Call Yourself Back

June 6, 2021 • 2nd Sunday after Pentecost • Celebrating PRIDE
Reading: Mark 3:20-35 (adapted from the New Revised Standard Version)
Pastor Alexis Lillie

WOW. It isn't every day that we read a text that references Beelzelbul, or blasphemy, or eternal sin -- and here they are, all in one text. If your first thought is YIKES, you are not alone! I want to look at this text in the interpretive tradition, and use that to help us make some of our own interpretative moves, and get at the vibrancy and life-giving pieces that I think are here, but maybe buried a few layers down.

As this text starts: People don't get Jesus, and this is certainly true about his family in this passage. You’ll notice that there’s almost a story within a story here – the stuff about Jesus’ family comes at the beginning and end, and then all this other content is in between. This is something Mark loves to do. So for now, we’ll table the stuff about family and come back to it.

Of course, his family aren't the only ones that don't get him! The scribes - the religious teachers - don't get it so much that here, he gets called Satan! I think of this term, this persona, as a stand-in for all the things that are evil, and unjust, and not right. When they accuse Jesus of being Satan, all of that is heaped on Jesus.

And Jesus, again, tries to explain it to them, this time by defending himself. He uses metaphors for inner division, to show that what they're accusing him of cannot be possible. Things (a house, a kingdom) divided against themselves can't survive in-tact. Even Satan - this all-encompassing-evil persona they're accusing him of being - cannot be divided.

He says -- how can I be Satan, or, let's say for our purposes, working for all evil. How can I be? Because I am clearly also working for good! And you all have seen me! You’ve seen me heal people, feed people... And, I have TIED UP evil! I have restrained the "strong man" - this stand-in for evil - so that the forces of good can plunder the negative power at work in the world!

Jesus is saying, you can't be both things at once, not whole-heartedly anyway. You can't work against yourself and be whole.

Jesus, as he so often does, is not speaking on the surface only. But, as one commentator said, in the language of mystery. In the gospel of Mark this tendency toward mystery is even stronger.  The author ascribes to the rhetorical Greek meaning of “parable” which was synonymous with riddles, proverbs, fables. A story that is one thing on its surface but also engages symbols that point to something else

A kingdom, a house, they are symbols. They point to a body, which yes, could be the group of people that literally make up a kingdom or a house. And he's also using these terms to to refer to himself, his human body. He's saying he cannot be both of these things, both Jesus and Satan, both good and evil.

Why? Because it is not life-giving to be divided within one's self! One CANNOT STAND when that division is occurring.

Here's where I want to call in that language of mystery, the allegory, or proverb to get to the life-giving stuff. Because yes - there are the comments Jesus is making on one level, in his self-defense, explaining how he is misunderstood in his effort to create a new way, and how he is continually coming up against the status quo and trying to push his community further.

AND... I also think one of the things Jesus is up to here, is that he is speaking to the importance of internal unity, to that mystery of bringing ourselves together. To the importance of knowing yourself, refusing to acquiesce to what others think of or expect from you --
even when they think you are losing your mind!!

He is speaking to the necessity of calling yourself back to yourself. Calling any division back into the whole.

“The strong man" from our passage isn't the only one that end up bound up. While we are in no means the representation of evil and injustice symbolized by the strong man, we can be tied up within ourselves too. And what happens when the strong man is tied up and restrained? He is plundered! Which, in the case of evil being restrained and scattered, is a good thing. In the case of our inner selves being divided -- tied up and dispersed -- Jesus is telling us, it is not good. You're not going to be able to stand within yourself!

The strong man, this manifestation of evil, is restrained by goodness, by Jesus. We are bound up - and cut off from ourselves - not by Jesus! But by a whole host of things.

We can be divided within ourselves by our family of origin and other important relationships in our lives - through the mistakes of others. We can be tied up within ourselves by the cultural messaging we assimilate through osmosis. We can certainly be dispersed within ourselves by the church! There are a lot of ways that we can be separated from ourselves.

We are left being able to identify readily with these symbols -- the house, the kingdom – because we know this internal division. We resonate with feeling like we are unable to stand, plundered, and definitely NOT vibrantly alive.

As I am re-imagining this story with the language of mystery and allegory, THIS is the "eternal sin." If we, like Jesus, have God's spirit in us, then the so-called “blasphemy” of the spirit is to speak against ourselves, to be divided within ourselves. To stay bound up and plundered.

When that happens, the world does not get to enjoy the things our spirit is called to that will outlast the physicality of this body. And in that sense, the loss is eternal. The sin is eternal.

When we understand our divine wholeness this way, it really IS crucial that - as our service has been pointing toward -- we call ourselves back.

This starts with recognition, becoming aware of the ways that we ARE divided within ourselves. The ways our spirits have been wandering the earth. The places we are bound up. Even this recognition is more than many people get to over the course of a lifetime. Recognition of a divided spirit can lead us, like our poem says, on a journey that day be hours, days, years, thousands of years. And - as Jesus' story indicates - the process of calling ourselves back is often fraught, and tangled. It can be isolating, when we feel misunderstood and unseen.

Here is where I want to go back to the beginning: calling your disparate parts back, unbinding the things that have been tied up... that journey toward wholeness can fracture relationships. And, at the same time it is something that needs to be done in community. Even as the recognition, and our journey toward wholeness, can lead to breaking down of relationships, we need the support of community for the journey of recognition. So, it often leads to the necessity of creating a new family.

The author of Mark can be pretty down on the biological family - they're much in favor of creating a new, chosen, spiritual family.

Jesus' story in our passage starts with his family wanting to seize him, misinterpreting his message. It ends with a different kind family (including "sisters", which is an important reference to women being among disciples). In the ending scene, Jesus’ birth family stays literally "outside," and Jesus says the only requirement to be part of his new family is to do the will of God.

In his quest for unity -- internally and externally -- Jesus creates a new family, and removes the barriers to welcoming others into this community. The irony here is that while barriers to acceptance are being torn down, we can't begin to do the work of welcome, until we welcome ourselves and all our divided, bound up, and disparate pieces.

So, acknowledge your division. Feel the places that are tied up. Look at the rooms that have been plundered. Begin to love these things, to draw these things back into you, knowing it is an eternal process.

Knowing that, as Poet Laureate Joy Harjo says, "When you find your way to the circle, to the fire kept burning by the keepers of your soul, you will be welcomed."

Amen

(c) 2021 Alexis Lillie
All rights reserved.