sermon – Page 17

Listen

July 7, 2024 By Pr. Joseph Crippen

You and I are called to follow Christ, proclaim God’s love with our lives, and we help each other both hear that call and live it.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Seventh Sunday after Pentecost, Lect. 14 B
Texts: Mark 6:1-13; Ezekiel 2:1-5; 2 Corinthians 12:2-10

Beloved in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen

As recruiting pitches go, these stories are pretty bad.

If God’s Word today means to call us to serve God, follow the path of Christ, and proclaim God’s love with our lives, these stories are pretty counterproductive to that goal.

Ezekiel is called to speak God’s Word to people God calls “impudent, stubborn, and rebellious.” There’s a good chance, God says, they won’t listen. Paul today says his service to Christ is filled with “weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, calamities.” Seriously, he was stoned nearly to death for proclaiming Christ. And Jesus, with a near total rejection in his hometown that limited his divine abilities, sends out followers in pairs to do the same job, clearly instructing them what to do if they’re also rejected.

It’s important not to oversell a recruiting pitch. But you and I could be excused for walking away from today’s readings thinking, “thanks, but no thanks. Not the job for me.”

But we could also say we’ve not heard a call as clearly as these.

When was the last time you heard God’s actual voice calling to you, as Ezekiel did? Paul met Christ on the road to Damascus, who set him on his way. And these initial twelve were sent out by Jesus himself, God-with-us. Maybe they faced hardship and rejection, but at least they heard their calls clearly.

Those of us who’ve been Christian our whole lives, and maybe even those who came to faith later, likely say in this age that our sense of faith isn’t attached to God’s direct voice calling. Most of us don’t get visions. We rarely claim to hear God’s actual voice, and these days that might lead you to seek medical care rather than the road of discipleship.

So are these readings at all meaningful to us today? Since most of us don’t share a call story like these, and most haven’t had major setbacks and persecution because of our discipleship, maybe we’re off the hook.

But God is supposed to speak to us through Scripture, to lead us to faith and life in Christ. So don’t climb off that hook just yet.

Maybe it’s a question of how we listen for God’s call.

What are you looking for? What do you need to feel God has called you to follow Christ and proclaim Christ to the world in word and deed?

Now, this may actually distract from that question. But my call to ordained ministry was nothing like these calls today. In high school I thought medical school might be a path. But then I considered what I was good at and loved to do. I wanted to help people, and had gifts for that. But I felt I’d struggle if, as a doctor, I couldn’t save someone. I loved my church and serving in the liturgy, and the whole community of faith. I found theology exciting. I was good at public speaking. So simply on practical terms, I decided I should be a pastor. It wasn’t until years later I could say with confidence it was a call from God.

Here’s why that’s distracting: we’re not talking about career calls today. My call to Word and Sacrament ministry is no different from calls any of you have received that led you to a certain career path or life choice. All jobs, paid or not, are holy vocations, Luther taught us.

What God’s Word today is asking is much more important: how am I called, as Joseph, to be Christ in the world, beyond my paid job? And how are you called that way?

But I shared that story for the process.

I didn’t expect nor receive a vision. I didn’t think I’d hear God’s voice speak aloud. It was just practical.

And maybe that’s how we could think about our life in Christ God might seek in us, since most of us won’t have a dramatic experience like so many in Scripture.

What do you see in yourself? Are you good at some things that others aren’t? Are there things you understand and care about more than other things? Are your passions drawn to certain problems in the world? Do you have wealth you could share? Some way that you might weigh your wealth against the needs of the world, as Paul talked about last week? Do you have time that you could give to something? What if you put all this information together, along with anything else you can think of? What do you then hear from God?

Theologian Frederick Buechner describes it this way: “The kind of work God usually calls you to is the kind of work (a) that you need most to do and (b) that the world most needs to have done. … The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”[1] The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.

So each of us has some listening to do.

And let’s at least address the poor recruiting pitch.

