St. Timothy's Episcopal Church, Aiea

From Father Peter:
Mahalo nui loa for your prayers for my recovery from Covid! I sense them (and the Paxlovid is helping too). I missed being with you so much this morning but I was able to worship with you via Facebook Live. My deepest thanks go to Nancy Chun for leading the service, and to Kurt and Laurie for serving as well. I hope to be back soon. In the meantime, if anyone is interested, here's the text of the sermon I was working on for today:
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Rev. Peter Wallace – Sermon for June 9, 2024 (Proper 5B)
“Family Matters” – Mark 3:20-35

Beloved, we’ve had some difficult losses in our St. Timothy’s ohana in the past few weeks. We pray for Lauralee in the passing of her Aunt Gladys and her mother Kitt, and for Glenn and his family in the passing of dear Luci. For the Robinson family in the loss of Winnie. And others in our extended ohana.

My mother passed away in 2006, and it was a sad but sublime experience to be with her in her hospice room as she passed from this life to the next, surrounded by her children. Not a day goes by that I don’t think of her.

In the midst of difficult times of death and loss, we tend to look back over our own lives to remember. And when we do, we realize family can be very complicated, right? We love our family members deeply, but sometimes we may not understand their life decisions or positions on issues or actions they’ve taken that we just can’t agree with.

Not long before we moved to O’ahu, Dan and I took a road trip from Atlanta to visit our own siblings in NC and WV. When we were with our siblings, we talked story about growing up. We had a chuckle or a good laugh or perhaps paused and shook our heads. The crazy aunt. Our preacher grandfather who told so many hilarious stories. Once again I heard the story about the time when I was 4—well, let’s not go there.

Family. Family is on our minds, and in our hearts. But Family can be complicated. And they can cause a lot of worry—about their health, their decisions, their bad luck, all sorts of things. And we so miss them when they are gone.

And Jesus knows this about family.

He experienced it too, as we see here in Mark 3.

My friend, seminary professor Matt Skinner, notes that Jesus generates a lot of worry in this passage. But I suppose Jesus always has.

There is a very interesting cast of characters in this passage.

First, the CROWD arrives. They keep doing this, swarming Jesus at almost every turn. He seems magnetic. They want more of Jesus. They don’t seem to be worrying about this Jesus—they’re intrigued by him.

But second, Mark says “his FAMILY” arrives, and in light of the reports they’ve been hearing about what he’s been saying and doing, they went out to “restrain”—or seize—Jesus.

Now the worrying begins. Our translation says “for people were saying, he has gone out of his mind,” but the Greek says, “for THEY were saying”—meaning his FAMILY were saying, he’s lost his mind.

Those who might know Jesus best, those who might have the most to lose if his ministry angers the people who have the power to end it — they want to take him away. For his own good-- they are fearful, worried about what might happen to him. And perhaps, to them.

It seems Jesus’s family have no other way of interpreting what he has been saying and doing ever since he went to see cousin John to get baptized. They have drawn their conclusions.

Then, Third, the SCRIBES from Jerusalem are lurking about, eager to offer their explanation of Jesus and his power. They too are worried about what Jesus is up to, and how it might affect them.

Now these Scribes were supposed to be theological know-it-alls. They represented the religious establishment, and they used their authority to hold the people in their power. This was the establishment that would eventually make sure Pilate kills Jesus by the end of the book. They now claim that Jesus is an agent of Satan, not God. So they recognize there’s a power at work in him, but they figure that power must be evil, because it doesn’t benefit them! They were all about protecting themselves, their position, so they basically damn Jesus.

Their declaration about Jesus illustrates clearly what Jesus meant when he mentions, later in this encounter, the very specific instance of unforgivable blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. The scribes dismiss the possibility that God can restore people’s lives, because they say what Jesus is doing is an evil deception! They reveal themselves as openly contemptuous of God’s work through God’s Son Jesus.

