Sermon from June 25, 2000
The odds are that few of you have read even a single paragraph written by Miss Dorothy Sayers. Let me share an excerpt from one of her Christian essays. "The people who hanged Christ never, to do them justice, accused Him of being a bore – on the contrary; they thought him too dynamic to be safe. It has been left for later generations to muffle up that shattering personality and surround Him with an atmosphere of tedium. We have very efficiently pared the claws of the Lion of Judah, certified Him 'meek and mild,' and recommended Him as a fitting household pet for pale curates and pious old ladies," (Christian Letters, 15).

Here is an example of how we pare His claws. Several years ago, Time Magazine ran a cover story concerning Christianity. It printed an interview with a 35-year-old man and his wife, both church members. The interviewer asked the man, "Why don't you drop out of the church if you are so dissatisified with it?"

He answered this way: "I suppose that I haven't dropped out of the church because ... after hearing so many people say the same thing so many times, I can't quite shake the feeling that they just might be right. No one has ever proved it, but maybe there is a (hell) on the other side. I feel that I've got to keep up the premiums."

Keep up the premiums? What is Christ, an insurance salesman, a bill-collector, an exterminator gleefully waiting for someone to miss enough installments so that he can throw the delinquents into the pit? We must be talking about different Christs. Almost all the distortions of Christ that I hear have Him doing something bad to other people. In the New Testament other people are trying to do something bad to Him – usually because they had never known goodness to be so winsome or so threatening. Mark 3:21-35 offers an illustration of His goodness.

Verse 21 gives the informal verdict of Jesus' family about Him. When his family heard about this, they went to take charge of him, for they said, "He is out of his mind." Verse 22 gives the official, Jerusalem verdict about Jesus. And the teachers of the law who came down from Jerusalem said, "He is possessed by Beelzebub! By the prince of demons he is driving out demons."

The action of the Jerusalem authorities in verse 22 helps us understand the action of Jesus' family in verse 21. Better that your son be known as a mental case than as possessed by the devil. By preserving the memory of this painful and passionate opposition to Jesus, Mark protects us from an unrealistic, sentimentalized picture of Jesus. Time after time Mark checks that tendency by bringing before us Jesus as His contemporaries found Him to be – winsome, engaging and mysterious to be sure; but also disturbing, disruptive and unpredictable. The Lion always walks free in Mark's Gospel.

When I closed last Sunday, I said that the men who accused Christ of doing miracles by the devil's power were not acting capriciously. They had come up against someone who challenged everything they held dear, everything they felt called upon by God to protect. I asked if, given our usual resistance to change, we would do any better. It was an awful moment for Israel. Reality itself or deception itself had come upon them. They had to choose.

Was Jesus right or was the Jerusalem delegation right? How would the massive crowds of Jesus' day, guided by their judgment or lack of judgment, answer? How shall we answer? Jesus did not allow the Jerusalem verdict to go unchallenged. We have to take His answer into consideration as we decide between Jesus' witness about Himself and the verdict of the Jerusalem officials. Verses 23-27 give His first answer.

So Jesus called them and spoke to them in parables: "How can Satan drive out Satan? If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. If a house is divided against itself, that house cannot stand. And if Satan opposes himself and is divided, he cannot stand; his end has come."

I like His answer. First of all, He speaks good sense. He says in effect to the officials, "Let's assume for a minute that you are right and that I cast out demons by demonic power. Doesn't that seem a little odd to you? Why would Satan want to undermine his own work? That is what you are saying." I think most fair-minded people would say Jesus scored some points with that answer.

But He did more than expose their poor thinking. He raised the stakes considerably in verse 27. In fact, no one can enter a strong man's house and carry off his possessions unless he first ties up the strong man. Then he can rob his house. In Jesus' figure of speech, the strong man is Satan.

His point is this: "I am not Satan's servant; I am Satan's superior. By setting demon-possessed people free I have entered his house, tied him up, and taken away his possessions. When I cast evil spirits out of people, I am exercising authority over the one that brings so much evil into human life. When you oppose me, you may not mean to, but you are putting yourselves on the side of that evil. When you side with me, you are aligning yourselves with the power that will utimately bring the restoration of all things. My power over evil spirits anticipates that restoration."

If you think those stakes are high, listen to the conclusion Jesus draws in the second part of His answer in verses 28-30 from what He has said. I tell you the truth, all the sins and blasphemies of men will be forgiven them. But whoever blashpemes against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven; he is guilty of an eternal sin." He said this becuase they were saying, "He has an evil spirit."

Do you remember the original accusation against Jesus, when he forgave the paralytic? "He's blaspheming." Mark did not let sleeping dogs lie. He used Jesus' words to throw that accusation back at the teachers of the law. However, Jesus' tough words were kinder than their tough words. He did not say, "You are blaspheming." He warned more than He accused. "Whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven." He left them some wriggle room, even as He discredited their accusation against Him and in the same breath warned them of how risky their accusation really was.

Jesus also did something else, not only for them, but also for the rest of us. "All the sins and blasphemies of men will be forgiven them." Not some but all. Not just the small ones but all. Not just the ones we can forgive ourselves for but also the ones we cannot bring ourselves to forgive ourselves for – all of them.

The kingdom of God means God's exercise of authority over ever-increasing circles of human life in love. Mark makes it very clear that if we want to see what God's authority and love look like under human conditions, we need to watch what Jesus does and hear what Jesus says. To watch and hear Him is to watch and hear God. Now that you have heard what He said about forgiveness, what do you think about the God of Jesus Christ?