It’s true that if you live as Christ you might get pushback from others, feel threatened, have to let go of things you’ve clung to tightly. Jesus never said that we’d have it easy. He talked about sacrificial love. He modeled vulnerability to others, even those who are evil. He called us to love our enemies and pray for them. If you and I listen, and hear, and then follow, sure, there will be hard consequences.

But since when is this an easy world to live in? We’ve got setbacks and challenges of all kinds. Not being Christ in the world doesn’t change that. Playing it safe with our wealth or time, holding onto prejudices and biases, ignoring the pain of our neighbors, doesn’t ensure a safe and happy life.

But the witness of people of Christ through the ages is there is a joy and peace and hope that comes with following, even in adversity. A sense you are part of God’s healing love that leads you through all circumstances. Following Christ might be hard, but living in this world is hard. And in following, the joy of the Spirit lives in you and fills you with peace from God and hope for the world.

And remember: we’re in this together.

We help each other listen, and see gifts and abilities in each other. We don’t serve Christ alone. None of us has all the answers we need, all the resources, all the patience, all the endurance and strength, all the vision. But in this grace of our community, together we can be a wonder of Christ’s healing in this world.

So listen for where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet. And let’s each help each other listen, because God is calling. Together, we’ll also help each other live into that calling, until God’s hope for the world’s healing comes to be.

In the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen

[1] Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking: A Seeker’s ABC, Harper and Row, 1973, pp. 118-119.

I Call to Mind

June 30, 2024 By Pr. Joseph Crippen

God’s healing is coming, and therefore we have hope.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Sixth Sunday after Pentecost, Lect. 13 B
Texts: Lamentations 3:(21)22-33; 2 Corinthians 8:7-15; Mark 5:21-43

Beloved in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen

Jeremiah found hope.

In the middle of his grief over the destruction of Jerusalem, lamentation after lamentation, verse after verse filled with sorrow over the exile of the people to Babylon, suddenly this ray of light shines through tears: “This I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: the steadfast love of God-Who-Is never ceases, God’s mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning.”

As we lament the pain and suffering of our world, can we find hope in God’s love like Jeremiah? For thousands of years, the suffering and pain people were aware of was close by, people you knew and lived with and could even help. Now we not only hold our own personal sufferings and grief, but day after day after day we’re constantly made aware of the pain of people we’ll never meet, from every corner of the world. This awareness is so recent in human history, we’re not at all evolved to handle that. But still, the news, the pictures, the grief, keep coming.

But can we, too, see a ray of God’s hope?

It seems to shine from our Gospel today.

There’s a beautiful pair of stories of Jesus, God-with-us, healing a woman sick for twelve years, raising a twelve-year-old girl from death. God’s hope and light shines through these stories.

But what about the others? How many other children in villages around the Sea of Galilee died that year whose parents never found this joy? How many women and men suffered from long-term disease that year (just think of cancer), and didn’t find Jesus in a crowd and touch his cloak? God’s mercy seems limited.

And that’s before we ask about the children of Gaza and Israel. About Ukrainian and Sudanese children. And adults. Caught up in the evil of war and violence and being killed day after day. Is there hope for God’s healing mercy in these stories that gives hope for today’s children and vulnerable people?

Our faith tradition commonly doesn’t lean into these stories of healing.

At least when it comes to our own expectations. Lutherans have always been a little leery of expecting God’s healing of our own disease, let alone healing all that ails this world. We’re not raised to expect miracles either on an individual or a global scale as some Christians are. It is enough, we seem to say, that we name these things before God in prayer. But we’re usually not expecting to be blessed like these parents or this woman.

But what if the hope we’re seeking comes from learning to pray with trust?

This father didn’t know if Jesus would heal his daughter, but he asked. He pleaded repeatedly that Jesus come and do something. This woman reached out and touched Jesus’ cloak, thinking it would be enough. They risked expecting God to heal in Jesus.

So what if we set aside our rationality a little when we prayed and simply, whole-heartedly, expected God to bring healing to those who need it? God still might not heal that person or situation as we ask. Fine. But maybe it would give us more hope to remember that sometimes God does. What if we could learn not to expect disappointment?