All around these scribes, they can see that Jesus is setting people free from their demons. People are experiencing wholeness and new life. Reconnecting with their dignity as God’s children. Jesus promises that sins and “whatever blasphemies” may occur are no obstacle to people’s renewal (Mark 3:28)! And yet the scribes scoff and denounce all of this as false or dangerous or evil.

How can people — these religious elite, especially! —who have grown so cynical and scornful of real, lived blessings, ever be able to experience deliverance from their own spite and nastiness, ever be able to experience freedom from the pains they have endured? Apparently they can’t. It’s tragic.

Sounds like they are committing the extraordinary kind of blasphemy Jesus talks about here (and which he distinguishes from other, forgivable blasphemies).

This is an “eternal sin” only because it reveals an entirely hardened heart, a calcified spirit; such people have seen the works of God up close in Jesus himself and yet repudiated the transformative power of God’s grace through Jesus.

Now, once these three groups — crowd, family, and scribes — find themselves brought together here in Mark 3, in these interwoven scenes, Jesus speaks. He has a few declarations of his own.

First, Jesus spends little time refuting the scribes’ accusation. It’s absurd! It makes no sense to say that Jesus’ power in casting out Satan’s demons is satanic power. That’s a house divided against itself, Jesus says, and if that’s the case, it will only crumble. So there goes that argument against him.

Jesus is far more powerful than Satan. In a quick parable about a violent home invasion he characterizes himself as the one who is able to overwhelm Satan’s reign by “tying up the strong man” and plundering the things the “man” has taken as his own. The whole Gospel of Mark, Matt Skinner says, is a story about the reign of God coming to displace another reign, but that other reign will not give up its power without a fight.

Then, Jesus’s focus returns to his family, the ones who have come to sn**ch him away from the crushing crowds, from the consequences of the harsh attacks he levels against the religious leaders, and from his dangerous visions of a battle he fights for the sake of the world.

Not only does Jesus resist the intervention of his mother, brothers, and sisters; he renounces their claim on him. They remain “outside” the crowded house, while Jesus embraces those gathered “around him” there. Those people are his true brother and sister and mother, because they are doing the will of God. They see Jesus for who he is. And they follow, without fear.

So Jesus redraws the lines of family, of belonging, saying that those who do God’s will are brothers and sisters and mother to him. And in his culture, in which family structure was so important, Jesus’ word here about creating a new family might have been shocking. It sure is shocking to us today.

And yet it also can bring great joy to some, especially those followers who find themselves separated from their own families of origin. June is Pride month, and you may hear stories of LGBTQ+ siblings who were kicked out of their own families of origin because of the way they were made, but found themselves in new families in various churches that welcomed them.

Yes, family can be complicated. The religious authorities and Jesus’ own relatives lack imagination, lack vision. They cannot figure him out, and so they attempt to label him—he’s satanic, he’s crazy—in order to quarantine him. They’re afraid of Jesus.

But Jesus keeps his focus on achieving something eternal. A forever family—one to which he invites all of us.

Now, Jesus has certainly promised good news, but he keeps insisting that we must not mistake that for comfortable news.

What’s certain here is this: the reign of God that Jesus keeps talking about is not going to be about maintaining business as usual. And if we’re part of that kingdom, if we’re truly committed to following Jesus, that affects everything in our lives.

Dear siblings, we do love our family members, warts and all.
We mourn them deeply when they leave us. We praise God for them and celebrate them.

But we also have our families of faith. Our Jesus ohana. You, and you, and you, and me together. When one suffers, we all suffer.

We share, we serve, we love. Together.

Let’s not fear Jesus, let’s trust him.

Let’s do the will of God together.
Let’s be Jesus’s brother and sister and mother.
Let’s be the family of God. The forever family…
in the name of the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit,
and of the mother, the sister, the brother.
Amen.

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Sources:
Matt Skinner, Working Preacher commentary on this text.

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