June 6, 2021: May God’s words be spoken, may God’s words be heard. Amen.
Well, it’s been awhile, right? This two Sunday a month worship can sometimes feel like an eternity when we have a five Sunday month as we did in May, but that will all be behind us in September as we return to a full-time schedule post-pandemic. It has also been awhile since we heard from the Gospel of Mark, which, since we are in Year B of our three-year lectionary cycle, the Mark year, one might find a bit odd. But, as it happens, we hear a lot of the Gospel of John in Year B too… especially in Holy Week and Eastertide. So, we haven’t been reading from Mark on a Sunday since Easter morning.
Sooooo…just a little reminder…previously, on the Mark Channel, Jesus is baptized, heads to the wilderness, began calling disciples, heads out on a “Preaching Tour in Galilee,” (I kid you not – that is actually the heading in the NRSV translation for Mark 1:35-39), he is healing lots of folks, and drawing huge crowds. And now, in today’s episode, we find ourselves in the middle of Chapter 3, where Jesus seems to have more followers than a Kardashian Twitter account, and is busier than a squirrel in a nut factory. Which, is actually not a bad metaphor, because his family thinks Jesus is actually nuts!
Jesus is out and about with those many followers, and he is healing people. Now, to heal people in those days, was not about telling them to take a pill and call the doctor in the morning. Nor was it a telemedicine visit or an online therapy session. It was to go to the outskirts, to the dark and lonely places. Disease was thought to be due to evil, or a punishment of some kind for sin. Folks just didn’t want to get too close, and others felt the diseased deserved it, and so it was all made worse by excluding them from the community. Jesus goes to where others will not go – he sees them, touches them, heals them. And you know what?
Folks say – THAT’S CRAZY!
They think he has lost his mind.
So much so, that when his mom, brothers, and sisters hear about it, they try to go drag him back home – you know, keep the crazy boy out of sight. As I noted before, they must have been from the North, ‘cause I can tell you, the folks down South will tell ya, “we just set our crazy people out on the porch and hand them a sweet tea.” But these folks, even his own family, think Jesus is a pair of one-eyed jacks short of a full deck, and they want him to just shut up and go away.
Shut up and go away.
That’s what we seem to want when folks are doing things we don’t like, or find uncomfortable, or disagree with, isn’t it? We may even think they are crazy, or perhaps – that they are evil. And that is where we end up here in this gospel passage. See, that family bit – where mom and the brothers and sisters of Jesus want to just bring him home so he won’t embarrass them or himself anymore – at least in their eyes – well…that comes before, and after, a different reaction altogether to what he is doing – different, but a bit related.
The scribes are there too, and they accuse Jesus – not of being crazy – but of being in league with Satan. Now, Jesus’ response is one of those famous bible passages that sadly, many don’t realize is from scripture. He says to these scribes, these temple authorities, “How can Satan cast out Satan? If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand. And if Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand, but his end has come.”
You know that this “house divided” statement of Jesus has been quoted by some of our nation’s leaders, including President Abraham Lincoln, who, interestingly enough was also executed. The sad thing is, based on a lot of Facebook memes out there, many people today seem to think that he said it first. Seriously.
Yet there is a reason this passage is so well known – it is powerfully on point – even if taking it out of its scriptural context can lead to some of the message Jesus was trying to convey to be lost. Time and time again, as history has shown, as Lincoln knew then – long before he was President – when we enter into pitched battle against one another, when we divide the world into insiders and outsiders (which, oddly enough, the Gospel of Mark does quite a bit), when we fail to see the other as our equal – we begin to implode – our hate and bitterness destroying us from the inside out.
I am reminded of a baseball story I heard about awhile back. “In the spring of 1894, the Baltimore Orioles came to play the Boston Beaneaters – Seriously, that’s what they were called in those days. Anyway, folks came to the stands to watch a routine baseball game. But what happened that day was anything but routine. The Orioles’ John McGraw got into a fight with the Boston third baseman, Tommy Tucker. Within minutes all the players from both teams had joined in the brawl. The warfare quickly spread to the grandstands. Among the fans the conflict went from bad to worse. Someone set fire to the stands and the entire ballpark burned to the ground. Not only that, but the fire spread to 107 other Boston buildings as well.”
Now, there have been many reasons given as to how the fire started, and some argue it may have been an accident (personally, I blame Mrs. O’Leary’s cow for visiting from Chicago and smoking a cigar too close to the stands), but one could reasonably say that the fighting between McGraw & Tucker, spread like wildfire across that ballpark, and with or without a match, was the catalyst for a lot of destruction. There are better ways to resolve our differences.
Now, this is not to say that we should not stand up against the powerful to free the oppressed, that we should not stand with the marginalized or give voice to the voiceless. Not at all. In fact, Jesus makes that clear in this very passage.
After Jesus rebukes them for thinking that he is Satan’s agent, he says: “…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.” The strong man here are the forces of evil that have allowed the children of God to suffer, Christ being the one who binds him, and topples his empire.
