Jesus Is Distracted

 Mark 5:21-43

June 27, 2021

 

We’re only in chapter 5 of Mark.

Jesus and the disciples are just starting their ministry

out in the world and it’s picking up steam.

Jesus has healed a few people,

he’s already confronted the religious leaders,

Jesus is being talked about, no doubt.

People are seeking him out.

The disciples are, I’m sure, pleased to be

part of this movement at least for now.

 

And today, Jairus asked Jesus for help.

His daughter is dying and he doesn’t know where else to turn.

 

Jairus is a leader of the synagogue.

He must have been desperate to come to Jesus.

He’s an important, powerful man.

 

This is exactly the type of person

that the disciples were waiting for.

This is just the kind of person that would

give their ministry the boost that it needed.

If Jesus could help Jairus,

they might be able to really make a change in this town.

They might be able to be a strong and powerful group

instead of the ragtag group they were.

And Jairus is surely loaded, that couldn’t hurt.

Not that we’re out for that, of course, but it could really help.

 

Okay Jesus, let’s go and heal that man’s daughter.

(I mean, of course, we’re concerned for her), but

this is the chance we’ve been waiting for.

We don’t want to keep the leader of the synagogue waiting.

 

Jesus started to walk with the disciples and the powerful man

in the right direction, moving through the crowds.

But then he stopped and said, “Who touched my clothes?”

 

And you can hear the disciples annoyance.

“Who touched you? Are you kidding?”

There are about a hundred people around you.”

Forget about all these people and get to the important one,

come on, Jesus.  Jairus is waiting.”

But Jesus won’t leave. He stops what he’s doing for this woman.

A woman who has been hemorrhaging for 12 years.

 

At this time, when women were menstruating,

they were seen as unclean and would have been

separated from the community.

She would have been separated for 12 years.

She would have been a pariah.

Not just forgotten, but hated.

People would have been scared of her

maybe they would catch what she had,

Maybe whatever bad spirit was on her

would have rubbed off on them.

She was someone, not just to be ignored, but actively avoided.

 

And she was so pushy. She just came and touched Jesus

His power went out from him without his consent.

She didn’t ask, she just took it from him.

Trust In the Lord
Liz Lemon Swindle

She had no right to do that.

And she had no status to warrant it.

 

She was just the kind of person
that the disciples didn’t want

to be seen with. Someone who would

bring down the ministry, cheapen their reputation.

Someone who should not keep the
important mission at hand waiting. 
Come on, Jesus, let’s go!

 

You can tell by the annoyance in the disciples

voice that they would have preferred him to move on.

And I’m sure that Jairus would have preferred

for Jesus to move on and get right to his house.

 

But Jesus doesn’t. It doesn’t seem fair,

Jairus was more important. And Jairus came first.

But Jesus stops to find out who touched him.

Who took his power. He talks to her,

she tells him her whole truth, which had to take a little while.

And then he tells her that her faith has made her well

and she could go on healed of her disease.

And in that time Jairus’s daughter died.

 

Now, most people would have moved on.

Either annoyed by the woman’s presumption,

or motivated by the task at hand,

They would have gone to the house of the important man

and left the crowds and the woman behind.

At least to make a show to the important person,

that they were trying their best to help them.

 

Maybe we would have come back to the

unnamed woman later,

after we were done with the important person.

She had been waiting for 12 years.

What would one more hour mean to her?

 

I think that  everyone at one time or another,

has moved on from a situation in front of us,

and pressed on with whatever we were planning on doing.

Sometimes it’s annoyance, sometimes it’s not wanting to get involved

sometimes we’re focused on our own priorities.

But often in pressing towards something we want

we miss what’s right there in front of us.

In Ohio I did work with the Synod

for churches that were in conflict and crisis.

And a lot of churches have found themselves,

in the last decade, in conflict because

of the decline in worship numbers and income,

they tend to blame the pastor,

or this group or that, or changes in culture,

They get into fights about who should have done what.

