Today’s gospel reading is full of division, conflict and animosity. In order to unpick what is there we need to understand an important way of thinking in Jesus’ time and place. It went like this: people were labeled according to their place of origin, their social status and so on. We hear this reflected on the gospels – Jesus is the Nazarene, the son of a carpenter. We hear Peter labeled as a Galilean, and James and John were ‘the Sons of Zebedee’. And, of course, Joseph was from Bethlehem – and there he returned at the beginning of Jesus’ life.
Such labels worked well as a means of identifying people before the existence of things like birth certificates, postcodes and national insurance numbers. The down side of this system of labeling people was that, if people overstepped the mark, they would soon be labeled as deviant. If they went too far they would be labeled as sorcerers – having demonic power.
Hence, in today’s gospel we see Jesus’ family trying to have him taken away – sectioned, if your like. And the Scribes were claiming this demonic possession. This would have brought great shame on Jesus’ family, which is why they were trying to remove him – to save any further embarrassment.
The scene which Mark depicts is potentially catastrophic for Jesus. If he fails to get out of this mess, somehow, he will be locked away somewhere and his ministry will end.
Jesus manages the situation in an amazing we – he must have been the sort of person who could keep a calm head in times of crisis. He comes up with this startling image of the strong man who must be bound before his goods can be taken away, his home plundered. We must imagine a real 6ft 6 inch bruiser with rippling muscles, and a thick, square jaw – the sort of person you wouldn’t like to meet on a dark night in a narrow alley, as my Grandad used to say. This is Jesus’ image for Satan, and, in this metaphor, Jesus is the thief – what a startling idea – robbing Satan’s house after tying him up – binding the strong man.
What effect would this have had on the great crowd, so numerous that Jesus wasn’t even able to eat? For them it must have been make or break time. Were they following a deviant who was possessed by the devil? Or were they following someone who was indeed a deviant – someone who had well and truly overstepped the bounds of common morality and good taste – but who was truly good? It was decision time. Some, no doubt would turn their backs and walk away. But others would have been able to see that Jesus had indeed bound the strong man – that it didn’t make sense for Satan to be working against himself. To allude to another BIblical phrase – they could recognise Jesus as good because of the fruits of his life and ministry. So they followed and were faithful. These, Jesus called his brothers and sisters – and if we have the courage to defy social convention (Being a CHristian is definitely uncool these days) and follow Jesus as our saviour, teacher and friend, we too are his family – his brothers, his sisters, his beloved.
The image of the strong man bound is still startling – I wonder why it hasn’t passed into common usage like so many biblical phrases have. Here is an image of evil – something powerful and thuggish, something frightening – even terrifying. It suggests that we need to take evil seriously. This is something that deviates from current thought – in many ways we have come to a place where we think that that not only the devil doesn’t exist, but that evil is something we don’t talk about because either. It is not socially acceptable.
But it does exist, doesn’t it? Maybe it’s easier to see and recognise on the TV screen at a safe distance. And it’s easier to see in the bombs and terror plots of religious extremists than it is in our own lives and attitudes. But evil exists all around us – it exists when vulnerable elderly people are neglected in care homes (as has happened to two of our members recently). It exists in a society where some have so much money they can’t possibly use it all while some people have to rely on food banks to feed their families. It exists in a world where some individuals have more money than some whole countries, where people flee poverty and terror and wealthy nations close their borders. It exists when the seas are choked with plastic but industry still churns out food in plastic wrappers as if it doesn’t really matter. Here, we can see Jesus’ metaphor being fulfilled – we live in a country divided against itself, in a world divided against itself – and a house divided against itself cannot stand.
Evil is alive and well in our lives. We need to be asking Jesus’ help in binding the strong man, wherever we find him. We need, as well, to look at the fruits of our own lives. What fruits do we bear? If people had to make their minds up about us, just as they did about Jesus, if people looked at the fruits of our lives, what would be their conclusion? Who’s camp would they decide we were in?
In some ways the house divided against itself is an image that could describe St Oswald’s too. If we are truly followers of Jesus, we need to think about how are we going to enable people to hear about his love? If we truly love this church, we need to think how it is to survive and flourish in a changing world – a world where the gap between the world out there and the church ‘in here’ has grown into an mighty chasm. This means that sometimes we might have worship which is not what we would choose, sometimes we need to have worship which is accessible to those who aren’t here today because our normal worship is too weird. Please think about this – let us be a church united in love, not divided against itself. Let us build a house where future Christians will be able to gather for worship, as we do today. Amen