a sermon for the second Sunday after Pentecost [Proper 5B/Lectionary 10B]
Mark 3:20-35 and Genesis 3:8-15
This week the Wall Street Journal ran a piece with the headline, “The Great American Reunion.”[1] With poignant photos of different people embracing each other, many of whom were not wearing masks so that their wide and infectious smiles could be seen, the article was made up of several different stories of people across the U.S. who were planning to use the summer of 2021 as a chance to spend time with family. The sub-headline reads, “Families and friends are coming together after long separations as vaccinations rise; ‘My God, we’re back.’”
One story tells of the reunion between 22-year-old Nicole Chase, a recent college graduate, and her mother, who lives about two hours away. Having chosen to keep apart for months in order to protect a step-father with a compromised immune system, Nicole and her mother finally get together for a visit on Mother’s Day now that they’re all vaccinated. They hug, and neither want to let go. At one point Nicole says that the best part of the weekend was just being in her mother’s presence. “Being around her,” she explains, “just feels like home and secure and the one place where I don’t have to worry about anything.”
Sound familiar? There are stories just like this about people here. One older couple here has been waiting for over a year to see and hug their adult son, who lives in a special home for people with traumatic brain injuries. Their first meeting just a couple of weeks ago was happy and blessed. Scenes like this are occurring throughout the country these days as we begin to turn the corner against COVID, and the joyful reunions of human communities are perhaps the best part of it all.
But being with family is not always a blessed and harmonious thing. After a period of separation because of his ministry and travels, Jesus returns home only to have his family try to restrain him. It is not entirely clear whether they are trying to protect him or silence him, bring him in for some of mom’s homemade macaroni and cheese or lock him up in that room down in the basement because everyone thinks he’s crazy.
Because at this point, some important people do think Jesus is crazy. This huge crowd follows him everywhere he goes. You know those scenes from American Idol when the final contestants get to go back to their hometown after they’ve gotten a little famous? That’s what we can imagine here. There are people lining the roads, fans showing up in front of wherever Jesus is staying just to get a photo or an autograph. Mark tells us that Jesus and the disciples couldn’t even eat because of the crowd. But worse than that, the religious authorities have followed Jesus all the way from Jerusalem because they have seen him casting out demons and they see the commotion he’s started and they are convinced that he is up to no good. For Jesus, being in the presence of his kin is not the one place where he doesn’t have to worry about anything.
You could make the argument that just about every moment of Jesus’ life is a critical point but this particular event in his hometown is very important. The core of Jesus’ reputation and the direction of his mission is on the line. He is being accused of being a devil worshiper. I remember when accusing someone of being a Satanist was one of the worst things you could say about someone. When I was growing up there was an old run-down house way out at the edge of town that was reportedly haunted and used as a site for devil worship. There was absolutely no evidence to back that claim up, but we teenagers would drive out there at dark just to freak ourselves out. It was like a no-man’s land, only good for the bulldozer. No one would buy it…or so we thought.
When the scribes claim that Jesus has Beelzebul, they are saying that his house is haunted. And Jesus knows that these rumors must stop. For God’s kingdom of life and light to take hold, Jesus must make it clear that his actions are always for the good. When he is busy casting out other people’s demons, he is advancing God’s peace and justice, not causing the demons, themselves. If Jesus were on Satan’s side, he would instead be busy trying to put demons into people. It makes no sense, Jesus says, for his works to be described as dark and evil because his works are clearly an attempt to rid the world of evil. Jesus comes to bind up Satan the strong man and plunder his property. By that he means us (remember he’s speaking in parables)—we are the precious property of God, and we belong in God’s kingdom. But the forces of darkness that rebel against God have taken us hostage. Jesus comes to combat that and, by handing over his life, undo the control that these things have on us.
For some of us, this may be a strange way to understand Jesus, the man who comes to offer his life as a ransom for many, who lets himself get beaten and bound up in the worst possible way when he dies on the cross. But Jesus here, in the presence of his family and this huge crowd certainly understands himself as a superhero with strength and might who comes to tie up and do in the satanic forces so that he can rescue God’s people. This image of Jesus, this mission of Jesus, is precisely where the verses of one of our most beloved hymns come from, “A Mighty Fortress is Our God.”
No strength of ours would match his might (the “his” in that sentence is the devil).
We would be lost, rejected.
But now a champion comes to fight,
Whom God himself elected.
You ask who this may be?
The Lord of hosts is he!