I think He is generous past all hope. By comparison I am ashamed of my own slowness to forgive people who offend me. I think forgiveness must be enomously important in the governing of the universe, inasmuch as God makes such a point of offering His forgiveness. I think it is important to remember the connection between God's forgiveness on one hand, and repentance and confession on the other. John the Baptist taught us to remember that.

Do you remember at the opening of Mark? John preached a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins and crowds of people came to the Jordan River confessing their sins. In other words God extends His generosity to those who acknowledge they need His forgiveness and who renounce their sinful ways.

BVBC is a congregation of people characterized by a consciousness of being forgiven by God. We have acknowledged that we need His forgiveness and we have renounced our sinful ways. We are not always consistent; I wouldn't want to leave you with that impression. But we know we are inconsistent when we sin against God.

In other words we have answered the question of Mark 3: Is Jesus right or is the Jerusalem delegation right? We would say to Pharisee and Herodian, "We cannot fully appreciate the difficult position you were in; it must have been terrible. But, respectfully, we disagree, and we wish you and your heirs would change your minds about Jesus." That is our choice, but how would people then choose? What happened next in Mark 3 once again makes large issues rest on that choice. Listen to verses 31-35, as they bring Jesus' family back into the story.

Then Jesus' mother and brothers arrived. Standing outside, they sent someone in to call him. A crowd was sitting around him, and they told him, "Your mother and brothers are outside looking for you." Mark never tells us what they had come for. Maybe they were still trying to persuade Him to give up His reckless course of action and come home and make things right. We do not even know if Jesus invited them in. We only know what He said.

"Who are my mother and brothers?" he asked. Then he looked at those seated in a circle around him and said, "Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does God's will is my brother and sister and mother."

If, after hearing that, every mother held her babies a little closer and a little tighter, we could all understand. We speak glibly of radical statements. Jesus' statement in verse 35 is radical in the sense that it touches one of the roots of human life: it redefines family by introducing an alternative to one's family of origin.

Jesus' message was, "The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is near." Based on what we learned in Mark 2, Jesus was saying, "A new way of being human is on the horizon. If you want to know what it will look like, watch me." If He was right, then belonging to a family different from our family of origin would be perfectly consistent with a new way of being human. Jesus was not repudiating His family of origin, and He does not ask us to repudiate ours – unless our family of origin threatens to keep us from the kingdom of God. Then, we must choose.

When Jesus introduced an alternative to families of origin, the last words in verse 35 define the alternative. "Whoever does God's will is my brother and sister and mother." If you are looking for a list of rules for doing God's will, you look in vain in the Gospel of Mark. Verses 34-35 say, He looked at those seated in a circle around him and said, "Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does God's will is my brother and sister and mother."

Doing God's will meant choosing to be with Jesus, when voices all around were telling people to stay away from Jesus. In the context of Mark 3 it meant choosing to be with Jesus, in spite of His family, who were calling Him a mental case at best, and in spite of some very powerful people, who were calling Him Satan-possessed. In that environment people who met with Jesus ran the risk of hearing harsh words from their own families and perhaps from the authorities. You can appreciate the pressures this placed on the twelve disciples Jesus had chosen to be closest to Him.

Matters had reached a crisis in the towns and hamlets of Galilee. Social pressure and official policy were forcing people to make choices between Jesus and those who opposed Him openly. His authority not only did not go unchallenged; it was now denied altogether. He had countered with warnings of blasphemy and with the possibility of a new family structure taking shape around Him. When chapter four opens, Jesus will give His assessment of the situation for friends and foes alike. In the meantime His words at the end of Mark 3 offer again to merge our ways into His ways.

First is the way of forgiveness. As Christ's representative, I put to each of you this question: Do you believe that God has forgiven you all your sins and blasphemies? I come back again to characteristics of this congregation. We here believe that God for the sake of Jesus has forgiven us for all our sins and blasphemies.

I could say much more about why God does this for Jesus' sake, but if you did not know any more than you now know, it would be enough to receive God's forgiveness. Jesus has told us that God offers us forgiveness for all our sins and blasphemies. If you believe Jesus Christ was telling the truth, and if you are willing to acknowledge your need of forgiveness, and if you are willing to renounce your sins, then tell God that. In a moment I will give you time and help in doing that.

I have talked about this matter of forgiveness as a characteristic of this congregation. I did that, because I believe this and every Christian congregation participates in something unique. To choose to be here permanently in this circle of people, who have gathered around Christ, is to do God's will. Choosing to be here permanently implies allegiance to Jesus Christ and the new way of being human He introduced into the world.

That new way begins with repentance, confession and forgiveness. That in turn implies a willingness to learn and practice His new way of being human within this congregation and then in the world around us. What does his new way of being human look like?

One word sums it up – love. But this love goes in three directions. The First Great Commandment points our love toward God. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength (Mark 12:30). The Second Great Commandment points our love toward human beings. Love your neighbor as yourself (Mark 12:31). The Apostle John points our love away from the world. Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him (1 John 2:15).

I have given these three directions of love three different labels: worship, which is love for God; love, which is love for human beings; and detachment, which is obedience to the command not to love the world. A person who practices worship, love, and detachment is learning to love the new way of being human that Jesus introduced into the world.

These three directions of love offer a powerful counterbalance to our culture in which we are tempted to forsake Christ and in which we come away some weeks pretty beat up. They help us keep a biblical balance and a biblical perspective. They are something we do together, as the new people of God.