And what if we believed God’s Word that God deeply grieves for the children of this world, for those vulnerable to others’ evil and violence and oppression? What if we prayed for God’s healing in the Middle East, in Africa, in Ukraine, and actually expected God might move leaders to end war? Jeremiah didn’t have any evidence that this pain and suffering was nearing an end. But he clung to a hope that God was a God of love and healing.

Holding that hope, we can also learn about other ways God heals.

We have witnesses across the ages who asked for God’s healing, whether individual or collective, who didn’t receive exactly what they prayed for. For every fall of the Berlin wall and ending of apartheid in peace, there are so many wars that end only when one side has died so much they can’t go on. For every miraculous healing there are thousands who succumb to their diseases.

But people who learned to trust in God witness to a deeper healing in the face of adversity, a peace in their hearts even if their world is collapsing around them or their body failing. A sense that their lives, and the lives of their community and beyond, are in God’s love no matter the circumstances.

That’s a healing we can also pray for and trust we will receive. And find hope.

There’s one more thing.

The people of Corinth didn’t have the internet. They had no idea about the suffering of the Christians in Jerusalem. They had no idea that their Macedonian neighbors had given well beyond what they could afford for Paul to bring back to Jerusalem to aid in that suffering.

But Paul – as we heard today – made them aware of all this, just as we’re now aware of suffering far away. And Paul invited them to be a part of God’s healing.

This is also where we find hope. We are part of God’s healing mercy for the world. For our loved ones. For our neighbors. Now that you know, like the Corinthians, what others are doing to help, you can find a way to be of help. Now that you know, like the Corinthians, that others are in need, you can offer yourself to be a part of their hope.

Because this only works for God when we all share this ministry together. Macedonians, Corinthians, you, me. God needs more than one or two, God needs all to join together to be a part of God’s healing mercy in the world.

In the midst of lamenting the pain in the world, Jeremiah calls this to our minds.

And now you can call it to your mind, and therefore have hope: “the steadfast love of the Triune God never ceases, God’s mercies never end, they are new every morning.

It is good, Jeremiah says, that one should wait patiently for the salvation of God. Because that salvation will come to you. And it is good, Paul says, that one should also be a part of that healing of God. Because you are critical to it. And this is how God’s mercies are renewed every morning.

So this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope.

In the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen

Questions Matter

June 23, 2024 By Vicar at Mount Olive

Answers are important, but questions matter more — our questions for God, like “Do you not care that we are perishing?” and God’s questions for us, like “Why are you still afraid?”

Vicar Lauren Mildahl
The Fifth Sunday after Pentecost, Lect. 12 B
Texts: Job 38:1-11; Mark 4:35-41

God’s beloved, grace to you and peace in the name of the Father, and of the ☩ Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The gospel reading today reminds me of an improv game that I remember watching on “Whose Line is it, Anyway?”.

The game is called “Questions Only,” and in it, the players must act out a scene off the top of their heads, but they are only allowed to speak in questions. So, it might go something like this:

Imagine a scene is set in a restaurant, one player might ask: “Are you ready to order?”

The other player can’t say yes or no, but they might respond with a question like: “What are the specials?”

“Can’t you read the board?”

“Would I like the BLT?”

“Do you like Bacon, Lettuce and Tomato?”

“Who doesn’t?”

And it can go on and on like that until someone can’t think of another question or accidentally answers.

It’s harder than you might think and the joy of it, I think, is when a player messes up. Not only because the mistakes tend to be pretty silly, but also because the format of question after question after question builds its own kind of tension, which can’t be resolved until one of the players finally makes a mistake and offers some kind of resolution.

And, at least in Mark’s telling, it almost feels like Jesus and the disciples on the boat are playing their own mini game of “Questions Only.”

When the storm blows up, the disciples ask Jesus: “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” Jesus doesn’t answer them directly, but after he calms the storm, asks: “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?” And, like good improv players, the disciples don’t answer this question, but respond with a question of their own which they ask to one another: “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?”