 

So often in these churches, the lament I hear is that

the people remember  the way the church was

around 20-50 years ago, with huge Sunday Schools

and all their friends and families attending.

And so many people spend all their minds and effort

pining for those days and trying to figure out how

to get back to make things they way they were again

(I mean they don’t want to change anything,

but they just want those times to come back)

 

But they’re so focused on that, getting back to their

former power and glory that they miss

the opportunities that God has put right in front of them.

 

One congregation that we went to,

the members were hyper-focused

on the dwindling Sunday School numbers.

The council was spending all their energy trying to get

kids back into the church and into Sunday School?

And at the same time the council was complaining

about the constant influx of homeless people

coming to their door and asking for bus fare and food.

 

There was another church that couldn’t figure out

what to do with themselves besides fight with each other.

They didn’t know what they were going to do at all.

 

In the middle of working with them, we asked them casually,

what’s being built on the land next door?

The city was actually building a food bank and pantry

on the land right next door to the church. Hmmm.

Maybe God is trying to tell them something?

 

It’s way easier to see these things from the outside.

That’s why they bring other people in.

 

Churches these days have a difficult task.

We are always trying to figure out how to

do our regular church business:

keeping the lights on and the bills paid, etc.

and also, how do we respond to the immediate needs

that are around us in the world.

The great need that we see in our world every day.

 

Some churches do that by forgetting about the world

around them, they only focus on their own church

and their own members and they never let anything

take their focus off of building their infrastructure

and their own power.

 

They avoid the need and act like it’s not

any of their business to respond to the world.

They just deal with church business and take care of their own.

Or they just circle back to it when they get their own house in order.

I don’t think those are the answers that Jesus

would be advocating for based on this story.

 

As Christians, we follow Christ’s lead and logic

which doesn’t usually follow common logic.

 

Jesus was not concerned about his infrastructure

or his longevity or even the future of his own ministry.

He was not worried about his own notoriety,

or his reputation, or who he was seen with.

He was not worried about building his own power.

 

Now those are all things that we have spend some time on in

this world in order to survive.

But sometimes those things turn into a church’s whole ministry.

We can be so focused on our own that we forget

about the ministry that God has put in front of us.

Sometimes we worry about increasing

and maintaining own power and we forget

how Jesus used his power.

 

Jesus became powerful, only so that he could give his power away

to nobodies and nothings like that woman who touched him,

and stole his power from him. That’s what he was there to do.

The power that was in him, he gave away to the less powerful.

But the more he gave away to others, the more he had in the end.

Real power, Godly power, is found when

when we let  people who have none take it away.

 

The powerful man and his daughter would have to wait.

There was a need right in front of him which required Jesus attention.

But in the end of the story, Jairus’s daughter is saved too.

Even though he was too late to restore her health,

he used his power to raise her from the dead.

 

We are not the church we once were.

We are not as powerful, and not as pretty,

we are not as polished, not as accepted, not as respected,

not as rich and profitable, we are not as full.

 

But we are also not as arrogant,

not as blind to the suffering of others,

not as disconnected from the world,

not as oblivious as we once were either.

 

God is reforming us, more fully into Christ’s image

able to do God’s mission in the world.

Able to engage with the world around us

and share God’s power and healing with

those who are right in front of us.

And that is Good News

for the church and the world.

Jesus, Don't You Care?

Mark 4: 35-41 
June 20, 2021

Can we just say that

we have been through a lot this past year?

Individually, in our churches, in our businesses,

in our country, and in the whole world.

We have been through a lot.

 

I know there’s a new sense of optimism

now that COVID doesn’t seem to be

such a threat with the vaccine being so effective.

But we’ve been through a lot.

 

Almost 4 million people in the world have died

and more than 600 thousand people in America alone

and many more have long term effects.

And we have been isolated, anxious, frightened.

 

And that is just our COVID mess.

This church went through a conflict not too long ago.

Friendships and relationships were broken.

You’ve lost leaders and ministries and

parts of your organizational underpinnings.

