He’s out of his mind.
Beside himself.
He’s dangerous.
He’s wicked.
In any case, he’s trouble.
That’s what they are saying about Jesus, today. The people who should be closest to Jesus – his family of origin, other religious leaders. They’re saying he’s crazy, not safe.
And to some extent, they are quite right.
It’s true that Jesus is trouble. He’s very disruptive.
You and I might not think that preaching the presence of God and forgiveness of sins, or healing the sick is “making trouble.” At least, not until someone does it in a way we aren’t used to, or weren’t expecting.
We would probably be skeptical of someone without a medical or psychological degree seeking out folks with psychotic illnesses, seizures, and degenerative diseases and declaring them cured.
We’d be disturbed by someone who announces that the way we’ve worshipped God, and the rules and rituals we’ve followed all our lives are unnecessary, or even separate us from God. Heck, we’ve been wrestling with a version of that “unnecessary” rituals question since last March, and it has definitely been uncomfortable!
We get uncomfortable, troubled, when someone changes the rules of righteousness and success and being good people on us. “The tax collectors and prostitutes are going into the kingdom of God before you” sounded to a lot of good, religious, normal people of Jesus’ day like “the lobbyists and the drug-dealers (corporate and street-corner alike) are more holy than you” would sound to us today. As if everything we thought was wrong with society is actually…right with God? That can’t be, can it?
Oh, Jesus is trouble, all right.
Then and now, Jesus stirs up what is stable, pushes our boundaries of safety and comfort, and actively, intentionally messes with us and with the world.
You and I have the advantage of twenty centuries of tradition to help us clearly identify Jesus’ rule-breaking, norm-challenging, radical healing, and novel preaching in the gospel stories as “good trouble.”
It’s harder to do that with what changes and challenges us now.
And so Jesus is talking to us today, not just to the scribes of old, about how we face changes that disrupt what we count on and challenge our comfort and our convictions.
There’s a gift or skill or spiritual practice called “the discernment of spirits” that’s been important to people of faith since before Jesus. It’s how we answer the question of how we know if a certain prophet actually speaks God’s word. Whether a desire we experience, or an idea you have, comes from God or from the devil or from selfish human impulse. Whether the actions and teachings of a certain leader are salvation or damnation.
Jesus is calling that gift and practice of discernment into focus today, because the religious establishment of his time are trying to judge the chaos Jesus is causing by arguing in the synagogue, inviting sinners to holy meals, stirring up crowds that follow him around and have no respect for order or meal times. They see his deeds of power and hear his declarations of God’s will that are opposite to what God’s people have relied on for generations – and that call into question so much of what the scribes themselves believe and teach.
So they say what’s obvious to them. It must be a spiritual enemy to cause all this disruption.
He’s “casting out demons” using the spirit of demons. This man has the power of evil.
They’re wrong, of course.
You know that. I know that.
But they didn’t know.
Any time our reliable assumptions are called into question, when things that have guided us to good in the past are challenged, it’s quite often hard to tell the good change from the bad. To know whether a new teaching – about sin and forgiveness, about marriage or human sexuality, about slavery or segregation or reparations, about demons or mental illness, about the validity of worship over the internet, about whatever will come next – is of God, and will bring us closer to God, or of evil and will separate us from God.
And the stakes are high.
Any sin can be forgiven – will be forgiven – Jesus says. Except for blasphemy against the Holy Spirit.
The only unforgivable thing is to call an action of God evil. Call the Spirit of God demonic.
This is the one thing we can’t afford to get wrong.
And it’s so easy to get it wrong. So difficult, sometimes, to get it right.
We aren’t on our own in this task, though.
Jesus and the church give us tools for this.
Jesus reminds us to focus on the commandments: Love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind, with all of yourself; Love your neighbor as yourself.
Those “great commandments” guide us in figuring out the will of God, or what actions and desires are of God, when we’re navigating new territory, or wondering about our old habits and assumptions.
The church reminds us to listen to the voice of tradition, to read and read and re-read scripture, to immerse ourselves in the prayers of the church, so that those time-tested voices seep into our hearts and point the way. And to listen in community, not alone: to ask others to pray with you and actively listen for the will of God together. Seek community to help us resist evil and choose God in our daily choices and momentous decisions.
We can look for healing – for lasting reconciliation, renewed strength, whole hearts – as indicators that something changing around us is of God.
Most of all, we can ask of absolutely everything “What if this is of God?”
What if this delay in pursuing my dream is actually a gift of God?
What if this interruption of my day is God at work?
What if that reversal of the church’s traditions is a way that God is healing an old and lasting hurt?
What if those people I don’t like are actually…right about something? Actually guided by God?
The answer won’t always be yes.
Some things really aren’t of God.
Many things are. But some things actually are evil, or simple selfishness, greed, and human error. Some things are just… accident.
But if we ask every new thing and every old familiar habit if this is of God; if we explore the changes that challenge us to discover what good might come of them, what forgiveness, healing, growth, love may emerge; if we look for what God might want us to learn, and see, and do, then we will find out what the Spirit of God is up to, even if it’s not what we thought we were looking at when we began.
If we give every disruption or discomfort or surprise the chance to show us what God might be healing, who God might be loving, where God might be leading, we’ll never make the one unfixable mistake of calling God’s work evil and thus cutting ourselves off from God’s love and healing.
If we are looking for God, expecting God, we cannot lose, even if what’s in front of us is actual evil.
Right in this story, Jesus assures us that evil can’t actually win.
A house divided against itself can’t stand, after all. For evil to do good in order to trick us, evil divides itself, opposes itself, and loses its strength.
And Jesus reminds us that he is the strong one John the Baptist predicted. The one who comes into the world to tie up the strength of evil and take its power away.
So whether it is evil in front of us, or good, if we ask every challenge and change in our lives to lead us to God, we will find God. We will be the family of Jesus, the chosen siblings of Christ, unbreakably connected to God’s own self in the world and in eternity.
It may be a lot of trouble.
Jesus usually is a lot of trouble.
But it’s good trouble.
The stirring of the world to reveal the presence and glory and forgiveness and unending love of God.
And I wouldn’t want to miss that.
Would you?
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