Question after question after question – but the answers are left unwritten. The sea is calmed, but the tension isn’t resolved.

And it reminded me of a quote from Rabbi Edwin Goldberg, who wrote that when it comes to studying scripture: “Answers are important, but questions matter more.”¹

Faithfully seeking God is not about knowing the answers, it’s about the questions.

And nowhere is that more poignantly demonstrated than in the book of Job.

The entire plot of the book of Job hangs on one of the most difficult questions of human life: if God is good then why is there suffering? And famously, “the answer” that God gives at the end, isn’t an answer at all. Just more questions hurled at Job from the whirlwind:

“Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?”

“Who laid its cornerstone when the morning stars sang together?”

“Who shut in the sea when it burst out from the womb?”

And we only heard the first part, it goes on and on with more and more questions like this for three more chapters! The questions are meant to enlarge Job’s perspective. To help him glimpse a God who is too big for storms and whirlwinds, and much too big for simple, declarative answers! God is beyond the declarative – beyond static description. The mystery of God’s being and reality can only be glimpsed in questions, in shifting images and dynamic metaphors–in a tension that can’t be resolved. It’s the same idea that Augustine observed, when it comes to God, he wrote: “If you understand, then it isn’t God.”

Which, to be honest, can be frustrating.

It can even hurt to be reminded of our smallness, of our helplessness in the face of a chaotic universe and a God we can’t begin to comprehend. And it sure doesn’t stop us from asking different versions of the same question from Job.

“Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” That question the disciples ask in the boat sends a shiver down my spine.

Because it’s the same question I’ve wanted to ask, during the storms I’ve weathered in my life, whenever I’ve watched whirlwinds swirl around my loved ones.

“God, don’t you care that we are dying?”

“Don’t you care that we are being gunned down in grocery stores and in Gaza?”

“Don’t you care that we are drinking polluted water and choking on toxic air?”

“Don’t you care that we are so lonely, so hurt, so hopeless that we are killing ourselves?”

“Don’t you care that we are dying?”

These are the hard questions that I think. I wrestle with them. I rage over them. But I don’t often speak them.

We’ve been taught not to speak these kinds of questions, especially not from the pulpit. Not to betray any kind of lack of faith, any doubt in God’s goodness. We’re taught to say “Oh sure, I know that God cares,” we’re taught to pray on the assumption that God cares enough to listen, we’re taught to give the good Sunday School answers and never to flat out ask the question. “God, don’t you care?”

Maybe because we are afraid to. What if we ask and God answers no? What if God says: “Your mind cannot even contain me. I am the question that cannot be answered. I am the storm and the stillness, I am the thunder and the tempest and the whirlwind and the fire, I AM THAT I AM. How could I care for a speck like you?”

That’s what our deepest, darkest fears whisper to us. So, it feels safer to shove the question down in our hearts and fake an easy faith that we wish we felt.

But the disciples didn’t do that.

They were terrified and they asked the question out loud: “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?”

And Jesus doesn’t answer directly. He doesn’t say, “Of course I care, how could you even ask that?”

Instead he calms the storm.

We can ask. We can ask the hard questions.

Because God speaks from the whirlwind. Because God’s love is as big as God’s power and as big as God’s self. Because answers are important but questions matter more.

The questions we ask God. And the questions God asks us.

That’s what those four chapters of questions that God asks Job show us. They show us how much God cares. How much God cares for the Earth, right down to its foundations. How much God cares for the sea, who God calms and swaddles with clouds. And if we kept reading in these chapters we’d see more questions that show in beautifully strange detail how much God cares for all creation.

“Where is the way to the dwelling of light?” God asks.

“Have you entered the storehouses of the snow?”

“Do you know when mountain goats give birth?”

God cares. God cares so deeply. God cares for every photon and snowflake and baby goat. And cares for you. Cares enough to invite you into wonder. Into mystery. Into tension that cannot be resolved.

God cares enough to ask the hard questions of you.

“Why are you still afraid?” Jesus asks.