People are still grieving.

 

And there other usual messes that are ongoing.

Economic disparity, racism, climate change,

there is a potential environmental disaster happening

in California and the west coast with the drought

not seen in a thousand years.

 

And each of these things come down to real people,

they are not just statistics.

-Melinda who lost her husband to COVID

-Six people in the Ortega family who died because they

went to a family BBQ together last year.

-William, a black man who was shot in his home by police

while he was watching a movie because someone said

he was dealing drugs, and now he’s paralyzed.

-The Swansons, a couple in California,

who lost their house and everything they owned in a wild fire.

-You don’t worship with your friend any more.

 

The writer Salmon Rushdie wrote rightly

that individuals are drawn into the

“annihilating whirlpool of history”.

 

Each of these historical events has millions

of real-life stories attached to them.

Each statistic is an actual human being.

 

The world is not just a mess in general,

it’s a mess specifically for so many people individually.

 

And even without these whirlpools of history,

there are the normal every day waves that crash on us:

The problems of work and families

children, grandchildren, co-workers

We have arguments, disagreements, misunderstandings,

The regular aches and pains of life

and the serious illnesses.

People are in abusive relationships,

broken relationships, addictions, depression

 

It’s overwhelming sometimes

Like the storms will never end.

Like the wind is too rough.

Like the waves are getting too high.

Like we are in over our head and the undertow will take us away

Like at any moment, we could be drowning.

 

We can easily feel like life is just one big storm

and we are being hopelessly thrashed around in our little boat.

Like the disciples on that short trip across the lake with Jesus.

 

The disciples are veteran fishermen.

They know what they’re doing,

they’ve no doubt encountered storms before

but this is a big storm.

This looks like it might be too much

for their capabilities and their little boat.

This is a storm that would call for some extraordinary event.

What Kind of Man is This?
Keith Clark

Some sort of miracle maybe.

 

And as they get up on their feet

and as they work to stabilize the boat to no avail.

They look over and Jesus is lying on the cushion

at the end of the boat. Sleeping.

 

When our waves come up over our head

one too many times, we might very well

be like those disciples who yell at Jesus.

“Jesus, don’t you care that we’re drowning?!”

 

You know, in Matthew and Luke’s Gospel,

they tone the disciples down.

Matthew and Luke both have the disciples saying

“Save us, we’re perishing.”

But the disciples in Mark are a little more biting.

I think a little more realistic.
Why are you sleeping? Don’t you care?

When our little boats are being sucked into that whirlpool

and we look for a sign of hope, and we get silence,
and just more and more water.  it can easily seem like Jesus is asleep on the job, like God just doesn’t care about us, or humanity or this world. “God, don’t you care that we’re drowning?”

 I don’t know whether we expect a miracle

each time we make that plea.

I don’t know whether those disciples expected Jesus

to get up and control those waves.

I think that they just expected a bit of help.

“At least get up, help us bail out the ship.”

“At least show us that you are panicking like us.”

Don’t just sleep.

 

There are many images of Jesus,

the good shepherd, praying in Gethsemane,

Jesus with the little children.

But the Jesus that naps in the crisis

is not one that we usually see etched into stained glass

or embroidered on a pillow.

But it is one that many people have experienced first-hand.

The feeling like God isn’t watching.
Like Jesus is asleep at the cushion in the back of the boat.

Like nobody cares.

God’s silence can be deafening sometimes.

 

But here we are in this boat.

The word nave, which is another

word for a worship space,

has it’s root meaning in the word ship.

We are in this boat, this nave.

 

We have come together baptized in water --
something that can be both life-giving and dangerous.

Together we live in this boat.

No one promised that it would be a cruise ship,

with an easy and enjoyable ride.

or a battleship, with steel protection from the outside.

 

We are a little fishing boat, whipped from side.

We are blown by the winds of change,

and the winds of sin and sadness like anyone else

We are sucked, like everyone else, into that

Annihilating Whirlpool of History.

