3rd Sunday after Pentecost

Grace be to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

As soon as I read the assigned Bible readings for this Sunday, there was one phrase from the gospel that would not let me go: If a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand.

That verse got stuck in my mind. A house divided against itself cannot stand. The more that verse took hold in my brain, the more stories caught my attention that bear this out.

For example, I listened to a podcast about sects and cults. They were talking about one group that is prepping for the apocalypse by stocking up on non-perishable food and other supplies. Their idea is that they can hunker down by themselves and save themselves through Armageddon.

The podcast guest pointed out that this tactic is really flawed. Sooner or later, she said, you will run out of food, and then what? Then you need to know your neighbors, need to find out who has what skills that will help everyone survive: who knows how to grow grain, who knows how to work with leather and make shoes, who knows how to suture a wound, etc.

If you shut yourself off from everyone else, you will not make it. If your house is divided from everyone else, it will not stand.

Sunday afternoon, I called my parents in Germany. My father told me an interesting story about the 1912 summer Olympics in Sweden. Not having made it into advanced rounds, Russia and Germany faced each other in a consolation match.

Now, Russia at the time had two preeminent soccer clubs, Moscow and St. Peterburg. The two were bitter rivals. So bad was their rivalry that they asked the Olympic committee if they could send two teams, one from each club. The request was denied. And so a team made up half of Moscovites and half of St. Petersburgers went to Sweden.

Germany fielded a weak team that year and was expected to lose to Russia big time. Yet the members of the two Russian clubs hated each other so much, they refused to play with each other, didn’t pass the ball to each other, didn’t assist each other. In the end, Germany won the match 16 – 0, the biggest defeat of a Russian soccer team ever. A house divided cannot stand.

Another story that came to mind is President Abraham Lincoln using this line in a speech on the eve of the Civil War. He was warning congress to find a solution to the slavery issue because a house divided cannot stand; a nation divided ends up in disaster. And it did.

Which brings us to today. Many people compare the current political divides to the atmosphere prior to the Civil War. Some fear and some threaten a new civil war. The divide between the two major parties has cost this nation dearly already: congress is stuck and unable to react to new realities with new legislation; confidence in our legal system and even the supreme court is eroding; the press is under attack.

On a personal level, people that used to be friends don’t talk to each other anymore; whenever you meet someone for the first time, there is tension until you figure out where that person stands politically; in fact, my young adult kids tell me they ask that question on first dates, and if the divide is too great, there won’t be a second date.

Nobody likes it being this way. Nobody likes the tone of politicians and newscasters when they go after the other side. Nobody likes the tensions in families, workplaces, and churches whenever politics come up. Plus, whenever those in power are caught up in their own games, those who end up suffering are the poor, the marginalized, and the environment.

It's not a good situation.

A house divided cannot stand.

What are we called to do about it? Let’s see what Jesus is saying to us and modeling for us in today’s gospel story.

So far in Mark’s gospel account, Jesus has called disciples, has healed many people and cast out many demons, and has taught the crowds who flock to him for words of grace and acceptance. Last week, we heard how Jesus angered the Pharisees by not observing strict sabbath rules. Yet the demons he casts out call Jesus ‘Son of God’ and people come from all over the be in the presence of this healing rabbi.

Neither Jesus’ family nor the authorities know quite what to make of Jesus. But they do know that they don’t like what is going on.

Jesus’ mother and siblings come with the plan of taking Jesus home and sitting on him. They are embarrassed by his ministry. “People are saying, ‘He has gone out of his mind.’” People are saying – oh the power of public opinion! The family is afraid Jesus has gone crazy. Insane. Off his rocker. They are trying to stage an intervention and get Jesus home where they can control him.

The authorities accuse Jesus of being demon possessed. He must be in cahoots with Satan, they say.

Jack Rogers once said that we tend to think of those who disagree with us as either ‘ignorant’ or ‘evil’, because what we believe is so obviously right. That’s exactly what is happening to Jesus here; he was called either insane or diabolical.

There is so much of that kind of talk going on in the public sphere today. People call each other all kinds of names, most falling into one of these two categories. The one who disagrees with them is either stupid, crazy, dumb, uneducated, uninformed, etc., or he or she is wicked, engaged a witch hunt, out to destroy the nation out of evil intent.

Nothing good or constructive comes from such name calling.

This is how Jesus reacts to being called insane and diabolical: “He called them to him and spoke to them in parables.” Jesus doesn’t avoid conversation, he initiates it. He calls the very people who maligned him to come and talk to him.

Next, Jesus asks them a question. A real question. Not something like, “Are you nuts?” That’s not a question that opens conversation. Rather, Jesus asks a question that takes seriously what the scribes have just said about him. He is willing to look at their opinion and accusation with them.

Jesus then goes through a couple of points, arguing that he is not working with Satan, but rather is binding up Satan in order to free everyone Satan had plundered. He invites his opponents to examine their beliefs from a logical perspective.

Finally, Jesus brings up the topic of forgiveness. All sins will be forgiven, he says. Not might be, but will be. Forgiveness is part of how Jesus deals with his opponents. He holds out his own forgiveness and the hope that eventually, forgiveness will bridge the divide between them.

It’s in this context that Jesus utters these puzzling words: “Whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit can never have forgiveness, but it guilty of an eternal sin.”

I looked into several commentaries to figure out what Jesus means.

In Jesus’ presence, people are healed, people are delivered from demons, people are given hope, people experience wholeness and peace. Yet the scribes scoff at it all and call it evil. These are the religious experts who should be the first to recognize God’s grace at work, but their minds are so stuck they can’t embrace it. Professor Skinner writes this, “The extraordinary kind of blasphemy of which Jesus speaks (and which he distinguishes from other, forgivable blasphemies) is an “eternal sin” only because it reveals an entirely calcified mind; such people have seen the works of God up close in Jesus himself and yet repudiated the transformative power of God’s grace.”

They reject God’s gift of forgiveness. They don’t think they need forgiveness. Jesus says what cannot be forgiven is the refusal to be forgiven, because the forgiveness offered by the Spirit in Jesus Christ is mocked as evil. Sin against the Spirit occurs when I say, “I refuse to acknowledge that I need forgiveness.”

In other words, Jesus calls us to humility. Jesus calls us to admit that sometimes we are wrong; sometimes we mess up; sometimes we need to ask for forgiveness; sometimes we have to change our mind on something; sometimes we need to be transformed by the grace of the Holy Spirit active in Christ, our Savior.

Let’s sum up what we learn from Jesus today when it comes to dealing with adversaries who want to write us off as insane or evil, or those whom we are tempted to write off likewise:

Seek conversation with them.

Ask questions to draw them into conversation.

Engage their points and look at them logically.

Be willing to forgive.

Be humble and know that we could be wrong and in need of forgiveness.

This is really helpful. The more of us follow these guidelines, the more we can bring healing to our communities.

Talking about communities: Jesus is setting new boundaries for who belongs to the family of God: those who do the will of God. One commentator said this: We always heard the adage, “The family that prays together stays together.” But here Jesus says, “Those who pray together are family.”

So let’s pray. Pray for one another. Pray for those with different opinions. Pray for the wholeness of our nation, our families, our congregation. Pray that we will never be a house divided, but instead a house united in doing the will of God by humbly seeking conversation with all of God’s children. Amen.