OT Reading: Psalm 130
NT Reading*: Mark 3:19-35
*Depending on how your specific translation parses verses, this passage in Mark involved the last half of verse 19, "Then he went into a house..."
Idealistic perceptions of what message Jesus proclaimed are easy to
come by. We understand the ideas about love your neighbor. We even understand that
Jesus challenged the prevailing Jewish religious leadership. We prefer and try to model the romantic allure of prophecy. But we seldom take
the time to think about the historical reality of his message.
Palestine was a province of Rome, and it was ruled by an inflexible,
iron hand. Rome was just the next in a series of brutal occupying forces. The
heirs of Alexander the Great exacted horrifying punishment on the Jews, even
killing mothers and the child if it was ritually circumcised.
We talk about oppression in the 19th and 20th
Century, but what oppression our citizens have experienced pales in comparison
to that born by the Jews in Roman Palestine, or even in Nazi Germany.
Jesus understood the Law is based on a few basic principles
epitomized by the Shema: “Hear O Israel, The Lord our God is one! You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your hearts. Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise. Bind them as a sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem on your forehead, and write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates."
All worldly allegiance takes a back seat to fealty
to the Lord. Compromise with worldly authority is the ultimate blasphemy.
Yet
here we find Pharisees (the lay religious police), the Sanhedrin (the ruling
priestly elite), and the cult of the regional Roman lord (the Herodians)
collaborating in an unbelievable hypocrisy.
Jesus heralded from Galilee, the District of the Gentiles, a
productive countryside. Its residents were viewed as rubes, known for Robin
Hood-like resistance to ruling oppressors and laboring under the prejudice of
the Judeans in Jerusalem and its temple hierarchy. Today folks who pursue
“Christian social justice” romanticize this resistance and see themselves as
prophets calling out the oppressors of today, as if they themselves have the
authority of Jesus and standing to call themselves prophets.
But perhaps they miss the Mark. Mark tells us that Jesus in a few
short weeks of his ministry overturned all this hypocritical thinking as rubbish.
He called for a radical theology that puts loyalty to God and God’s creation,
our fellow humanity, as the principal ethical value.
He challenged authority with weakness. He alone has the authority to call out hypocrisy and religious
oppression and did so. We should never forget that reality when we think it
proper to toss a shame bomb at someone for their sin.
Jesus has created the equivalent of a riot in this brief initial
span of his ministry. He has been to the synagogue a couple times, the last
time (3:1-6) he healed a man with a withered hand (we will not quibble about
how this “unclean person” found his way into the synagogue) and gotten into an
argument with the Pharisees over blasphemy that initiates the plot to kill
Jesus.
This passage shows us Jesus expects from us a loyalty whose human
corporeal liability may be our death. This is Mark’s view of the ultimate test
of faith.
Crowds from all over Judah and beyond have come to Galilee to
witness his healings or be healed, or have demons cast out. Out of exhaustion, He
has retreated to a mountain with those he has just immediately chosen and named
the twelve his Apostles.
Now, in our reading, he has gone to a house in Galilee and as soon
as the crowd learns where he is they beset him again. He can’t even find time
to eat in his work with the demanding crowd. (By the way, step out on the
sidewalk or go down to the Salvation Army or a shelter and you’ll find that
same crowd.)
The ones who were with him realize how this constant labor with the
crowds exhausts them and Jesus. When they hear his detractors saying the man is
crazy, they come out of the house to restrain Jesus.
[Many translations say his family came out, and said he was crazy, but
the Greek only says the ones like him nearby, his disciples, came out. Both the
King James Version and the Message Bible translate this way. To insert “family” here requires reading v 31
backward into this earlier event, and ignoring that he is with the twelve he
has just named as Apostles (and spiritual family). Mark leaves it ambiguous
exactly who is calling Jesus crazy.]
Then Mark throws a curve ball at us by dropping the issue of the
encounter with the crowd and the disciples. Jesus begins a detailed teaching responding to the accusations of the religious leaders that he is under the
sway of Satan.
After all, Jesus has created
quite the dilemma for the Pharisees, priests and Rome. He has upset their apple
cart. We all know how much we value stability and assurance and dislike
conflict and disorder. We know how much institutions covet stability. Jesus has
confronted the very stability of the religious and political situation. Is it
much different today? Don’t we all tend to label persons who espouse
disagreeable religious or political positions as misfits or even “crazy?”