So often, we read this as a rebuke of the disciples, but if you go back and look again, it’s the wind and the sea that Jesus’ rebukes and commands, not the disciples. He doesn’t say “Don’t be afraid.” He asks them: “Why are you still afraid?”

I bet Jesus knew the answer. I mean, it seems pretty obvious. But it wasn’t about the answer. Answers are important but questions matter more.

Because the question is connection. Relationship. It’s a chance for the disciples, and for us, to search our hearts for where fear is coming from. It’s an invitation to swap that fear for faith. Faith in the God who cares enough for us to ask.

Why are we still afraid? Engaging with that question is scary in itself. And we’re probably never going to be able to answer it fully. Never going to be able to resolve the tension. But faith isn’t about knowing the answer. It’s about opening wide our hearts, and asking more questions.

In the name of the Father, and of the ☩ Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

^{1. https://reformjudaism.org/learning/torah-study/torah-commentary/answers-are-important-questions-matter-more}

Joyful Unknowing

June 16, 2024 By Pr. Joseph Crippen

Growing as Christ, gaining God’s vision, is a gift of God, a mystery that grows in you even as you learn the skill and craft of being Christ in this world

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Fourth Sunday after Pentecost, Lect. 11 B

Texts: Mark 4:26-34; 2 Corinthians 5:6-17

Beloved in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen

This past Lent, in our Sunday rite of confession, we asked God to call us “from certainty to faith.”

The opposite of faith is not doubt. The opposite of faith is certainty. To believe you know all that needs knowing. To know you’re right and another is wrong.

But what about this sower? Jesus asks. They cast their seeds and then live their life. They go to bed at night, and get up in the morning, and the seed grows. As if the earth produces the stalk, the head, the full grain, all by itself. Even the sower doesn’t understand how.

Every farmer I’ve known has this deep awareness of uncertainty. Weather can change, plants can struggle, yet every spring there’s a green tint of hope in the once barren field. Farmers know about faith, about living in uncertainty, because very little of their life is certain.

So what about them? Jesus asks. Can you learn anything from them?

Paul has a beautiful mystery of growth today, too.

Paul says that in Christ we’re given a completely new point of view. We normally see the world and others through our eyes, our human perspective. But now we see through God’s eyes, as God sees.

So we look at the world as Christ, Paul says, and see a new creation in every human being. We look and see that all that is old is becoming new, all that is broken is being repaired, all that is wounded is being healed. We see hearts beating with God’s heart and bringing life and love to the world.

New things have come into being in Christ, Paul rejoices, and we know it and can see it. Because now we see with God’s eyes.

But hold on, you say. I don’t know how to see that way. To see every person as God’s image, or to see hope in the despair of our world, or to see God’s love moving. It’s like you’re talking about a great tree that gives life and shelter and all I can see is barely a seed.

And this week I was tempted just to encourage you to work on that.

A sower has to learn the skills and ways of that vocation. So does a metalworker or mechanic. Or a doctor or teacher. To do anything well, we need to be taught, we need to practice, we need to work at our craft.

So we could consider the life in Christ as a craft to learn, a way to practice, a skill to hone. It is in loving, and trying to love, that we become loving. It is in forgiving and praying for those who hurt us that we become forgivers.

And if you want to see with God’s eyes, you could work on that, too. You could learn to pay attention to how you see others. You could embrace God’s Word and learn from Scripture how God’s vision works, and try to embody that. You could be taught by others, be shaped by effort and prayer, and learn to see as God sees.

And that’s a good goal. A worthy effort. Except Jesus has a deeper understanding of how you will become like Christ. It’s the mystery of these two parables.

Jesus says the growth comes from God, and you don’t have to understand how.

This way of being Christ, of seeing as God, loving as God, is a mysterious, miraculous thing that’s really hard to understand. You look at yourself and see a small seed, nothing worth mentioning. You look at the world and see nothing different.

But take heart, Jesus says. God takes what is tiny and unimportant and grows it into something huge. A seed becomes a protective tree that provides shelter and shade. Your eyesight develops into the new vision from God’s eyes, not yours, so you can see the new creation God is making. Even you are being made a new creation, while you go to bed and wake up and go to bed and wake up, day to day to day.