 

We have no promise of smooth sailing.

We have no promise that we won’t feel

overwhelmed, panicked, forgotten

Sadly enough, we don’t even get a guarantee

that Jesus will calm the storms each time that we ask.

And, despite our cries, sometimes we do perish,
we die, we don't make it.

Freedom from storms is not a promise that Jesus ever made.

 

But the promise in this gospel story, is at the beginning:

“Let us go across to the other side.”

That is the promise.

 

The world, our lives, and the Spirit in them are not static.

The promise is that there is another side.

The promise for us is that sooner or later

we will all get to the other side together.

And that Jesus would be there with us.

 

Martin Luther King Jr. Said,

“I’m convinced that we shall overcome

because the arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

Meaning that we may not see the end of this mess in our life-time,

but we know that justice, good, and love will prevail over chaos.

 

We have put our trust in the one who created all

who has power over the devil,

who can control the waves and the wind

who can bring life out of death.

And we know that chaos will not win out.

The world, or our lives and all the rest might seem a mess,

but we know that the mess is not the end of the story.

We might not personally see the end of every mess.

But Jesus will be with us in the mess.

The power of God will see us to the other side.

 

And that is what gives us peace and stillness in the storm.

The Wild and Invasive Kingdom of God

Mark 4:26-34
6-13-21

 So today, Ezekiel says:

²²Thus says the Lord God: 
 I myself will take a sprig
  from the lofty top of a cedar;
  I will set it out.
 I will break off a tender one
  from the topmost of its young twigs;
 I myself will plant it
  on a high and lofty mountain.
 ²³On the mountain height of Israel
  I will plant it,
 in order that it may produce boughs and bear fruit,
  and become a noble cedar.
 Under it every kind of bird will live;
  in the shade of its branches will nest
  winged creatures of every kind.

 

Jesus and his audience would have known

this imagery from the book of Ezekiel.

God would take the little twig and from it,

A great nation would grow

like the mighty cedar of Lebanon.

Which are strong and tall and impressive.

Like the Sequoia or Redwood here in the US.

 

Actually throughout Ezekiel and in other books,

the writers compare the kingdoms  of Judah,

Assyria and Babylon to the great cedars of Lebanon --

strong and everlasting.

 

The Majestic Cedars of Lebanon

The people that Jesus was speaking to

would have known these metaphors well

and so, obviously, would have Jesus.

So when Jesus started out:

“To what should we compare the kingdom of God?”

I’m sure they expected something

tall and equally majestic, maybe bigger than a giant tree.

Maybe a mountain or the vast heavens above.

 

But then Jesus says: “The kingdom of God can be

compared to . . . a mustard seed”

You could almost hear the crowd going, “what?”.

Huh? They must have thought he was crazy.

 

Some preachers today want to believe that mustard

trees are tall and sturdy like the cedars of Lebanon,

And that the moral of the parable is

from the tiny seed, the big impressive tree grows.

But that’s not what people would have thought

A Wildly Invasive Mustard Bush

hearing this parable in Jesus time.

 

Mustard plants were the invasive plant

of the middle east, the kudzu vine or bamboo,

something you really don’t want growing in your yard,

because it is bound to take over.

It was actually so invasive that there was a Jewish law that you

couldn’t plant it in your own fields because it could infest your neighbor’s field.

It also grows so densely that it chokes other plants out.

 

So the kingdom of God is not like a majestic cedar,

a mighty oak, a towering sequoia.

No, it’s like mustard seed. Not a bad plant,

but a plant that just creeps and without anyone

even realizing it, it just takes over.

 

It’s true. The kingdom of God is not like other kingdoms.

It’s power is not in its physical strength,

or military, or financial strength.

It’s power is in its ability to sneak in

and change the human heart.
To choke out the forces of evil, apathy, hate, violence, and fear

and replace it with God’s values,

of compassion, mercy, and love.

 

Now I have to admit, sometimes as I preach

about parables like this, and about Jesus,

how his death and resurrection

has transformed the world, sometimes I wonder.

