Sermon: Crazy Like Jesus

Mark 3:19b-35

Crazy Like Jesus

James Sledge                                                                                       June 10, 2018

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that most of you don’t spend a lot of time worrying about Satan or the power of demons. In fact, many progressive Christians, including pastors such as myself, are a little unnerved, even embarrassed, by biblical talk of Satan and demonic possession. Clearly this comes from ancient peoples who weren’t sophisticated enough to understand things like mental illness or epilepsy.

But sometimes I wonder if our “sophistication” isn’t actually an arrogance that does not serve us well. We sometimes imagine that there’s no evil, only problems to be solved. At some point progress and advancement will inexorably lead to a better and better world.

At the dawn of the 20^th century, many believed progress would soon do away with war in a unified Christian earth, only to witness one world war followed shortly by another. Imagine the despair of those who thought humanity was about to achieve world peace but instead saw millions and millions slaughtered in battle, killed by bombs raining down on civilian populations, and exterminated in the Holocaust.

Mainline and progressive Christians often fall captive to despair these days. I know I do. Granted we do not face world war or Holocaust, but things we hoped for and counted on have failed us. Our heralded democracy seems to have welcomed racism, xenophobia, hatred, and outright lying as accepted parts of the process. Christianity itself is too often a tool of hatred, bigotry, and the acquisition of power at any cost.

I wonder if we sophisticated moderns don’t need to take the problem of evil more seriously, even if we do not personify it. How else to explain school children slaughtering classmates with easily obtained weapons of war? Or followers of Jesus cheering war, spewing hate for those different from them, embracing lies, immorality, and disdain for the least of these, in the pursuit of power?

How else to explain many of us swallowing consumerism’s big lie that if we only acquire enough, if we only get more, we’ll be truly happy? How else to explain turning childhood into a high-stress, cut-throat competition where children must outduel others to get ahead, and we are willing to sacrifice children with fewer advantages for the sake of our own?

I also wonder if thinking we are smarter and more sophisticated than ancient peoples doesn’t obscure for us the sophisticated literary work of biblical writers. Our gospel reading is a good case in point, so let me take you back to that reading.

Jesus has just named the twelve apostles, after which Jesus “went into a house.” I’m not why our NRSV translation says he “went home.” “House” is a pretty big term in this story.

And so Jesus and disciples are inside the house and a huge crowd gathers, people presumably looking for healings or blessings. It’s such a ruckus that Jesus and his friends can’t enjoy a meal. His family also learns Jesus is there, and they come “to restrain him,” or maybe better, “to seize him.” Apparently they think Jesus has taken leave of his senses, something that also gets obscured in our NRSV translation.

But before the conflict between Jesus and his family can play out, Mark introduces a second story. It’s a literary device that Mark uses often. One story brackets the other, allowing the two stories to interact. There’s also a remarkable symmetry to our passage. Family at both ends; then issues about Jesus being possessed next to them. In between is a center with Jesus’ parables on Satan, a house divided, and plundering a strong man’s house.

The meaning of these parables seems clear. Any charge that Jesus is somehow in league with Satan, that he performs miracles by demonic power, is easily refuted. Why would Satan rise up against himself? If Satan is fighting himself, surely his end is near.

More to the point, Satan’s house cannot be plundered unless he is first bound. Far from being in league with the forces of evil, Jesus is the one who can best Satan, who can take on the forces of evil.

That’s wonderful news. Jesus is more powerful than Satan, stronger than evil. What a message of hope for those who despair at the state of the world. Evil will not have the final word. Satan is helpless before the will of God.

But of course the same nervousness and embarrassment we sophisticated moderns have with demons, Satan, and miracles, leads many of us to spiritualize Jesus’ power. Perhaps he can grant eternal life or give us some spiritual comfort, but he can’t really do anything about the state of the world, leaving us once more in despair.

I wonder if we can get over our sophisticated embarrassment and entertain the notion that, in Christ, God enters into the world on the side of the hurting, poor, broken, and the least of these? That in Jesus, God has sided, not with those who accumulate more, but with those who have little? That God will turn the power structures of the world upside down for the sake of those at the bottom, left out, and marginalized? And those who follow Jesus can begin to live now in this new, upside down world, this new day, this kingdom of God?

But who would believe such a thing? You’d have to be a little crazy, which is exactly what Jesus’ family thinks he is when they go to stop him. They don’t think Jesus demon possessed, but they end up on the side of those who do. Jesus’ family is outside the house, which perhaps symbolizes the church, inadvertently, unwittingly coopted by the powers of evil. A lot of Christians in our day, likely many of us, find ourselves out there with them at times.

Thankfully, we’re not stuck there. Not even aligning ourselves with the evil cuts us off from God’s love and forgiveness. Only blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, which Mark defines as proclaiming Jesus himself evil, does that.

But the question remains. Will we follow this Jesus who says he’s more powerful than evil, who insists that following him in the way of service, self-giving, and cross-bearing is the way to the joy of true and full life? Or will we listen to the voices of culture and consumerism who would like to prevent us, and prevent Jesus, from doing anything really crazy?

I sometimes wonder if part of the reason the Church is struggling so in our day, that Christian faith is so far off on the periphery of many of our lives, relegated to a little private spirituality, is that we engage in so little of the craziness that Jesus did.

There’s an old Bob Dylan song titled, “Gotta Serve Somebody.” The chorus goes, “But you're gonna have to serve somebody. Yes, you're gonna have to serve somebody. Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord, But you're gonna have to serve somebody.” According to Jesus, what the world thinks is sane quite often turns out to be serving the devil. And following Jesus, doing the will of God, makes you look just a little crazy. But it also joins you to what God is doing to transform the world. It lets you experience the joy and hope of God’s new day, of the kingdom, right here and now. And Lord knows, the world could use a bit more of Jesus’ kind of crazy.