June 9, 2024 – Third Sunday After Pentecost
Rev. Gary Percesepe
I Samuel 8: 4-9 & Mark 3: 20-35
…and you, Mary, will suffer as though you had been stabbed by a dagger. But all this will show what people are really thinking.” Luke 1: 35
E pule kākou—pray with me: May the words of my mouth, and the meditations of our hearts, be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord my rock and my redeemer.
Mark’s Jesus keeps us breathless. From the moment of his baptism in the Jordan, he is on the move. The heavens tore open, and the Holy Spirit descended on him like a dove at his baptism, and a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the beloved; with you I am well pleased.” Then, bang, the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness where he was tested for forty days, by Satan, and he was with the wild beasts, and angels waited on him. He reappears after the arrest of John the Baptist proclaiming the good news of God and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent and believe the good news.” Then, bang, he sees Simon and his brother Andrew fishing, and bang, Jesus calls them to follow him, claiming that he’ll make them fishers of men. And bang, they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men and followed him. They went to Capernaum. He entered the synagogue and taught. And the people were astounded at his teaching, for he taught as one who had authority, not like the scribes of the Mosaic law, the first inkling we have that the religious authorities take offense at him. And bang, a man in the synagogue with an unclean spirit cries out in convulsions, but Jesus rebukes the unclean spirit, and it came out of the man. The people were amazed, and they kept asking one another, “What is this? A new teaching, with authority? He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him!” At once his fame began to spread throughout the surrounding regions of the Galilee. Then he enters the house of Simon and Andrew and heals Simon’s mother-in-law of a fever. That evening at sunset the people brought to him all who were sick or possessed by demons. The whole city was gathered around the door! And he cured many who were sick of various diseases and cast out many demons. Next morning, while it was still very dark, he got up, went to a deserted place, and prayed. Simon and the others hunted for him; when they found him, they said, “Everyone is searching for you!” But he answered, “Let us go on to the neighboring towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also, for that is what I came out to do.” So, he went throughout all of Galilee, proclaiming the message he’d been given by God in their synagogues and casting out demons. A man with a skin disease came up to him begging to be made clean. Jesus healed him but warned the man to say nothing to anyone. But the grateful man proclaimed freely what Jesus had done, spreading the word, so that Jesus could no longer go into a town openly, but stayed in the country, and people came to him from every quarter. And that is just the opening chapter of Mark’s gospel.
After his travels Jesus finally arrives at home, with his family. The crowd mobs the house, wreaking havoc so that they could not even eat. Imagine being that hungry, food is scarce, the family meal sacred, and the crowd is clawing at the door, like Elvis at his mother’s house in Memphis, but these people are hungry, sick, diseased, contagious, and some are lunatics, drooling with spit, half naked, filthy, the unclean spirits in them crying out, and all you want to do is eat your meal with your family in peace but it feels like you’re in hell, and the culprit is right there next to you, your brother, your son Jesus, who insults you by leaving the family table to go care for his people.
What did those family members do? They went out to restrain him. They actively prevent Jesus from doing the mission he felt called to since his baptism.
Remember those scribes who were offended in chapter 1? Where are they now? There they are, witnessing this chaos, come all the way from the holy city of Jerusalem to this godforsaken place in Galilee to judge what they’ve heard in the official reports, and what is their verdict? “Jesus is the one who is demonic, he’s a satan, that’s why he can cast out demons, he has Beelzebub, and by the ruler of the demons he casts out demons.”
The scribes from Jerusalem use the strategy of all threatened leaders: they try to undermine Jesus’ popularity by charging that he is in league with the prince of demons, Satan. In our day, this would have the force of calling Jesus a terrorist.
Jesus riddles them this: How can Satan cast out Satan? A divided kingdom cannot stand; Satan divided in revolt against himself must mean his end is coming.
We’re given a foretaste of one of Mark’s master narratives: Jesus will “break into” the Temple in Jerusalem, cast out the true thieves, and put a ban on the goods of that house. The answer to the riddle of whether Satan can cast out Satan is that Jesus is the stronger one heralded by John the Baptist and he intends to overthrow the “strong man” whom Jesus identifies as the scribes and religious establishment represented by the demon in verse 24, in fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy, “The captives of the strong one will be liberated; the prey of the tyrant will be rescued.”(1)
The global damage done by “the strong man” here on Maui takes the form of an economic system that raises prices, exploits the labor of the lower and middle classes, and manipulates markets to drive the people from their land. Here in Mākena, where native people once farmed and cowboys drove cattle to the landing, and founded this hale puna, the ‘aina of our kūpuna now supports colossal houses of billionaires which sit mostly empty. The strong man demands that the crops you see growing alongside our highways be exported for profit to the mainland, not used here for domestic consumption. Skyrocketing housing prices, rural people forced off the land, wood harvested from fragile rain forests, fisheries stripped and exploited– in the U.S., the strong man rules almost every dimension of daily life and culture, placing surveillance technology on our smart phones to track our consumption and sell us more. Markets have become as gods, even as the fossil fuels fueling this relentless consumption cause oceans to rise and the planet to burn. What behavior best demonstrates a people out of their minds? Outsourcing our kuleana to market forces who will stop at nothing until ‘aina and kai are no more, or Jesus’s call to his followers to plunder the strong man’s house and to ransom the people from their bondage to the economic systems of domination?
Jesus’ own family seem to agree with the religious authorities, just as Christendom has never agreed that the Domination system is wrong. His own family thought Jesus was out of his mind. In response, Jesus completely redefines the meaning of family. How must the woman who carried him in her womb have felt when Jesus asks, “Who is my mother and my brother? The one who does the will of God, who embraces the message of non-domination and follows me in the plundering of the strong man’s house! Does the church have the courage to follow, or must we remain in thrall with the strong man? What’s at stake in following Jesus is whether the captives of our global house will be liberated. Where Jesus is Liberator, can the church remain a jailer?
Martin Luther had a father who wanted him to become a lawyer. Luther said no, breaking with his family; he became the father of the Protestant Reformation.
Often the first resistance a new follower of Jesus encounters when they sense God’s call in their life will come from within their own family. Well, OK. Be that as it may, I still see a look of pain on Mary’s face, don’t you? Amene.
(1) Isaiah 49:24ff, as cited by Ched Myers in “Say to This Mountain: Mark’s Story of Discipleship.” This sermon traces several themes found in this book, and in Ched Myers’ classic commentary, “Binding the Strong Man.”