We’ve been at this for 2000 years.

Where is  Christ’s effect on humanity?

Where has Christ’s effect on history been?

Jesus said that the Kingdom of God is here,

where is the kingdom of God?

Where is the mustard plant that is supposed to take over.
Because I think it seems like

things are getting worse, not better.

 

But remember, the Kingdom of God is sneaky.

It’s not just going to come like a giant tree,

like a dramatic swooping change that we would notice,

it’s a quiet invasion.

 

There was an article in Forbes magazine

a couple of years ago, it was called

“Why the world is getting better

and why hardly anyone knows it”

 

Most people surveyed in any country

Sweden, the UK,  the US, overwhelmingly

said that the world was getting worse.

And I think most of us would say the same thing,

the golden years are always behind us.

People are worse off, the injustice is deeper, the violence is increasing.

It seems like the devil is surely winning this battle.

 

But, the article said, that our limited viewpoint

was misleading, if you pull back and look at the world

over a longer stretch of time,

on “virtually all of the key dimensions of human material well-being—

poverty, literacy, health, freedom, and education—

the world is an extraordinarily better place

than it was just a couple of centuries ago.”

 

A far lower percentage of people in the world

are living in extreme poverty,

more people than ever are able to read,

in 1800, almost 43% of children died before they were 5.

Now it’s down to only 4.2% of children.

In 1800 less than 1% of people in the world lived in a democracy,

a place where they could vote and have a say in their country’s politics.

Now that is up to 55% of the world.

 

Even in terms of violence, a statistic that we would

think is obviously worse than ever now.

Another article in  the Wall Street Journal says:

that Violence has been in decline for thousands of years,

and today we may be living in the most peaceable

era in the existence of our species.

ooh. It doesn’t feel like it at all. But it’s happening.

 

It’s slow progress, but that mustard seed is growing,

slowly it’s taking over. And I believe it’s because people

are growing in their compassion and empathy for others.

The devil is losing and Jesus plan of healing the world

is taking time, there is a lot to do, but it’s happening.

  

And maybe it doesn’t seem like things are getting better,

because we are more sensitive to things than ever before,

even if they don’t affect us personally.

We care about victims of violence,

we care about those in poverty,

we want to see all people educated,

we care that others are healthy and free, more than ever before.

God’s ways and vision are becoming our ways and visions.

And the younger generations seem outdoing

older generations in the caring and compassion department.

 

And, since we care, because we hold God’s vision

and we’re frustrated that things

aren’t good and just and fair for all people.

Maybe that’s why it seems worse than ever,

because the mustard seed in our heart wants us to see

a world that is just and safe for all people.

 

Like when we heard about children

of immigrants being taken from their parents.

When we hear about gun violence.

Or people who are homeless or hungry.

We may never meet these people,

We may not all be all on the same page on

immigration laws, or gun laws, or food stamps

and we might not agree on what should be done,

but we know that these things have to change.

 
And even though things seem terrible,

the outcry in itself is hopeful.

Because we know how the mustard seed is.

 
We know that heartbreak turns into action.

People start asking, what can I do?
How can I change this? Where can I volunteer?

Where can I send money? How can we change policy?

What can we do? Christians,  Jews, and Muslims,

atheist and agonistic all moved by their compassion.

As terrible as it may seem now,

we know that once that once that compassion

gets into our hearts, that God’s will is bound to be done eventually.

 

And that’s how the kingdom of God works.

It’s like a mustard plant, a weed

that invades people’s hearts, that slowly takes over

with compassion and empathy, mercy, and love

 

 

Slowly we are caring about things that God cares about,

Slowly, until there are enough of us,

and until we’re motivated to change one thing,

then another and then one day,

God’s will is done, and the kingdom of God is here.

 

The kingdom of God is in refugee resettlement groups,

it’s in the volunteers who work at shelters,

it’s in food pantries, it’s in justice work,

it’s in gifts of money, it’s in letters to congress

it’s in our prayers, our voices, our tears and discomfort.

