The Jesus we
meet this morning – surrounded by noisy, needy crowds, rejecting the norms of
family and religious order and social niceties, and too busy to so much as stop
and eat – isn’t the Jesus I like to
hang out with.
I prefer the
Jesus of quiet mornings with my coffee and prayer book, with a sense of
spaciousness and calm that helps make me generous and grounded.
Or,
occasionally, the Jesus who is fierce but focused in overthrowing the social
order, with a clear plan in place that will bring us a better, equal, generous, loving world, quickly and conveniently.
Not this noisy,
crowded, chaotic Jesus.
But this is the
Jesus we have The Jesus we have in the assigned gospel story this morning, and
the Jesus moving around a lot in our world and society today – insisting that
we keep paying attention to the needs of the world that are more than we can
easily manage, and disrupting the norms of a good family, a good religious
order.
In the story we
hear today, Jesus is disturbing the peace in his hometown; he seems to be
publicly rejecting his family, denying his roots and relationships, and he is certainly upsetting the stable, trusted
religious order.
“He has a
demon!” say the scribes from Jerusalem, come down especially to warn people. “He
may be curing people, but he’s doing it with his evil powers.”
Even his family
agree that he’s out of his mind.
And at the
center of that chaos, Jesus looks at the forces of order and says: “How can
Satan cast out Satan?” Look, if I’m using the power of evil against demons and evil, then evil is
divided, weakened, cannibalizing itself. Divided and already conquered.
If you’re right
that I’m using evil powers, then evil is already defeated.
This is good
news. Really good news. When we’re stuck
in the chaos of change, seeing healing or liberation for other people that
might be dangerous to our norms and expectations, excitement that might be bringing positive reform, or
maybe the end of moral clarity; when we’re not sure whether the disruption of
is of God, or of Satan, it’s good news that evil defeats itself.
It’s a truth we need to hang on to, because evil is powerful.
When you and I
are lucky, when we exercise the different forms of privilege and protection
that we have – from money or health or color or geography – we have things that
shelter us from the pain of evil, or sin, or Satan. But it’s still real.
Even if we don’t
talk about Satan as fluently as the first century scribes from Jerusalem, we know there’s
evil around and among us. That’s why the first thing we are asked – required –
to do in coming for baptism is to reject Satan. To renounce the evil that corrupts
and destroys us, all of God’s good creation; to reject everything that divides
us from the love of God as our focus and center.
It’s why – after baptism – we all confess together
most Sundays that our thoughts and words and deeds have been sinful, have fallen
short of the love of God. Because evil is powerful, and present, and common, around
us and among us.
Evil generates
the distrust among God’s people that fuels the 24-hour cable news cycle,
irreconcilable political differences, the walls we build around ourselves with
security systems and exclusive neighborhoods, and real physical walls.
Evil hurts
people – far away or close to us – in too many ways to list.
Jesus isn’t just
talking to the scribes who are accusing him of evil when he says that a house
divided against itself cannot stand, and that Satan divided against Satan is self-defeating.
He’s preaching us the good news that evil can
be defeated, by using its own power against itself. And that Jesus has come to
tie up that strong man, to bind the power of evil so that it can be plundered, so that all the good that’s been burdened and hoarded
by evil, captive in our divisions, can be freed to serve God’s purpose again.
And there’s a
lot of good that’s been drawn into the power of evil.
In fact, evil often
tempts us by showing us the good it looks like we can do or have by making
choices that either hurt others or divide us from our dependence on and trust
in God.
Good like the safety
we can guarantee by building protective walls around our houses, our time, our
country, our neighborhoods. By showing us how to use money, or color, or
geography, or tradition to protect ourselves or unite us against others.
Safety is a
good. Unity is a good.
Evil tempts us
by showing us those goods, and trying to hide or minimize the damage our
protections do – to God’s people on the other side of the barrier; or to our own
freedom when the walls start to close us in, or demand more resources than what
they were built to protect. Tries to hide the damage to our hearts and souls
when we start to depend on the walls for our safety and identity, instead of on
God.
That’s what
Samuel and God are trying to tell the people of Israel in that other story we
heard this morning, from that time about three thousand years ago when Israel wanted
a king. They were trying to choose the good, trying to choose a way toward order,
and unity, identity – a stronger representation of the community’s relationship
with God – and someone to protect them against marauding neighbors.
At God’s urging,
Samuel points out that this choice will cost them: A king, you know, may
protect you and go in front of you in battle. But he’ll cost you. He’ll tax
your goods, and your families, and your time. And God reminds Samuel that even
though the people might think that a king will better unify them as people of
God, this choice actually puts more distance between the people and God.
It turns out
that a yearning for order, for clarity and stability and protection, often divides
us from God. And that the uncomfortable disruption that Jesus causes may in
fact be a protection from evil – that embracing uncertainty may protect us from
choosing a damaging certainty. In fact, we may have to be vulnerable to
disruption in order to not be vulnerable
to evil.
Jesus – who redefines
the normal order of family today, who stirs up noisy, needy crowds all the way
to the cross, and then disrupts even the normal, predictable order of death – is
here to tell us that in order to bind up the strong man, in order to bind up
the power of evil, we have to be vulnerable to disruption; to change and
discomfort and uncertainty.
Because it
forces us to put our trust in God, instead of in ourselves, to question our
long-held assumptions about what is good, and to be called back to a focus on
the will of God, a focus that makes us Jesus’ family.
That may not be
the Jesus I want to hang out with on a quiet summer morning with my coffee and a
prayer book. But this is the Jesus who comes to us today, over and over again. Stirring
up the normal order to make us vulnerable to grace, to the healing and freedom
and gifts of God we never earned, to break open our norms and expectations so
there’s room for a great big unexpected family of God, then in Israel and now in
Moorestown, and everywhere and evermore.
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