2nd
Sunday after Pentecost June
10, 2012
Mark
3:20-35 Functional Families
Dear
fellow redeemed,
We
may consider it putting the best construction on things.
*
We say, “He comes from a
dysfunctional family!”
In
other words, “Give him some slack.
He’ll come around!”
Then again, we might say it as an
excuse not to work on a given relationship.
* If so, we should know everyone is
dysfunctional in some way or another.
Yes, even Christians.
*
There’s no perfect family. A
basic review of Old Testament history will establish that.
* There’s Cain and Abel, the first set
of brothers ever created by God.
That didn’t last.
Cain murders his only brother Abel.
* And remember Jacob and Isau? They were
quite dysfunctional if you ask me.
Jacob
is favored by his mother, and Isau
by his father. Jacob conspires to steal
his
brother’s birthright. And then Esau is resolved to murder his
brother.
* And
who can forget Joseph and the brothers he had to put up with.
He too is favored by a parent, his father who made him a
coat of many colors.
What’s
more, he has dreams of his family bowing down and serving him. In time, his
brothers who are sick with jealousy and
resentment sell him to a caravan of Ishmaelites.
* And
yes we also have stories about sisters.
There are the two daughters of Lot.
When
Sodom and Gomorrah are destroyed by fire, they imagine that they will have to
repopulate the earth. So they get their father drunk and try to get
pregnant through incest.
This
is God people we’re talking about! And
times never change.
Apparently
every last one of our families is dysfunctional!
*
We may explain it by giving
thought to the devil’s primary objective in your life and
mine. Satan seeks to divide.
He desires to divide us Christians against God and from
each other.
*
And why not? He achieved with it Adam and Eve.
Our Old Testament reading begins with God confronting Adam
who sinned.
*
Without giving it a second
thought he had listened to Satan’s lies.
“God’s
not going to let you die just because you eat some fruit.”
“He just wants to keep your eyes from being opened and
knowing both good and evil.”
“Sure, God talks big, but he doesn’t really have your best
interest in mind!”
* In the end, Satan succeeded in
alienating Adam and Eve from their loving God who
simply wanted to care for them.
Zoom
ahead in time to today’s Gospel and we’ve got the same thing all over again.
* Picture
it. Jesus has come to his home
town. He’s the promised Christ and therefore
our
loving God and Savior. But Satan would have people question this.
*
So he assigns demons under him to
torment the local people.
Soon
Jesus drives a demon out of a dumb man.
And by the time we get to our reading,
Jesus
has created such a stir that the crowds would not leave him or his disciples
alone.
* On one side you have these people in
need. They didn’t necessarily care who
Jesus was.
They
just wanted him to heal their loved ones.
And
on the other side you have these experts of the Law who had come all the way
from
Jerusalem with the express purpose of catching Jesus in an
unlawful act.
[i]
*
They already know how they’ll
spin things. “Jesus talks big and his
actions are very
impressive. But he’s
not someone you’ll want to hang around with.”
“He is possessed by Beelzebul . . .
By the prince of demons he casts out demons.”
*
That’s when his family decided to
get involved. In their opinion Jesus was
in quite a
spot. The Scribes and
growing masses of needy people were driving him over the edge.
Unless the situation simmered down soon, he was sure to go
crazy.
Do
you find it surprising? This was
Christ’s own family drawing this conclusion!
Apparently
the Lord Jesus himself was dysfunctional!
*
With little difficulty we see
what Satan’s motives were on this day.
What
better way of destroying the faith of Christ’s followers than giving them
reason to
believe he was “losing it”, or that
the promised Savior was possessed.
You
want this guy on your side? Is this what
it means to belong to God’s family?
* And we can be sure Satan’s motives in
the Church today are much the same.
As the story of Christ goes, so goes the story of his
believers.
We
may not label those of our household as”out of their
mind”, but we too have this idea
that our family can undergo only so
much harassment by the devil and the world.
And then we’re that broken family of God.
*
What possible blessings can God
have in mind for me after all my hurt and sorrow?
* My husband is dead already five or ten
years now.
*
I’m divorced and my children
favor the other parent over me.
* I’m disabled and no longer able to
provide as I used to for my loved ones.
*
Or it may be that other member of
the home we’ll describe as dysfunctional.
*
My son was recently diagnosed
with bi-polar.
* My daughter or granddaughter is
pregnant and she’s not even engaged yet.
*
At one time we were that solid
Christian family everyone seemed to admire and respect.
And now look at us!
We’re pretty pathetic, aren’t we?
* That’s what
Satan and the spreaders of his lies would have us believe. We’re maxed out.
We’ve exceeded our limits. Having made it over the edge, we’re
yesterday’s news.
* But you
know what’s really going on, don’t you?
Satan wants us, at any given instant,
to look at what God is working in our
lives, and react: “This isn’t good! This
is scary!
Jesus does not have our best interest in mind!”
*
Is it any wonder? If Satan should con believers about the
Christ who’s working miracles
in his hometown, casting out demons, we can be sure he’ll do
so with us.
But
does it really make sense to point the finger at our Lord?
*
After Jesus is accused of doing
the devil’s work, he responds.
“How
can Satan cast out Satan? If a kingdom
is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot
stand. . . If Satan
has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand.”
* It may have been one of those rare
times when Jesus had no need to quote Scripture.
What
the Scribes had asserted was not rational.
The prince of demons uses someone
to cast out other
demons?! Even Satan would not be so
stupid as to undermine his own
efforts.
*
No. The only role Satan had in
this event was to spread his lies.
The
Scribes were accusing Jesus of demon-possession. Actually, it is they who were in
league with Satan, for they hated both Christ and his
Gospel. [ii]
Jesus
makes his case, and exposes Satan’s agenda.
