Sunday, June 9, 2024
First Congregational Church of Cheshire
© the Rev. Dr. James Campbell
Mark 3:20-35
…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.”
Some lies my mother told me:
Of all those things my mother told me, the last one is perhaps the most egregious, even if well-intentioned. Of course, we know what it’s supposed to mean. We know that our parents told us this in order to bolster our confidence and to remind us that words could only really hurt us if we believed them. - Ah, if only it were that simple. If only words didn’t sometimes land like stones. If only they didn’t cut us, like a knife, right to the bone. If only they didn’t sometimes do worse even than that.
Early in my ministry at this church, we hosted a community memorial service for a young girl from Doolittle who took her life because of the pain inflicted by words. This child was bullied incessantly until she just couldn’t take it anymore, and death seemed the better option.
Of course, this was an awful tragedy. But we can’t honestly be surprised. How can we be surprised when our children live in a culture in which bullying has been elevated to an artform. C-SPAN should have an “R” rating for the way our elected leaders speak to one another. Insults are hurled. Lies are told. And there is name-calling – lots and lots of name calling: “looser,” “idiot,” “enemy,” and perhaps most dismissive of all, “crazy.” If you call someone crazy, that’s the end of the conversation because you have effectively delegitimized everything else that comes out of that person’s mouth. With one word, you have taken their power. And that is exactly what some bullies tried to do to Jesus.
According to Mark’s Gospel, Jesus’s ministry was wildly popular and his fame had spread far and wide. And it’s no wonder, because in just the first few pages of this Gospel, Jesus has bested Satan, cast out demons, healed a fever and a leper and a paralytic and a man with a withered hand. And his preaching? Well, people were wild for his preaching. He drew crowds of thousands who hung on every word. And all of this excitement threatened those who were charged with keeping the social order.
On this day in particular, Jesus was back in his hometown of Nazareth. And a crowd of people had gathered and they pressed into and against the house where he was, so that he couldn’t even lift his hand to his mouth to eat.
Well, news of this ruckus reached his mother, Mary, who gathered her other sons and daughters and decided to intervene. What else was she supposed to do when people were saying, out loud, that her first-born son was crazy.
Jesus was crazy. Now maybe that idea has never occurred to you before. I hadn’t really thought about it either until this week when I read about an early 20th century, four-volume exploration of the mental health of Jesus. It was written by a French physician named Charles Binet-Sanglé. Dr. Binet-Sanglé read the Gospel accounts through a medical lens and wondered: was Jesus bipolar? A megalomaniac? A paranoid schizophrenic? A utopian fanatic? An epileptic?
These theories have been largely discounted, but to even ask the questions at least took this erratic behavior of Jesus seriously. Because what Mark presents to us is not normal or normative behavior. His behavior was odd enough that the people of his hometown, who had known him since he was a child, were saying out loud: “He has gone out of his mind.”
And so, it was mama and company to the rescue. And once they arrived, they saw that the clergy had come down from Jerusalem to join in the name calling. But these religious scholars had another diagnosis. “He’s possessed,” they said. And their statement reminds us that religious people have other names they hurl for those they wish to discount: “fanatics,” “holy rollers,” “heretics” “apostates.”
So Mary and family find the house where Jesus was said to be. And in a scene that breaks my heart, they stand outside the door, where he was holed up with tax collectors and drunks and sex workers; where he was surrounded by jeering crowds and judgmental clergy, and they implored him to come home.
But apparently, it was too noisy in the house for Jesus to hear his mother’s voice. So, someone finally told him: “Your mother and your brothers and your sisters are outside, asking for you.” And that’s when he seemed to really go around the bend, because he replied: “Who are my mother and my brothers?” And then, looking around the room at all those other folks called “crazy,” he said: “Here are my mother and my brothers. Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.”
And he didn’t leave the house. And he didn’t come out to talk to his mom. And that was, I suspect, when Mary thought it might be true. Maybe he has gone out of his mind. And crestfallen, she gathered up the rest of her brood and went home.
So, what on earth was going on here? What was the point of what Jesus said? What did he mean when he seemed to dismiss his own blood relatives and insist that his true family was all around him?
Well, that question has puzzled scholars since the beginning. And that question challenges preachers who don’t want to offend the families in the pews.
But this week, I wondered, if maybe what was happening here was all rather simple. What if, I thought, all that Jesus was trying to do was to remind us all of what we already know, yet regularly deny in word and deed: that we are far more connected to one another than our name-calling will allow; that we are indeed our brother’s and sister’s keepers; and that God really is the father of us ALL.
Now in this world, in this cultural moment, in this nation so divided, to take these words literally seems naïve at best and crazy at worst. But if the life and teachings, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ means anything at all to us, then maybe it’s not Jesus who is crazy. Maybe the world is crazy.
And so the church is called to live into the sanity of God’s holy dream for this world: peace, prosperity, love, purpose, unity, dignity, community for everyone born – that is, for all those in here and out there who are our mothers and brothers and sisters.
Some of you may know of Wendall Berry – the farmer, poet, mystic, environmentalist, and theologian. In his marvelous poem “Practice Resurrection,” Mr. Berry writes of the nonsensical, day-to-day craziness to which the followers of Jesus have been called. He writes, in part:
“Every day do something that won’t compute. Love the Lord. Love the world. Work for nothing. Take all that you have and be poor. Love someone who does not deserve it… Give your approval to all you cannot understand… Ask the questions that have no answers… Practice resurrection.”
Crazy talk, I know. But it just might yet save this country and this world. And it will most certainly save us.