Jesus is overturning the world order – making powerless the powerful – that God’s people may be free. That is a scary thing to some, especially those in power, and can lead others to think you are just bat-well…you know-crazy to even think it is possible. And the truth is, that on this anniversary of D-Day, we are reminded that sometimes the strong man needs to be bound up, and as the body of Christ, we are called to do as he did – we need to be the force that destroys a house of evil.
Yet, much more commonly, and just as important in what Jesus calls us to here, is that unity it isn’t about conformity, nor is division about having different opinions about things. Unity in Christ is about recognizing that the one with whom we are divided is not a strongman to be bound up – is not the devil incarnate as the scribes tried to label Jesus. They are our sister or brother, made in the image of God. And like any family, including the good Lord’s, we will have disagreements, we will think some member is absolutely off their rocker, their opinions or actions in the world will have us believing they are possessed by the devil himself. Look at what is happening in the world today.
People are burning down proverbial ballparks everywhere – and God’s children are dying as a result. The violence in our country and around the world is killing our sisters and brothers – physically, spiritually, emotionally – and make no mistake, it will kill us all in the end. We are living in that house divided, and we cannot start to unite and live until we understand that our differences are not what is killing us.
Division, the kind Jesus is talking about, happens when we cannot accept our differences as being part of the diversity of God’s creation, so we fight one another into oblivion. Jesus calls us into a new way of being.
He invites us to respond to the movement of the Holy Spirit in our lives.
He expands our understanding of family as being far more than our blood relatives, or those who look, love, speak, or think like us. Family to a follower of Jesus includes any child of God – all people of this earth. The home we destroy in our division is all of God’s creation, and the creatures and humanity that dwell in it.
And He calls us to reconciling love in his name.
Here’s the thing… we will have divisions. It is an inevitable part of our human existence. There were divisions among Jesus’ disciples. And after his resurrection, no one would argue that St. Peter and St. Paul got together on weekends for family barbeques. There are also divisions that are healthy. In fact, sometimes it is the only way for the larger house of humanity to remain standing. The reality is too that human relationships can often be complicated, and there can sometimes be no clear path forward except to separate for the health of all. This is not a failure, but a recognition that unity isn’t the goal – love is.
What Jesus calls us to is to not allow our divisions to be seen as greater than what unites us – and what unites us is love – God’s unconditional love for us – and Christ’s call to love one another as he loved us. And in a world bereft with violence, hate, and oppression – our gospel proclamation of love, even loving our enemies, is gonna make some people say we are few cards shy of a full deck, and want us to shut up and go away.
Yet, if our lives in Christ are to have any meaning at all, we cannot be afraid of what others think. We cannot go home and hide ourselves from what is happening all around us. We cannot allow the depths into which we will sometimes fall in despair for our world to become a self-made prison into which we lock ourselves. And my friends, that is so very easy to do, to be sure.
That’s why we need to come here – every Sunday – online or in-person. We need to come here and be surrounded by a bunch of crazy folks.
Crazy, because we believe that all people are beloved children of God – young or old, weak or strong, rich or poor, gay, straight, or transgendered, republican, independent, or democrat, conservative or liberal, immigrant or native born, male or female – everyone is a child of God – our sister and our brother.
Crazy because we believe that all of creation is of God – the sea, the earth, the sky, and all that dwell in it – and we must care for it.
Crazy because we believe that the lonely, the hungry, the sick, the imprisoned, the oppressed, the poor, the addicted, the depressed, the widow, the orphan, and the homeless are Christ himself, and we will see them, touch them, love them as He loved us.
Crazy because we believe in the reconciling love of Jesus Christ, which compels us to love one another – and that means everyone – even those with whom we most disagree. It means we build bridges that cross our divides, rather than walls to shut one another out. It means we believe the Beloved Community is possible – a world where disparate groups strive to live in harmony with one another.
Folks, the truth is – none of that is crazy at all.
What’s crazy is a world that would think so. But right now, we can’t worry about that, can we. If folks think it’s crazy, well alrighty then. We will just need to be our Crazy Jesus following selves and stand up against injustice, be a voice for the voiceless, break down walls of hate, and build bridges of love. We are the Episcopal Branch of the Jesus Movement, and we will follow him – be him in the world, healing through love….
Yes, folks will call us crazy.
And they just might be right.
Yet go ahead, tell folks to hold your sweet tea, ‘cause you’re about to do some crazy things…crazy, Christ centered, love driven, wonderful grace spreading, things.
‘Cause we know that, crazy or not, love, God’s love, can change the world.
It’s the only thing that ever has.
Amen.
For the audio, click below, or subscribe to our iTunes Sermon Podcast by clicking here:
The Rev. Diana L. Wilcox
Christ Church in Bloomfield & Glen Ridge
June 6, 2021
The Second Sunday After Pentecost
1st Reading – 1 Samuel 8:4-11, (12-15), 16-20, (11:14-15)
Psalm 138
2nd Reading – 2 Corinthians 4:13-5:1
Gospel – Mark 3:20-35