The scribes accuse him of being under the sway of Beelzebul,
the prince of demons, literally The Lord
of Flies. This accusation of the scribes has some irony to it for Jesus has
been casting out these very demons with such attention that he cannot even stop
to eat.
The irony is not lost on
Jesus because he starts talking about it in parables. It is a sure sign this is
a teaching moment (for us) when he asks the obvious rhetorical question, “How
can the prince of demons (Satan) cast himself out?”
He wonders can a house
divided remain standing for long? If not for long, then if he is Satan casting his
own demons, he is at war with himself and cannot last.
He continues with another
puzzling observation. One cannot rob the house of a strong person without first
subduing the person. Is the implication that Jesus has tied up Beelzebul and
plundering his domain, the world of flesh?
Is Jesus intimating to the
scribes and Pharisees that their religious establishment is Beelzebul and Jesus
is plundering their domain?
Is Jesus saying by parable to
the religious leaders that the Kingdom is at hand and their temple kingdom
cannot last because they are attacking Him, its only source of salvation?
Yet, he leaves open a path
to forgiveness.
In a riddle, he tells them,
“Truly I tell you that all the sins and blasphemy of everyone will be forgiven,
but the one who (continues to) blaspheme against the Holy Spirit can never have
forgiveness, rather is guilty of sin perpetually. Why? Because when they say he has an unclean spirit they are refusing to embrace the Holy Spirit, the only path
to forgiveness.
With his teaching completed for now, we turn back to the matter at
hand, the disciples and his friends and some newcomers try to extricate him
from this sticky mess.
Who appears but his mother and siblings?
By now, even if not a Hebrew but having read a few of my posts, you realize that family is everything
in Roman Palestine even more so than now. It is the source of emotional
support, of care when one falls ill and the source of subsequent generations. It
is the only refuge from a hostile world. On top of that they are the children
of the Creator, and descendants in the family of Abraham, as are we.
So when his mother and siblings appear entreating him to come with
them, the reader knows the most powerful interpersonal relationship is at play.
Every good son will come to his mother when hailed.
But Jesus has just called twelve persons to be his Apostles in a
ministry leading to the ultimate commitment and sacrifice. These Apostles are
the ones who will carry his story to the world and be the model of Christ-like
behavior, a model you are called to
today. As he says here, and will say time after time, love the Lord with your
entire being, and love your neighbor the way the Lord (and family) loves you.
What does he ask the crowd who are encouraging him to go to his
mother and siblings? “Who are my mother and brothers and sisters?” This is very similar to the question he asks the lawyer soon, "Who is your neighbor?"
Completing a full circle that began with him entering the house with his Apostles, He says his family are the ones here who says “no” to Rome and follows His
will. His will is not hostility and reprobation; rather, it is to offer the
kind hand of grace of the Holy Spirit, even to the oppressor. Jesus says this family is the only path to
victory in the Kingdom of Heaven.
What does this mean for us who seek the Christian social justice
that Jesus preached? It demands that we turn away from shaming those with whom
we disagree (not saying they must be crazy) and seek ways to reveal our compassion for them as we place the
dissonance of Christ’s expectation against their support of a social wrong.
If the problem is opposing privatizing prisons, then we do the hard work to develop the
statistics that show that a large percentage of prisoners are there due to
mental health issues, or lack of resources, not crimes, per se.
If talking
about racism does any good (what is the relative percentage of Hispanics and
African-Americans prison?), you need to be armed with specific examples of
these injustices and publicize them. Shaming only closes minds and delays change.
For example, we can point out there is a ~200 prisoner backlog in the
private Silverdale prison in Chattanooga waiting for psychological evaluation
and/or medication that they were taking outside on the street. Each of those
200 is a ticking time bomb for violence.
We communicate factual information that beyond the ethical cost of
harm to the many lost souls who should not be there (some probably should be
there), we are also incurring financial costs and social costs that some one
will have to pay in taxes.
Perhaps we work directly to create educational opportunities,
productive employment opportunities and models of Christian behavior within the depressed communities in order
to break the cycle of generational physical and spiritual poverty? After all, these prisoners are part of our family, as are their jailers.
Brothers and sisters, this Christian family affair began with your
baptismal vows. It is hard work being a brother or sister of Christ. When faced
with the opportunity to criticize the establishment for the way it treats family, or roll up your sleeves and
get something done for the family the way He did, make the right choice and spread Grace, not shame, around.
Grace and peace,
AMEN.
No comments:
Post a Comment