Sermon at All Saints’ Church, Whiteparish, Morning Worship -– Sunday 6th June 2021
Genesis
3:8-15; 2 Corinthians 4:13-5:1; Mark 3:20-35
Well, I feel
I’ve drawn a bit of a short straw this morning as each of the three readings
set aside for today is, I think you will all agree, quite difficult not
particularly encouraging!
First, we
have God’s discovery of the Adam and Eve’s disobedience and what is known as
“The Fall” – the moment when Adam and Eve had eaten the forbidden fruit from
the Tree of Knowledge so that they might be like God and know everything – an
upsetting of the perfect equilibrium which God had created – the perfect
world. It is also the instance in the
bible where we first come across the trickery of Satan in the shape of the
serpent who convinces Adam and Eve that no harm will come to them if they eat
the fruit. How often are we tricked in
today’s world by false promises and assurances that no harm will come to us if
we disobey?
Secondly, we
have St. Paul writing to the Christians in Corinth, that great city where sin
abounded with the inhabitants worshipping false Gods and idols and Paul anxious
to ensure that the Christian community did not disobey the commands of Jesus
however much they might be tempted to turn away from Him. Paul is reminding
them of the need to stick to the straight and narrow and that the ultimate
reward of God’s glory will far outweigh the quick fixes of others. As he puts it “we know that if the earthly
tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, as a house not made
with hands, but eternal in the heavens”.
My wife Liz
often complains about my indolence and Paul gives me a perfect answer. As we have seen in both of these readings the
temptation was a quick fix and we can all so often have that temptation –
whether it’s a sugar high or something more – we can feel good for a time but
then in the longer term we suffer the consequences. My indolence, if that is
what it is, is caused largely by my wish to ensure that I do right thing and
not rush in and then regret what I have done.
Sometimes it has also been my undoing and I have lost out on
opportunities and not “seized the day” but on other occasions waiting on or for
something has actually profited me and put me in a better place in the long
run. I can think of many cases where
that has happened and I am sure you all can to.
The third of
our readings is probably the most difficult of all. Once again we meet Satan
and the rather bizarre accusation from the scribes that Jesus is a servant of
Satan, or Beelzebul as he is called in our reading. The circumstances surrounding this biblical
narrative are that Jesus has been teaching and preaching to the crowds and much
of what he has said has been difficult for the scribes and elders to
understand. They worshipped Jahweh, the
God of Israel who was a remote entity living within the Holy of Holies in the
Temple at Jerusalem. Now here was a man, made of human flesh and bone, claiming
to be Jahweh’s son – in fact Jahweh incarnate. It’s no wonder they were
confused and their natural response was that Jesus was either mad or bad. If he was not bad, a disciple of Satan
preaching this bizarre theology, then he must be insane. Indeed, the crowd seems to have believed the
latter – that he was probably possessed of evil spirits.
It must have
been a worry to his earthly family (his mother Mary and her other sons) who we
read were called in. “Your son and brother is off his head or worse, a terrible
blasphemer” is what they were faced with.
Jesus’s
response to these accusations is that if he was demon possessed or a blasphemer
then if they actually listened to what he was saying they would understand that
he is speaking against Satan and casting our demons. Surely somebody who was working with Satan
would not be doing or saying things consistent with God’s will! He then says something very profound indeed
“If a kingdom is divided against itself, that house will not stand and if that
house is divided against itself that house will not be able to stand”. I think that passage is something we should
all learn and recall in today’s modern world.
In many countries of the world today evil authoritarian regimes thrive
through the doctrine of “divide and rule” and this can also apply to our
Christian Faith. Jesus is saying something very simple – an undivided kingdom
or house is strong and will stand up against powers that seek to destroy
it. A divided kingdom or house will
crumble.
Jesus
doesn’t stop there though. Having argued strongly that the evidence does not
support the contention that he is acting against God but against Satan he
reminds the people of his true purpose of coming down to Earth – so that sins
can be forgiven through him with a direct line to God and not through pious
ritual in the temple; prior to Jesus coming all atonement for sins was by way
of sacrifice and through the High Priest in the Temple. Now all sins could be
forgiven with one major exception – blaspheming or grieving the Holy Spirit.
Jesus is telling his listeners that this is one sin that can never be forgiven.
So what is blaspheming against the Holy Spirit or grieving the Holy
Spirit? Well, as Christians we believe
that after Jesus returned to his Father in Heaven the Holy Spirit descended at
Pentecost to all the disciples and from that moment on became available to all
who believed. The Holy Spirit is that part of the Trinity, which we celebrated
only last week, which remains here on Earth and which we readily have access to
if we have true faith – that is we believe in it and ask for it. However, once given, if we blaspheme it, that
is to deny it, then we commit a sin which cannot be forgiven. That does seem incredibly harsh but such is
its power and importance in the Trinity.
After Jesus
had said all these things it is clear that the scribes, elders and crowds were
extremely uncomfortable and called in Jesus’s mother and earthly brothers and
sisters to try and control him and take him away. We then have one of the most
difficult and misunderstood passages in the whole of the New Testament Gospels.
He asked the question “Who are my mother and brothers?” You can imagine that this must have been
exceedingly upsetting to his family, especially his mother who had given birth
to him. I wonder if at that moment she
remembered what Simeon had said to her in the Temple about their being times of
anguish with him? In this passage he
seems to be denying them. He then goes
on to explain by looking around to everybody else with him and saying “Here is
my mother and my brothers! Whoever does
the will of God is my brother and sister and mother”.
A few years
ago I discovered that this passage had caused a major rift in a family. The
daughter of a non-churchgoing family had come to Christ and joined what I can
only described as a sect. Because her
parents and siblings were not a member of that sect the elders told her that
they were now her new family and that she must cut all ties to her blood relatives. They quoted this passage in Mark as
justification.
I don’t
believe for one moment that Jesus meant to replace his own family with a new
family of supporters but to supplement it.
My interpretation is that what he is saying is that if we give our life
to him and do the will of God, it is as if all those who have also done so have
become just the same as our blood related family. We are all brothers and sisters of the one
great family of faith. In fact, although
it isn’t very Anglican to do so, we should perhaps regularly call each other
brother and sister and certainly you will often hear the term “brother or
sister in Christ”. That does not mean we
shun or deny our family but that we are all members of an even larger family of
Christian hope, faith and love.
Why don’t we
reaffirm that now to each other by turning to the person next to us and saying “You are my brother/sister in Christ and I
love you as such”.
Here is a
lovely hymn which on reflection we should perhaps have sung this morning but I
will end by reciting the first verse of it as a prayer to remind us of our
status in Christ’s church:
“Brother, sister, let me serve you
Let me be as Christ to you
Pray that I may have the grace
To let you be my servant too”.
Amen MFB/161/05062021