The devil wants us to take our eyes off Christ
who shed his blood for us that we might
be forgiven.
* It’s why
our Lord continues with a warning concerning the most serious and costly sin
there is. “Whoever blasphemes against the
Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is
guilty of an eternal sin.”
*
Unfortunately, people often misunderstand
what this sin is about.
Over
the years, for example, many have maintained that the sin against the Holy
Spirit is
to despair, that is to lose hope
in God for salvation.
* This would
explain a conversation I had with a woman about 20 years ago in Michigan.
She
wasn’t a member of the congregation, but phoned the pastor’s office because she
was
extremely troubled. She went on and on about committing the sin
against the Holy Spirit
and how she was therefore going to hell.
*
Looking back on the incident, I
believe she wanted me to talk her out of it.
And
I tried. I explained that those who are
troubled by a sin and sorry for doing it have
not committed the sin against the
Holy Spirit. Rather, the only ones
guilty of such a sin are
those who’ve hardened their hearts
against Christ.
But
nothing I said to her made any difference.
* Later it was evident to me that she
was psychotic and was probably suffering from severe
depression. She was
despairing, which is to say she was giving up.
But according to her delusional thinking she was giving up
on God.
* The truth
was she was sick, was giving up on life, and was feeling extremely guilty about
it.
*
Would you like to know what the
sin against the Holy Spirit really is?
Despite
what Satan would have us believe, it’s not when you despair of your life,
believing it’s becoming increasing
dysfunctional. It’s the sin of rejecting
the Gospel of
Christ.
*
You see the Gospel is the message
about our Savior through which the Holy Spirit works
to give us forgiveness and faith. If someone rejects the Gospel, they reject
the only
message through which the Holy Spirit is sure to work.
*
Rejecting what Christ has done to
save the world, such a person is surely lost.
We
may consider it the ultimate goal of Satan: to end the Holy Spirit’s work in
our lives, to make
God dysfunctional when it comes to
preserving us in the faith.
*
So how do we escape such a
fate? We do so through a renewed
understanding of “God’s
family” and what makes us functional as members of his
family.
*
Returning to our lesson we see
the Lord’s mother and brothers catching up to him.
Instead
of interrupting, they send for Jesus who’s now visiting with a crowd gathered
around him.
* He’s been teaching the people about
God and Satan and about sin and forgiveness.
Presumably,
after instructing them about how one loses forgiveness, it’s time to
explain
how one gains forgiveness and is made an official member of
God’s family.
*
So when Mary and his brothers show up, it serves as a perfect transition to what
he’ll say
next. “Who
are my mother and my brothers?” Is it those who are of the same blood?
Is it those who have seen me grow in
wisdom or mature from youth to adulthood?
* Then he looks at those sitting around
him and says, “here are my mother and my
brothers! Whoever
does the will of God, he is my brother and sister and mother.
*
There’s no missing the
point. A functional family is not one
who happens to share the
same parents or brother or sister any more than we enjoy the
same health or are able to
keep our lives in one piece.
Functional families are those in whom the Holy Spirit is at
work. By faith in
Christ they are devoted to the same God.
Even
so, in time, every Christian family may question how together they
are. “Can my family
still operate properly despite how
we’re doing psychologically, emotionally, or financially?
In
the end, Satan plays a role in producing what many would call dysfunctional
families.
* However,
he has no say in making us spiritually dysfunctional.
You
see, Christ became dysfunctional for us.
So that he might rescue us from sin and
death and the devil himself, the Lord humbled himself to the
point of dying on a cross.
*
So that he might take our place
under God’s Law, the Son of God put his powers on hold.
So
that Satan may have no power over us as individuals or any power over our
future,
Jesus
became the good-for-nothing whom God should condemn to death.
* The result
is that we belong only to God. We are a part
of God’s family and will
forever function in that family as God
has called us to. The devil has no claim whatsoever
over us. “For
I am convinced” St. Paul declares,
“that neither death nor life, neither angels
nor demons . . . will
be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our
Lord”
(Romans 8:38-39).
* Not even
our aging bodies or our worsening mental health may deprive us of a place in
God’s
family and serving as his instruments for the benefit of others. Again from St. Paul:
“So
we do not lose heart. Though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature
is
being renewed day by day. . . For this
light momentary affliction is preparing for us an
eternal weight of glory beyond all
comparison.”
*
How could we even think of
comparing this life with the glories of the next? In the
presence of our only God we’ll get to serve as the Lord’s
family throughout all eternity.
Sometimes
it’s not possible to put the best construction on things.
It
would seem it’s our family that’s become dysfunctional as a result of life’s
unexpected curves.
* Our
son asks to move back in with us after his wife told him to move out.
* Our
wife receives word she has a cancerous tumor that’s inoperable.
* Our
grandchild has been in an accident and we’re to drive to the hospital
immediately.
*
And yet we may wonder how Satan
could put the best construction on the words God
spoke to him in the garden. “I
will put enmity between you and the woman, and between
your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head,
and you shall bruise his
heal.”
*
This was the first prophecy
concerning the coming of Christ our Savior who would
redeem us sinners and restore God’s family
*
Yes. Satan would apparently get
his way when Jesus went to the cross.
But the very blood by which the
devil sought to divide us is the blood by which Christ
would make us one.
*
And one means functional. So we do not lose heart.
The
Lord has done more than “give us some slack!” He’s given us a future in his family.
Here
in his church, we may consider ourselves his brother, his sister and his
mother.
Amen.
May
the peace of God which passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in
Christ Jesus.
Amen.
