A House Divided

2^nd Sunday after Pentecost, Yr. B, June 10, 2012

Genesis 3:8-15; Psalm 130; 2 Corinthians 4:13-5:1; Mark 3:20-35

Sermon preached at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church

Jesus has been walking around Galilee healing  and teaching.  He’s finished collecting disciples and has just come home.  Why?  We don’t know, but already a crowd is forming around him.  Obviously his reputation as a healer and exorcist has preceeded him, and now people are seeking him out.  The Scribes are trying to discredit him, by saying that Jesus is the chief devil.  They’re saying that Jesus is just masquerading as a good guy.  Sometimes that’s how evil gets a good foothold, by pretending to be good.

Jesus tells them what a ridiculous idea that is.  Why would Satan drive out demons?  Wouldn’t that just defeat the purpose of his whole existence?  Doesn’t Satan WANT to possess as many people as possible?  Wouldn’t Satan use those people to further his evil cause?  It doesn’t make any sense for Satan to turn against his followers.  A divided house cannot stand.

Mark’s gospel begins with John the Baptist and Jesus’ baptism.  It begins with the Holy Spirit.  A lot has changed for Jesus since that baptism in Chapter 1.  So much so, that his family thinks he’s gone off the deep end.  They think they need to come and fetch him, to bring him back home and set him straight.  He’s acting crazy!

Crowds are following him everywhere.  The crowd on this day is so thick that his mother and brothers can’t even get into the house.  They send in a message, and Jesus does the craziest thing of all.  Instead of responding to his family by returning to them, by giving them priority over others, by getting up and going outside to talk with them … Jesus looks around at those gathered and basically says, you are as important to me as that woman outside who I call “mother”.  You are all also my brothers and sisters and mother when you do God’s will.  The Spirit that descended on me at my baptism is also in you.

I think Jesus means it.  I mean, he’s already brought tax collectors and sinners home to eat at his table.  That happened in Chapter 2!  That couldn’t have been very comfortable for his family.  Most people only invited people into their homes who shared their same social position!  Tax collectors and sinners would only have brought you down a notch in the eyes of others.  They were just going to make you look bad! 

Jesus had been touching the unclean … a man with a withered hand, people with unclean spirits, a paralytic.  He was associating with people that were going to be a problem for his family.  Jesus wasn’t being very careful about following the Sabbath laws either.  No wonder his family thinks he’s gone crazy.  No wonder they’re standing outside trying to “restrain” him, as it says in the New Jerusalem Bible.  Something is terribly wrong with him, and it has to stop before he ruins the family!

But Jesus takes it to the extreme.  And looking at those sitting in a circle round him, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers.  Anyone who does the will of God, that person is my brother and sister and mother.”  (Mark 3:33-35)   Anyone who does the will of God, that person is my brother and sister and mother. 

Which of us really believes that?  Anyone?  It seems like a nice utopian idea, but not a very practical one.  Jesus invited tax collectors and sinners home to dine.  When was the last time any of us did that?  Jesus is talking about radical hospitality, not just something radical to the first century Jew either!   It’s radical for us.  Jesus is saying that we’re meant to care for … not just care about … anyone who does God’s will.

Last Sunday we witnessed Stella’s baptism.  She became a sister in Christ to us.  She made her promises and we made a promise to stand with her.  That sacramental act witnessed and sealed the relationship that Stella already had with God and now has with us … forever.  We are sisters and brothers to her.  We’re family in Christ, bound together by the Holy Spirit.  We have become “kin”.

St. Augustine described the Holy Spirit as the love that exists between the Father and the Son in the trinity.  We’re talking about the Holy Spirit.  We’re talking about the Spirit that makes us more of who we are, that empowers and enables us in becoming our true selves, the Spirit that draws us in love toward one another.  So, if we denouce the Holy Spirit, if we deny it … we are denying the very power of God that binds us together.

Jesus has just told those around him that a house divided cannot stand.  We divide our own “house” when we deny the very power that binds us together.  In essence we deny our baptism, and all that it means for us as a community of God.  We cannot exist as a “house pf God” without the Holy Spirit.

Families aren’t easy.  There are sibling rivalries, and misunderstandings and jealousies and plenty of mixed emotions.  We don’t get to choose our family.  If we could, we just might choose differently. Jesus left us the Spirit … as a guide … as wisdom … as the love that binds us.  We need something to hold it all together. 

The Old Testament has plenty of examples of families gone crazy.  Adam and Eve ate the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.  When God asked who told them to eat of the fruit, Adam blames Eve.  Eve blames the serpent.  I’m guessing that if there had been anyone left in the story to blame … the serpent would have gone for it.  But the serpent is the bottom of the barrel.  No one wants to accept responsibility. 

Isn’t that what love is about, accepting responsibility for those who love us and those we love?  From the get go, humanity seems to have had some trouble with that one.  Adam and Eve can’t take responsibility for themselves or one another.  Cain kills Abel, and when God comes looking for his brother, Cain has the audacity to ask, “Am I my brother’s keeper?”  Laban tricks Jacob into marrying Leah, when Jacob thinks he’s getting Rebecca.  Joseph’s brothers sell him off to the Egyptians to be a slave and tell his father that he’s been killed by a wild goat.  The New Testament is an attempt to show us how the world could be if we took seriously the idea that we’re all connected in the Spirit … to anyone who does God’s will. 

I think that’s what God has in mind when Jesus says that we are to BE brothers and sisters and mothers to one another.  Jesus is suggesting a fundamental change in our being with one another, but we’re human and our relationships are likely to remain sticky.  We’ll have ups and downs, but we also have the Holy Spirit pulling us back together.  We are family.  We’re not perfect.  Every family has its troubles; its squabbles; its shadow side.  Even though we are brothers and sisters and mothers … we’re going to have to work at getting along.  Just as Abraham and Joseph and Jacob and Laban and Adam and Eve did, because families involve relationships and relationships are work.

I’m willing to bet, that when Jesus finally did get outside to talk with his mother, she had a few choice words to say to him.  I would imagine that his brothers weren’t too happy with him either for making their mother wait on him.  It’s possible they weren’t very supportive of his calling to be a healer and faith teacher, and it probably didn’t make a lot of sense to them … but Jesus WAS their brother.  He was a part of them. We are part of one another.  Through baptism we’ve been grafted together too and the Spirit makes that possible.  A house divided cannot stand.  So let’s thank God for the gift of the Spirit among us, and pray that it will draw more closely together in love. 

Amen.