 

It will take a long time.

It won’t all happen in our lifetime,

but that plant is taking over,

God is changing this world from the inside out

starting with the human heart.

 

The kingdom of God is like this:

Jesus is that one little seed,

The seed gets scattered.

And God’s will grows and grows

and grows in the heart of humanity.

Without our knowledge, without our permission,

without our even noticing it.

Just one morning it’s there.
We don’t know how it grows, but one day,

we will reap the harvest that God has created.

How Can Satan Cast Out Satan?

 Mark 3:20-35

June 6, 2021

 

This is a tough scripture today.

There are three bits that happen in the same conversation,

but almost seem unrelated,

they are often quoted separately to

support a whole variety of different things.

 

And right in the middle there’s

that whole concerning piece about  the

on “unforgivable sin” of blaspheming against the Holy Spirit.

We believe in God’s forgiveness over everything,

We have many more texts to support that,

Christ even asked for forgiveness for the people that crucified him.

but as a pastor, people have come to me worrying

about this one passage.

 

They worry that maybe they once said something that could

fall into this category or that their son or daughter

or grandchildren might be unforgivable because

they said that they don’t believe in God, or they are mad at God

or they think Jesus is stupid or whatever.

 

For the record, I think the short answer is “no”

in spite of this one passage, I think that

nothing can separate us from the love of God.

Not blasphemy or any of those other things

that some people think are unforgiveable.

Nothing can separate us, or anyone,

from God’s love and I think that this

passage supports just that, in Jesus own confusing way.

The rest of the sermon is to explain that.

 

First I want to catch everyone up on

the story of Mark and where we are in it.

This is the third chapter of Mark,

pretty early in the whole story.

Just before this passage, earlier in chapter 3

Jesus heals someone in the synagogue on the Sabbath,

right in front of the Pharisees.  

And so the religious leaders start talking to each other

about how to destroy Jesus.

 

After that, Jesus  appointed his apostles

and he was embarking on a successful preaching tour.

He’s getting well known among the people

and one of his stops is, Nazareth, his own home town.

Jesus is home for the first time since he’s become someone.

 

And while he’s here in little old Nazareth,

things don’t go too well.

It’s so crowded that the disciples can’t even eat.

And they’re attracting all sorts of strange people.

Because of that, his home town people aren’t receiving Jesus well.

They saw Jesus grow up and now he’s talking

about all these high-falootin’ things,

they decide that something must be wrong with him,

they say that he’s gone crazy, insane, out of his mind.

 

And to top it off, the Pharisees have sent the

scribes down from Jerusalem to spy on Jesus.

And they’re harassing him.

Now the scribes agree with the Nazarene’s assessment

saying that he must be Satan himself,

the king of the unclean spirits.

 

 Jesus’ family are mortified by the whole thing,

trying to get him back in the house.

“Jesus, stop attracting attention,

stop  making the neighbors talk,

stop embarrassing us, you’ll  get us all in trouble,

I’ll  make you your favorite meal.

Just come in so no one can or hear you!”

 

His family can see the pattern already in process,

Jesus is being labeled as crazy.

The people are going to make him the scapegoat,

he’s going to be called unclean and expelled from the

community and the rest of his family with him.

It had been done many times before,

so they knew what it looked like.

It happened then and it happens now.

That is what humans do to one another.

 

When things get stressful,

we try to maintain our purity and our safety

by keeping “the dangerous” ones out.

The theory is that if we just get the bad eggs

outside of community the inside will

be clean and safe and pure.

 

And after it happens, then everything seems good for a while,

until the tension rises again, or something happens,

then we have to pick the next group to curse and villainize.

 

The most obvious example of this

is what Nazi Germany did to the Jewish people.

But there are more local examples, we did it in WWII ourselves

putting Japanese American families in internment camps.

We do it now with mass incarceration, we do it with immigrants,

we do it with people with mental illness and poverty.

Just get them away from us and we’ll be fine.