First Congregational Church of Cheshire
© the Rev. Dr. James Campbell
Mark 3:20-35
…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.”
Some lies my mother told me:
- This is going to hurt me more than it hurts you.
- No matter what you tell me, I will believe you.
- Sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never hurt me.
Of all those things my mother told me, the last one is perhaps the most egregious, even if well-intentioned. Of course, we know what it’s supposed to mean. We know that our parents told us this in order to bolster our confidence and to remind us that words could only really hurt us if we believed them. - Ah, if only it were that simple. If only words didn’t sometimes land like stones. If only they didn’t cut us, like a knife, right to the bone. If only they didn’t sometimes do worse even than that.
Early in my ministry at this church, we hosted a community memorial service for a young girl from Doolittle who took her life because of the pain inflicted by words. This child was bullied incessantly until she just couldn’t take it anymore, and death seemed the better option.
Of course, this was an awful tragedy. But we can’t honestly be surprised. How can we be surprised when our children live in a culture in which bullying has been elevated to an artform. C-SPAN should have an “R” rating for the way our elected leaders speak to one another. Insults are hurled. Lies are told. And there is name-calling – lots and lots of name calling: “looser,” “idiot,” “enemy,” and perhaps most dismissive of all, “crazy.” If you call someone crazy, that’s the end of the conversation because you have effectively delegitimized everything else that comes out of that person’s mouth. With one word, you have taken their power. And that is exactly what some bullies tried to do to Jesus.
According to Mark’s Gospel, Jesus’s ministry was wildly popular and his fame had spread far and wide. And it’s no wonder, because in just the first few pages of this Gospel, Jesus has bested Satan, cast out demons, healed a fever and a leper and a paralytic and a man with a withered hand. And his preaching? Well, people were wild for his preaching. He drew crowds of thousands who hung on every word. And all of this excitement threatened those who were charged with keeping the social order.
On this day in particular, Jesus was back in his hometown of Nazareth. And a crowd of people had gathered and they pressed into and against the house where he was, so that he couldn’t even lift his hand to his mouth to eat.
Well, news of this ruckus reached his mother, Mary, who gathered her other sons and daughters and decided to intervene. What else was she supposed to do when people were saying, out loud, that her first-born son was crazy.
Jesus was crazy. Now maybe that idea has never occurred to you before. I hadn’t really thought about it either until this week when I read about an early 20th century, four-volume exploration of the mental health of Jesus. It was written by a French physician named Charles Binet-Sanglé. Dr. Binet-Sanglé read the Gospel accounts through a medical lens and wondered: was Jesus bipolar? A megalomaniac? A paranoid schizophrenic? A utopian fanatic? An epileptic?
These theories have been largely discounted, but to even ask the questions at least took this erratic behavior of Jesus seriously. Because what Mark presents to us is not normal or normative behavior. His behavior was odd enough that the people of his hometown, who had known him since he was a child, were saying out loud: “He has gone out of his mind.”
And so, it was mama and company to the rescue. And once they arrived, they saw that the clergy had come down from Jerusalem to join in the name calling. But these religious scholars had another diagnosis. “He’s possessed,” they said. And their statement reminds us that religious people have other names they hurl for those they wish to discount: “fanatics,” “holy rollers,” “heretics” “apostates.”
So Mary and family find the house where Jesus was said to be. And in a scene that breaks my heart, they stand outside the door, where he was holed up with tax collectors and drunks and sex workers; where he was surrounded by jeering crowds and judgmental clergy, and they implored him to come home.
But apparently, it was too noisy in the house for Jesus to hear his mother’s voice. So, someone finally told him: “Your mother and your brothers and your sisters are outside, asking for you.” And that’s when he seemed to really go around the bend, because he replied: “Who are my mother and my brothers?” And then, looking around the room at all those other folks called “crazy,” he said: “Here are my mother and my brothers. Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.”
And he didn’t leave the house. And he didn’t come out to talk to his mom. And that was, I suspect, when Mary thought it might be true. Maybe he has gone out of his mind. And crestfallen, she gathered up the rest of her brood and went home.
So, what on earth was going on here? What was the point of what Jesus said? What did he mean when he seemed to dismiss his own blood relatives and insist that his true family was all around him?
Well, that question has puzzled scholars since the beginning. And that question challenges preachers who don’t want to offend the families in the pews.
But this week, I wondered, if maybe what was happening here was all rather simple. What if, I thought, all that Jesus was trying to do was to remind us all of what we already know, yet regularly deny in word and deed: that we are far more connected to one another than our name-calling will allow; that we are indeed our brother’s and sister’s keepers; and that God really is the father of us ALL.
Now in this world, in this cultural moment, in this nation so divided, to take these words literally seems naïve at best and crazy at worst. But if the life and teachings, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ means anything at all to us, then maybe it’s not Jesus who is crazy. Maybe the world is crazy.
And so the church is called to live into the sanity of God’s holy dream for this world: peace, prosperity, love, purpose, unity, dignity, community for everyone born – that is, for all those in here and out there who are our mothers and brothers and sisters.
Some of you may know of Wendall Berry – the farmer, poet, mystic, environmentalist, and theologian. In his marvelous poem “Practice Resurrection,” Mr. Berry writes of the nonsensical, day-to-day craziness to which the followers of Jesus have been called. He writes, in part:
“Every day do something that won’t compute. Love the Lord. Love the world. Work for nothing. Take all that you have and be poor. Love someone who does not deserve it… Give your approval to all you cannot understand… Ask the questions that have no answers… Practice resurrection.”
Crazy talk, I know. But it just might yet save this country and this world. And it will most certainly save us.
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