Let’s get our son and brother out of here, for his own good!”.
But we hear that there are now others who have arrived from the big smoke. They have no such niceness.
22 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.”
They don’t seem to care about Jesus’ state of mental wellness in the slightest. He may or may not be crazy, and they don’t care. He is possessed. This is why he can cast out demons: because he’s got a demon — indeed, one of the chief demons — inside him.
How did we get to here so quickly. It is not as though Jesus has raised a fighting force and is bombarding the community with conspiracy theories via hundreds of social media posts calling people to rebel! There are no reports of him gearing up his followers for some violent revolution and etc … He has been proclaiming good news, teaching God’s word and freeing and healing people.
Why do they believe him to be evil?
Pastor Matt Skinner from Luther Seminary in Minneapolis put it well, I thought:
“I think the answer is actually fairly simple: Jesus is so totally what the religious authorities don’t expect that they have absolutely no idea what to make of him. He doesn’t fit their categories…” (https://www.workingpreacher.org/dear-working-preacher/out-of-our-minds-2)
We know what this is. When a person doesn’t fit our categories of what is good or bad, acceptable or not acceptable, what is understood or not understood, we typically label that person ‘abnormal’, or deviant, or crazy, or possessed.
It is our limited human way to assume that what we know, have experienced, and hold to be true is ‘normal’, ‘natural’, and therefore God-ordained. This becomes the standard by which we measure — and judge — the thoughts and actions of others – sometimes for the good and often for the bad.
Jesus’ is operating outside their box. His whole ministry thus far has been about announcing both a new vision of God and a new way of relating to God.
The heart of that new vision for a new world is that God is love, that God desires the health and healing of all God’s creation, that God stands both with us and for us, that God is determined to love and redeem us no matter what the cost, and that this God chooses to be accessible to us, to all of us — indeed, to anyone and everyone.
This is in direct opposition to all the powers and people who would rob human beings and God’s beautiful creation of the abundant life God intends — whether those powers be unclean spirits; disease that ravages the mind, body or spirit; illness that isolates and separates those who suffer from community; or powerful people who don’t want to lose their power.
This is not only true for those around Jesus on this day.
We, as long-term Christians in a Western church who have had a position of influence and power for a very long time may get stuck in this thing called ‘religion’, as the Pharisees were.
At its heart, ‘religion’ has been understood as being the thing that regulates our relationship with God. The root of the word itself comes from the Latin ligare, to bind, which supplies the roots of the words, “ligament” (tissue that binds together) and “obligation” (the duties to which one is bound).
‘Religion’, then, in a good way, serves to connect us again to God by specifying what actions, duties, and obligations we should undertake out of reverence to God. Nothing bad or wrong about that.
Our way of praying and listening and being together through rites and ceremony and those wonderful sacraments is the way God structures our relationship with him.
But, of course, there is always the underlying trap for us to make our religious rites and rituals we love into a substitute for a genuine, living relationship with this God of grace.
We make our religious life not just to be ways in which we stay in touch with our God, but use the rites and the rituals and prayers and songs and buildings and architecture etc to manage and control that relationship with God for our own needs. Or even worse, we make OUR praying, OUR singing, OUR buildings and the way we go about being a church really a way to try and manage and control God!
This seems to be what Jesus is challenging these religious leader on.
It’s not that their way of relating to God is wrong — they are part of a long and proud tradition of faithful service to God and the people of God.
But they had developed this very hard edge to their vision of religion. In their fixation with keeping the Torah perfectly they had dismissed the possibility of God still acting in his own freedom – doing something new – something outside their ‘normal’ that displayed his actual heart for his world.
Even though all around them, people are being set free from their demons, experiencing wholeness and life and being given new dignity the religious people seem to be devoid of hope of God doing anything new and openly contemptuous of God’s good work.
Jesus promises that sins and “whatever blasphemies” may occur will prove no obstacle to people’s renewal (Mark 3:28)! But how can people who know the Word and the long story of God’s grace in the world and in their own people’s story who have obviously grown so cynical and scornful ever be able to “be forgiven all their sins and every slander they utter’?
Jesus says they can’t. And is not because he is lacking in grace, or the Holy Spirit is not actively calling them to his gracious new life. It is because they won’t allow his grace and simply refuse to listen to his heart now revealed through his Son. Jesus names it:
29 but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven; they are guilty of an eternal sin.”
Matt Skinner puts it well again,
“The extraordinary kind of blasphemy of which Jesus speaks (and which he distinguishes from other, forgivable blasphemies) is an “eternal sin” only because it reveals an entirely calcified mind; such people have seen the works of God up close in Jesus himself and yet repudiated the transformative power of God’s grace”.
Friend, you have seen God’s heart of grace up close and personal. But how is your mind toward God this morning. A bit calcified, out of touch, disconnected, lost in keeping the rules and keeping up appearances.?
But calcified hearts can be freed up by the wild grace of Jesus!
From that shock of water in which all your original and ongoing sin was washed away, to every time you have received the crucified and resurrected new kingdom of God in your hands and upon you lips; to all those experiences of beauty and grace and love and support in all of your suffering and pain and loss; in stories like today; living Word of Jesus the Living Word getting down to the heart of a person offering deliverance from misplaced religion and a return to true religion – the ‘religion’ of living faith in a living God of grace and power over all your demons, he is close and personal and active.
This ‘religion’ we share is not about merely regulating our relationship with God and each other in ways we know and expect.
This ‘religion we share is about transforming us from a calcified mind to a new mind – the mind of Christ; transforming us from sickness to healing, from loneliness to belonging, from fear to love, from shame to freedom – and all in the very up close and personal relationship with our God: Father, Son and Spirit.
Friends, Jesus is risen and ruling: Jesus is free. He is a little bit wild and will often challenge my limited understanding of what I have come to view as ‘normal’.
In some ways, we Christian might be a little bit crazy because God can do as he wants, and it will not always seem ‘normal’.
We might be ‘possessed’ too, but not be Satan!
Isn’t it true that since the day or baptism we are possessed by the Spirit of God and drawn into God’s family, a family founded neither through blood nor the law but through faith?
Yes. We are crazy and possessed, and we are free.
Amen
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