Christ Jesus, mighty Lord,
God’s only Son, adored.
He holds the field victorious.
What Jesus needs the crowd to understand, what Jesus wants you and I to know, is that in Jesus, God has come for us. Jesus has not come to harm us or condemn us or harass us. Jesus is not unleashing the forces of chaos on our lives. Jesus is the way God himself follows up on the question that God first asks to Adam and Eve, our first parents, that question that rings out when Adam and Eve go hiding, running away from their responsibility and their dignity into the dark places of the world. Looking for them, his beloved creatures, his pride and joy, God calls and says, “Where are you?” In the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, God is continuing that question. Where are we? Where have we run to? There is no place Jesus can’t find us, and there is no strong force Jesus won’t tie up with his love in order to have us back. On the cross of Calvary, Jesus holds the field you are on victorious.
This is why Jesus says that people will be forgiven for their sins and whatever blasphemies they utter. A blasphemy in this case is essentially an insult against God. God grants forgiveness for all of our brokenness, all of our misrepresentations of God and God’s goodness and the ways we let God down. God forgives all of our participation in the systems of corruption and oppression, but when people start to call the work of Jesus evil, that crosses a line. When someone outright denies the life-giving work of the Holy Spirit, God’s ability to find us in the first place, then forgiveness isn’t possible because it’s like the person has already decided it doesn’t exist, that God doesn’t forgive and create new life.
This remark of Jesus piques our interest, I think, because we’ve heard there is nothing beyond the bounds of God’s love. God seeks out the lost sheep every time. We’re not accustomed to thinking that there is actually something we could do that would be ultimately unforgiveable. But Jesus makes this statement to the scribes to drive home a critical point: God’s saving acts are at work in Jesus. It is the Holy Spirit doing these things, not an unclean spirit, and that must be put in as stark terms as possible. To insult him is one thing, and he will undergo plenty of them, but to label his works as haunted, or evil, or a demonic force is to label life and healing and forgiveness itself evil and demonic.
When a person comes to the font to be baptized, or when they bring a child to the font for Holy Baptism, the pastor actually begins with something called an interrogation. Usually this interrogation takes the form of one to three questions, depending on how it’s worded. Here at Epiphany we ask:
“Do you renounce the devil and all the forces that defy God?”
“Do you renounce the powers of this world that rebel against God?” and
“Do you renounce the ways of sin that draw you from God?”
Those questions have formed the beginning of the church’s baptismal rite from the very beginning because it needs to be clear here as this water is poured and these prayers are said, that this line is clear. This is the Holy Spirit at work, and there is no way that someone who is possessed of evil intentions or an unclean spirit could presumably respond to those interrogations by saying, “I renounce them.” It would be like Satan renouncing himself, and we know that Jesus says a house divided against itself cannot stand! Filled with the Holy Spirit, a person answers these questions with “I renounce them” and it’s a way of saying, “Yes, I want the life that Jesus brings. Yes, I know that God has found me in Jesus. He holds the field for me victorious.”
And when we receive that life, we receive a new family too, the new community that God has sent Jesus to redeem and gather. Jesus re-draws the lines of relationship, breaking down restrictive lines of blood and marriage and opening us up to a greater fellowship than our earthly families could ever provide. They are the brothers and sisters who have been washed in baptism with us, those who have been sought out and found by our one Father in heaven. People of all colors and ages and kinds. They belong to us and we to them,
As the seniors in the class of 2021 sat together in Price Hall the other evening for their picnic and recognition, I couldn’t help but give thanks for the sense of siblinghood many of them have among each other. I couldn’t help but be filled with joy for the ways they’d grown up here in the faith, especially in this year when so many other relationships were put on hold by pandemic. As I reflect on the lives and witness of people like June Cheelsman, of blessed memory, whose time among us at Epiphany and whose particular life path as a single person was a brilliant testament to how the church is a true family, I am filled with gratitude for how this community has nourished and enriched my children’s faith.
We renounce the ways that draw us from God because we know God draws us to him and with so many others. As this pandemic slowly draws to an end, and our family meetings resume, may we all gather for our reunion at the table of Jesus, where once again he lifts up the bread and wine and declares to those sitting around him, “Though life be wrenched away. The demons cannot win the day. The kingdom’s ours, folks. Forever.”
Thanks be to God!
The Reverend Phillip W. Martin, Jr.
[1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-great-american-reunion-covid-reopen-vaccine-summer-1122375755
Said Another Way 