 

And religion has done it repeatedly throughout history,

with people labeled as heretics,

with people who said the planets revolve around the sun,

with people of different races,

with people who are too artistic,

with people who’s politics are different,

And  in most recent years, with gay and lesbian people.

 

The theory for some churches is,

if we could get “those people” out of here

or convert them and force them to change,

then we’d be righteous, more holy, more prosperous.

It’s not a new pattern, it’s as old as time.

Just the identified problem is just different.

 

And this process of labeling and expelling people is Satan at work.

Satan is not found in some place outside ourselves,

in a red suit with horns tempting us to smoke or eat chocolate cake.

Satan is found in human relationships gone wrong and destructive .

And Satan’s  favorite hobby is dividing people.

 

The word Satan in Hebrew means “accuser”.

Satan is at work when we judge others,

When we make someone into the other and cast them out.

When we believe that we are like God knowing good and evil

like that serpent promised in the Garden of Eden.

This is Satan’s work.

 

So the scribes accuse Jesus of being Satan,

saying that since he has the power over demons,

that he must be the chief of demons.

Even though in casting out demons,

Jesus is bringing people back into community.

Clever tactic, accusing the other person of what

they were actually doing, right?

 

So Jesus calls the scribes over, he tells them to come closer

join the conversation circle, and he asks them,

“How can Satan cast out Satan”?

 

Of course the accuser in all of us

tries to cast out “Satan” all the time.

Which is really the master plan—

getting everyone to not trust anyone else.

To get everyone to hate and despise and accuse

everyone else until our hate consumes us.

 

But Jesus tells them, this method of being a society cannot last.

If a kingdom is divided against itself ,

that kingdom cannot stand.

Because:  1.  in the end it’s not sustainable,

we will destroy each other if we keep up this way.

(Which is, of course, just what the accuser wants.)

And 2. Satan’s kingdom won’t be able to stand because

Jesus is reordering the very social fabric of hate that Satan has created.

 

The way Jesus is doing that is that he is putting himself

into the position of the condemned.

God became the outcast, the one who was scapegoated,

the one who was called unclean and unholy,

and hung on a cross beside two thieves,

and left to die in a very unholy way,

to show that no one is outside the scope of God’s love.

 

Jesus compares himself to a thief in this gospel.

He is breaking into the house of the strongman,

Satan, who Jesus intends to bind up.

He will take the strongman’s property –

which is US, all of humanity –

and release the strongman’s captives using  the Holy Spirit’s tools:

love, compassion, mercy, grace, and forgiveness.

 

And those who don’t believe in the power of the Holy Spirit,

who don’t believe in the absolute power

of love and forgiveness for everyone --

Those who still insist on accusing others and

believing that some are beyond God’s reach – like those scribes,

those are the ones that stand with Satan’s world view,

those are the ones that blaspheme, or offend the Holy Spirit.

 

But watch out! Everyone is caught in this conundrum.

If we accuse those who we think are accusers,

and want to banish them out of our society, then who is the accuser?

A house divided cannot stand.

As long as we label people bad or unholy, or unforgiveable,

or unlovable or beyond the Spirit’s grasp, we are caught in Satan’s own trap of division.

 

The bottom line is that Satan’s game is a divided humanity.

As long as we keep dividing ourselves from others, Satan wins.

 

At the end of Jesus discussion with the scribes,

“A crowd was sitting around him; and they said to him,

“Your mother and your brothers and sisters are outside, asking for you.” 

They were still trying to get him safely inside.

 

And Jesus replied, looking at those who sat around him,

Including those religious scribes who he had called over

and he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers!”

And that is Jesus point.  Jesus was family, even with his enemies,

with the scribes who were trying to catch him.

We are all brothers and sisters.

Even those we disagree with most.

Even those who are out to destroy us.

 

The accuser will not prevail.

Jesus has come into the world,

the Kingdom of God is at hand.

The Strong Man will not have his way .

Satan will not rule this world any more.

God’s love will win.