You don’t have to understand it, Jesus says. Just trust it. Trust the Spirit is in you, making you new, giving you growth and life. So you become that protective tree that cares for your neighbors and your world. So you see, as God sees, the precious image of God in everyone you see or know. Even your enemy. Even those you despise. Even yourself.

And it is a good plan to also learn the craft as you are able.

The sower knew how to cast the seeds. And the sower knew how to wait: they weren’t digging up the seeds every few days to see if anything was happening. They knew their craft, their way, their practice. But they also knew to trust the mysterious growth only God can do.

So learn the craft of being Christ. That’s why we study and talk with each other. Each of us has different experiences and insights with God’s vision, God’s point of view, and we can help each other.

And learning the way of Christ, practicing it, honing your skills, will help you be open to the new paths the Spirit calls from you. It will make you eager, not afraid, to try something new as Christ, to step a little further into God’s vision and dream.

And it will help you see that growing tree in you when you might not have before.

And this will be your hope.

Just as with the sower. Because if you see the shoots of this new vision growing up in you, it’s like the germinating seeds appearing above the soil. It’s not fully there yet, but you know it’s coming. When you see it growing in your neighbor in this community, you find the joy that they, too, are becoming Christ.

So do the work you can, go to bed, get up – and trust God is at work in you doing the actual growth. And how this works? None of us understand.

But you know what? With the eyes of faith God gives, you’ll see it. The whole world will.

In the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen

The Real Blasphemy

June 9, 2024 By Vicar at Mount Olive

The scribes thought Jesus might be using the power of a demon, but spiritual evil can’t produce life and wholeness and community–that’s what the Holy Spirit does.

Vicar Lauren Mildahl
The Third Sunday after Pentecost, Lect. 10 B
Texts: Genesis 3:8-15; Mark 3:20-35; also Luke 6:27-28 and Romans 12:21

God’s beloved, grace to you and peace in the name of the Father, and of the ☩ Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

It’s only chapter 3, but Jesus has been very busy!

So far in Mark’s gospel, Jesus has been baptized and has seen the heavens torn apart and Spirit descending on him like a dove, he has withstood the temptation of the devil in the wilderness, and has come out proclaiming that “the reign of God has come near.” He has called the fishermen Simon Peter and Andrew and the sons of Zebedee, to leave their boats and follow him. He has cast out demons, healed the fever of Peter’s mother-in-law, and healed a man with skin disease. He has forgiven the sins of a paralytic man who was lowered through the roof by his friends, and also healed his paralysis. He has called Levi the son of Alphaeus, and has eaten with tax collectors and sinners. He hasn’t fasted when he was supposed to, and he has plucked grain and healed a withered hand on the Sabbath when he wasn’t supposed to. And he has gathered crowds so enormous that he had to preach to them from a boat off shore and he has found time in there somewhere to appoint the twelve apostles.

No wonder Jesus went home for a rest!

But he doesn’t get one. For one, the house is too crowded with followers for him even to sit down to get a bite to eat. And for another, some scribes, some religious authorities, have come down from Jerusalem and started throwing out accusations that Jesus is possessed by, or even in league with, spiritual evil.

“He has Beelzebul,” they say, “and by the ruler of the demons he casts out demons.”

Which can seem, to us, like a ridiculous thing for them to say.

Demons don’t tend to be part of our daily vocabulary. When was the last time you talked about Beelzebul the Lord of Flies? And even the more familiar figure Satan is more likely to inspire ridicule than terror. Our cultural image of the Devil is one of red tights and a silly goatee and horns and a pitchfork and that makes it all the easier to mock anyone who starts talking about the Devil or demon possession.

Oh those silly scribes. Imagine believing in Beelzebul. Imagine worrying about the Devil.

