Mark 3:20-35
Then [Jesus] went home; and the crowd came together again, so that they could not even eat. When his family heard it, they went out to restrain him, for people were saying, ‘He has gone out of his mind.’ And the scribes who came down from Jerusalem said, ‘He has Beelzebul, and by the ruler of the demons he casts out demons.’
And he called them to him, and spoke to them in parables, ‘How can Satan cast out Satan? If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand. And if Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand, but his end has come. But no one can enter a strong man’s house and plunder his property without first tying up the strong man; then indeed the house can be plundered.
‘Truly I tell you, people will be forgiven for their sins and whatever blasphemies they utter; but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit can never have forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin’ — for they had said, ‘He has an unclean spirit.’
Then his mother and his brothers came; and standing outside, they sent to him and called him. A crowd was sitting around him; and they said to him, ‘Your mother and your brothers and sisters are outside, asking for you.’ And he replied, ‘Who are my mother and my brothers?’ And looking at those who sat around him, he said, ‘Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.’
My working title for this sermon all week has been, “Crazy is as crazy does,” partly because there’s enough to unpack in all of these verses to make a preacher nuts, but mostly because of the actions of Jesus and the accusations against him for having lost his mind.
The nutshell of it all for me is that this is another moment in the life and times of Jesus when he’s under the microscope and under attack, even, for the ministry he’s begun. He’s being accused by the scribes – some of the leaders of the synagogues – which is a thing we hear often in Scripture. He’s being worried over by his family, which isn’t such popular Biblical theme. He’s being followed by overwhelming, overbearing crowds of people. And he’s trying to convince everyone that he hasn’t “gone out of his mind;” that he’s not crazy; that he isn’t possessed – at least not by the powers of Satan or Beelzebul, as some of them assume.
But Jesus is possessed, it seems – overcome with and inspired by the Holy Spirit, I mean. And that Holy Spirit – bestowed upon him through baptism – was moving Jesus to do some pretty surprising, shocking, out-of-the-ordinary, hard-to-swallow sorts of things. And people were taking notice. And people were suspicious. And they were afraid, some of them, and angry, some of them, and out of sorts about it all. So they assumed and accused and questioned and condemned all the things about Jesus that they couldn’t see or understand or wrap their heads or their hearts around. And they chalked it all up to “crazy.”
Because that’s how people are, too much of the time, isn’t it? We are suspicious of the odd-balls. We assume and accuse and question and condemn. Sometimes we simply dismiss those we don’t understand or who push us out of our “normal” or who move us away from what’s comfortable or familiar or safe. Sometimes, we even kill them. Which, of course, is where all of this got Jesus.
And it’s been that way ever since, really, for the oddballs… the movers and shakers… the envelope pushers. It happened to Stephen and to Paul and to Peter, too.
More recently, of course, I think about Mahatma Gandhi and Medgar Evers and Martin Luther King, Jr.
And since June is PRIDE month, I think about Harvey Milk and Marsha P. Johnson and Matthew Shepard, too.
Oddballs and eccentrics, each in their own right. Jesus freaks, some of them. Outsiders, others of them. Non-conformists, all. Rebels. Misfits. Trouble-makers, even. Their families and friends and neighbors might even have thought them to be their own kind of crazy, perhaps.
And when we take Jesus out of the stained-glass windows of our collective mind’s eye, he is all of those things, too – a trouble-making, non-conforming, rebellious kind of outsider. And today’s gospel reminds us that all of his preaching and teaching and healing was so revolutionary that it made people believe Jesus was crazy, that he had gone out of his mind. Even his family tried to stop him – either because they agreed maybe he really was losing his marbles, or because they were genuinely afraid for his safety, or their own. Others, like the scribes, thought he just might be the devil himself – or at least possessed by Beelzebul.
And it’s hard to blame them, really. Jesus was doing and saying some pretty amazing things which didn’t bode well for a lot of people – especially the ones in power – but good news that promised nothing but blessing and redemption and fullness of life for those who had, up until then, been persecuted, left out, sidelined, and worse. (The other oddballs, misfits, outcasts, and whatnot.) This Good News was crazy.
Last week, we heard Jesus promise that God loved the world – the whole world and nothing but the whole world – and that God sent Jesus into the midst of it all to save and redeem it. These disciples he’d gathered to follow him and to help with this ministry were nothing to write home about – Jesus loved oddballs and misfits, too, of course. Fishermen. Tax collectors. Women. All of them charged with helping the Kingdom of God come to pass. And people were being cured. Demons were being cast out. Sins were being forgiven. More misfits were being welcomed into the mix and lives were being changed by it all. It was crazy.
Because what makes “crazy” “crazy,” is that it doesn’t line up with what people expect, with what people are used to, with what people think they want or need in their lives. So Jesus meets all of the criteria on the report card for crazy. He is just exactly what the scribes and other religious leaders weren’t looking for in a Messiah – this peacemaker; this forgiver of sins; this living, moving, breathing force of mercy, love, and grace in their midst.
So, if Jesus was crazy by the world’s standards, it makes a wannabe follower of his wonder what all of that might have to do with you and me?
Well, I think the answer is in that bit at the end of today’s Gospel, when Jesus says, ‘Who are my mother and my brothers?’ And then, looking at the knuckleheads surrounding him, he answers his own question: “Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.”
So, I think what makes us brothers and sisters to Jesus is when we’re just as inspired by, just as overwhelmed with, just as possessed by the Holy Spirit – just as “crazy” as Jesus, if you will, because of the grace we’ve received and by our willingness to share it at all costs. And crazy is as crazy does.
So, what if we spent more time – as children of God, as followers of Jesus – trying to be crazy by the world’s standards, instead of conforming to what the world or the Church, even, thinks we should do or be or look like? For the record, I don’t think it always has to be big, off-the-charts, headline or history-making levels of crazy.
I think crazy might look like bending over backwards to be as safe as possible over the course of the last year of this pandemic, in order to love our neighbor and to protect the vulnerable – at times when others would not, and in ways that may not have always made sense.
I think crazy would mean giving more money and resources away for the sake of others and our ministry – to the point that people would think we were nuts.
I think crazy would mean we’d let more people in – so that the line for communion on Sunday morning would make guests wonder if they were in church, or at the bar; in prison or at the hospital; in the middle of a pride parade, a homeless shelter, or the United Nations.
I think it would mean we’d forgive more readily – so that enemies and grudges wouldn’t steal one more moment of our energy, one more ounce of our soul, one more second of our precious time.
I think it would mean we’d stop fighting about things the politicians and cable news networks inspire us to fight about. And I think, instead, we would start fighting against and worrying about extreme poverty, violence against women and children, systemic racism, consumerism, and the rate at which people die every day, all over the world, of preventable, treatable diseases or from lack of clean water.
I think crazy would look like the Kingdom of God happening among us, the Kingdom of God happening through us, the Kingdom of God happening for us, and for the sake of the world.
And I think that would just be crazy – in every holy, wonderful, faithful, gracious way we can’t always imagine; but crazy in ways that only God can accomplish – through the likes of oddballs and misfits like you and me – when we muster the kind of humility, courage, and faith to let it happen.
Amen
