The Good News:
Mark 3:20-35 Common English Bible
Jesus entered a house. A crowd gathered again so that it was impossible for him and his followers even to eat. When his family heard what was happening, they came to take control of him. They were saying, “He’s out of his mind!”
The legal experts came down from Jerusalem. Over and over they charged, “He’s possessed by Beelzebul. He throws out demons with the authority of the ruler of demons.”
When Jesus called them together he spoke to them in a parable: “How can Satan throw Satan out? A kingdom involved in civil war will collapse. And a house torn apart by divisions will collapse. If Satan rebels against himself and is divided, then he can’t endure. He’s done for.
No one gets into the house of a strong person and steals anything without first tying up the strong person. Only then can the house be burglarized. I assure you that human beings will be forgiven for everything, for all sins and insults of every kind. But whoever insults the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven. That person is guilty of a sin with consequences that last forever.” He said this because the legal experts were saying, “He’s possessed by an evil spirit.”
His mother and brothers arrived. They stood outside and sent word to him, calling for him. A crowd was seated around him, and those sent to him said, “Look, your mother, brothers, and sisters are outside looking for you.”
He replied, “Who is my mother? Who are my brothers?” Looking around at those seated around him in a circle, he said, “Look, here are my mother and my brothers. Whoever does God’s will is my brother, sister, and mother.”
Holy Wisdom, Holy Word. Thanks be to God!
Reflection: “That All May Be One”
Last Sunday, the United Church of Canada observed its 99th anniversary and the beginning of its centennial year, and there is much to celebrate.
But three years ago at this time, we were hearing the first reports from Indigenous communities of the discoveries of children’s burial sites at residential institutions across the country, and those numbers have grown and grown.
This year we have watched helplessly for months as hostages were taken and schools, hospitals and refugee camps are bombed in a war with no winners or losers in the land where Jesus taught and prayed and healed.
For decades we have watched and worried as the earth burns or floods, as people and animals and plants suffer from lack of water and lack of food.
How do we make sense of this strange mixture of celebration and sorrow? Mark MacDonald, the former National Indigenous Anglican Archbishop said, “We put the Gospel in the Centre and we pray.” And so we do. In the centre of a storm of emotions, of confusion and bitter regret and tentative celebration, we place this morning’s puzzling story from the Gospel of Mark and wonder how it speaks into our time. Earlier in this chapter of Mark, Jesus has been publicly healing and he is coming under pressure from all directions: from the crowds who clamour for his attention and from the authorities who are worried about his growing influence. He retreats up a mountain with his disciples but still they are followed by the crowds. And at this point, Mark says simply, “Then he went home.”
But even in a private dwelling with his closest followers, Jesus gets no peace. His family, probably fearing for his safety, is concerned that he is insane. The scribes or legal authorities of the church accuse him of being an agent of the devil. To all this, Jesus responds with some parables that, as parables often do, seem to raise more questions than answers.
There’s a lot going on here, but ultimately this is a story about power and healing and forgiveness, and a reflection on who is inside and who is outside.
It’s helpful to put this passage into the context of some background on the gospel of Mark. Ched Myers is a well-known Biblical scholar whose in-depth analysis of the gospel of Mark takes its title from this passage: “Binding the Strong Man: a political reading of Mark’s story of Jesus.” In his introduction to that book, Myers says, “Mark’s gospel originally was written to help imperial subjects learn the hard truth about their world and themselves. He does not represent the word of God dispassionately or impartially, as if that word were innocuously universal in its appeal to rich and poor alike. His is a story by, about, and for those committed to God’s work of justice, compassion, and liberation in the world…To those willing to raise the wrath of the empire, Mark offers a way of discipleship.”
As we celebrate the 99th anniversary of the founding of the United Church of Canada, we celebrate the vision and the hope that brought three major Protestant denominations together “that all might be one.”