And I don’t want to get too bogged down in spiritual metaphysics. The fact of the matter is that the people of Jesus’ day thought about the underlying forces of the universe very differently from us. Our instinct, so often, is to lean away from the spiritual and toward the scientific. But what we assign to the random chance of a chaotic universe, the people of Jesus’ day usually assigned to spirits, busy at work in the world for good or for evil. But this pre-scientific worldview – that’s not what makes this accusation ridiculous.

Because though we may think of them in different ways and call them by different names, we do know the forces of evil. And they aren’t silly.

We know the hurts that turn into hate – the houses divided against themselves.

We know the fears that fuel isolation and violence.

We know the voids so vast and empty that they begin to consume everything.

We know the greed that destroys and sucks dry in the name of amassing more, and more, and more.

We know the spiritual evil that surrounds us. That possesses us. That binds us. That plunders us.

To use the metaphor that Jesus uses, we know the strong man that lives in our house.

And, like these scribes, we know what it’s like to think that the strong man’s game is the only game in town.

When these critics of Jesus thought of power, they thought of the strong man’s power, the power they had experienced at the hands of their oppressors. That was the kind of power they knew – the power to make others afraid and poor and hopeless. That was the kind of power that changed things.

And here was Jesus – changing all kinds of things.

So, it must be “by the ruler of demons that he was casting out demons,” they thought. Jesus must be fighting fire with fire, wielding the weapons of the strong man. That must be where this power was coming from.

And, you know, it is tempting to use the strong man’s power.

It’s tempting to want it and to even think that maybe even some good could come from it.

It’s tempting to think that if that one guy you can’t stand was just out of the way, that then you might have peace.

It’s tempting to think that if there was just one more zero at the end of your bank account balance, that then you could afford to be generous.

It’s tempting to think that if that one person who wronged you were shamed and shunned and hurt, that then you might be healed.

It’s tempting to think that if you just eat that good-looking fruit that the snake is offering, that then you might be like God.

It’s tempting to think that you could fight fire with fire, that you could destroy the master’s house with the master’s tools.

Even Jesus was tempted.

But it’s a fantasy. In fact, it’s ridiculous. Actually ridiculous to think that you could use hate to heal. That fear or greed or violence could produce love or joy or peace.

That’s the real blasphemy.

The real unforgivable sin. Not unforgivable because it is so heinous or because God’s forgiveness has limits. But unforgivable because there is no forgiveness in the world of the strong man. There is no power to redeem or to reconcile. Just hurt upon hurt, hate upon hate, centuries of division and anger and revenge and plunder.

And that’s not the reign of God. That’s not what life in the Holy Spirit looks like. Life in the Holy Spirit looks like everything that Jesus has been so very busy doing over these three chapters. It looks like wholeness: healing fevers and skin diseases and paralysis and withered hands. It looks like redemption: forgiving sins and facing those life-sucking demons so that life can flourish every day of the week. It looks like community: reaching out to those on the margins, to the poor and the outcast and to traitors and the immoral, calling them and gathering everyone in a crowd so big and so brimming with new life and hope and joy in the reign of God, that the house is overflowing.

Wholeness, redemption, community: you can’t get those using the power of the strong man.

You can’t get life by wielding the weapons of Beelzebul or Satan or Demons or whatever you want to call the forces that hate and hurt and destroy. You can’t fight fire with fire. That’s the real blasphemy.

You fight fire with water. You fight hate with love. You fight fear with joy. You fight separation with connection. You fight death with life. And you end wars by waging peace.

This is what Jesus desperately wanted the scribes to understand – wanted all of us to understand – that when you are drenched in the Holy Spirit, when the Holy Spirit courses through you – then you start doing what the world thinks is the most ridiculous thing of all: you “Love your enemies; do good to those who hate you; bless those who curse you; pray for those who mistreat you.” You won’t “be overcome by evil but [will] overcome evil with good.”

And you will start catching glimpses of the reign of God.

There is spiritual evil in our world. We know it. But we do not lose heart. Jesus has overcome the world, has tied up the strong man, and freed us life in the Spirit.

Freed us from blasphemy. Freed us to fight fire with water.

In the name of the Father, of the ☩ Son, and of the Holy Spirit.