We look back with mixed feelings. Sometimes we recall with fondness a time when the Prime Minister of Canada would call the UCC Moderator for advice or for the church’s take on issues of the day. We remember when it seemed like everyone went to church on Sunday. We lament our loss of power and cultural relevance. Searching online for information on the UCC, we are quite likely to stumble on articles with titles like “The demise of the UCC” in which the statistics clearly show a steep decline in membership and givings, especially among young people. Hope is in short supply when we talk about the future of the institutional church.
But when we dig into the words and actions of Jesus in the gospel of Mark, we see that Jesus never intended to create an institutional church that worked hand in hand with those in power and excluded anyone who didn’t live by the common cultural norms.
We see that Jesus and his followers are outside all of the power structures of that place and time. And yet, Jesus is exercising the power to heal and to drive out demons. He knows that his power comes from God, and he confers the same healing power on his disciples. Little wonder that he makes folks uneasy. He is challenging the powerful legal and religious authorities, and he is choosing all the misfits and rebels who are his followers over conventional family life and expectations.
In this passage, Jesus reverses the conventional notions of who is inside and who is outside, who has power and who does not, what can be forgiven and what cannot. The insiders are not his family members who love him but want to keep him safe by dismissing his power and prophecy as insanity. The insiders are not the Roman rulers or the Jewish legal authorities. The insiders are the motley crew of poor fishermen, women, the disabled, the sick, the disciples who time and time again don’t really understand what he’s about but follow anyway. The insiders are all the people with the least power in the eyes of the world. The outsiders are anyone who seeks to deny or control the Holy Spirit of God working through Jesus to heal the world. As Jim Marsh Jr. says in a short reflection on this passage,
“The young rabbi wasn’t being disrespectful to his mother and brothers outside of the house in which he was teaching.* He was simply widening the family table. Including, not excluding. Communal containers of belonging are the veins that carry what is thicker than blood, which flows to the heart of God.”
The UCC has an uneasy history when it comes to our relationship with power. For much of our history, we have supported government and business as they have pursued power and profit at the expense of the working poor, the marginalized, and Indigenous peoples.
But we can also be proud of the many ways in which we have included those formerly excluded: we were one of the first churches to ordain women ministers, and later to ordain members of the LGBTQ+ community. We were the first Canadian church to apologize for our role in the many injustices against Indigenous peoples, and particularly our role in operating residential institutions that robbed them of their children, their culture and their language. We are trying to change.
Actually, it’s pretty clear that we have to change, and that much of the change will not be what we might choose for ourselves. As our institutional church withers, I believe we will be forced back to basics. Back to small gatherings of committed disciples. Back to basic ministry, like Jesus who taught and healed in spite of the laws that tried to limit his power. Back to faith communities who challenge those in power in order to heal and help the powerless. Back to following the leading of the Holy Spirit and claiming anyone who does the will of God as true family.
Jesus calls us now as we struggle to hear the stories of the damage done by our powerful ancestors. Jesus calls us now to stand not with the powerful but with the powerless. Jesus calls us to do God’s work by “Binding the strong man”, by standing against those with unearned power who do not use it well, by standing with Indigenous peoples, the LGBTQ+ community, the victims of war and violence and racism and gender inequity.
Jesus calls us to let go of institutional power and remember that God’s power is not in who we are or what we have been taught to believe or in denominational labels but in what we do.
It’s also time to hear yet again that in Jesus Christ there is grace: to hear it with our heads and our hearts and our spirits, as Richard Wagamese teaches. Jesus tells us that “the people will be forgiven for their sins” and we seek that forgiveness for the times when we have misused our power as a church.
But as we seek forgiveness, we also need to cooperate with Jesus in the building of a new kindom. We need to move out of our places of unearned power and let the Holy Spirit move us into a place of solidarity and support with former outsiders as they reclaim their voices, their past, their land and their future. To repeat Ched Myer’s words, we need to be “committed to God’s work of justice, compassion, and liberation in the world.” That is where Jesus is, that is where Jesus calls us to be.
We are called to widen the table, that all may be one, that all may be fed, that all may find justice. All my relations. Gilakasla. Amen.
