Prophetic Living

Then He began to say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” (Luke 4.21)

In Touch with God

The words “prophecy” and “prophetic” get kicked around a lot—so often that we assume we know what they mean without pausing to contemplate their true definitions. In secular terms, they’re synonymous with foresight. A prophecy is a prediction, plain and simple. In scriptural and spiritual terms, however, it’s something far more complex and urgent. When the Bible introduces prophecy—that is, words delivered by prophets—it wants us to understand God is speaking. Often it’s very specific about this. Dozens of passages are prefaced with phrases like, “The word of the Lord came to the prophet,” and what follows is framed in quotation marks. But more often the prophets speak directly, using their own words to express insight they received while communing with their Maker. And we should be very clear here. They’re not speaking for God, putting words in God’s mouth to serve their agendas. Indeed, it’s the opposite: God puts words in their mouths to serve God’s purpose. Sometimes prophecy comes in promissory form, as God makes covenants or tells the people what’s in store for them. But just as many, if not more, prophecies focus on the here and now: This is what’s happening. This is what led up to it. This is the right response. This is what you should avoid to prevent its recurrence.

So there’s a lot more to prophecy than forecasting the future. Prophecy in its truest, purest sense is God’s revealed word. We can even go so far as saying that prophecy is God’s active presence revealed to us, and in us, through Scripture. As with prophets of old, our communion with God—made possible by prayer, meditation, fellowship, and Bible study—puts us in touch with God. In return, God uses these same tools to stay in touch with the world through us. The closer we get to God, the better we see what God wants us to see, the better we hear what God wants us to hear, and the better we activate God’s presence in our lives. We are all equipped to live prophetically—to think, behave, and speak in keeping with the vision and principles first conveyed in Scripture. Thus, when we speak of “prophecy,” we’re not talking about crystal balls and psychic intuition. Prophetic living happens in the now. And constant awareness of our prophetic ability is vital to the work God calls us to do.

The Way It Always Goes

In Sunday’s Gospel (Luke 4.14-21), we watch Jesus model prophetic living. The scene is decidedly electric. After being away from Nazareth for some time to start His ministry, Jesus returns. Reports of His success precede Him. So the home crowd’s expectations are high. The synagogue is packed. Everybody’s eager to see what Jesus will do. But they’ve not been around Jesus lately and don’t understand that He doesn’t play into the star thing. It’s not about Him. It’s about the God Who sent Him and the work He’s been given. In fact, Luke is very clear that Jesus attends Sabbath services because it’s “His custom” to participate in weekly worship. (v16) There’s no mention of the disciples or an entourage of fans. Jesus enters His local synagogue as He’s always done: alone, unceremoniously, like any other worshiper. Apparently the congregation has invited Him to read a passage of Scripture and He's respectfully consented.

The big moment arrives. Jesus opens Isaiah and reads the first two verses of Chapter 61:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because God has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.

Then He sits down. He’s done. Show’s over—until Jesus notices everyone staring at Him. This is great theater. The tension is sliceable. He responds with a straightforward comment: “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing,” (v21) Unfortunately, Sunday’s reading truncates the story and dilutes its point. If we read on, we get a clearer sense of what Jesus means by how He behaves. The initial reaction is what one expects from people feeling proud of a local kid who’s done well. “How nice!” they say. Then the gravity of His words sinks in. Did He just declare Himself a prophet—and not any prophet, but one on par with Isaiah? The murmuring begins and the most readily outraged in the crowd ask, “Isn’t this Joseph’s son? He’s no prophet!” In what will become a signature strategy, Jesus uses their skepticism to His advantage. He answers, “It’s not enough that I tell you this? Do I really have to work wonders here, like elsewhere, to convince you? That’s the way it always goes: no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown.” He cites two examples of prophets who were obliged to minister to strangers because their own people rejected them. Chaos breaks out. No one realizes that their reaction ratifies His prophetic bona fides. Instead, they decide to throw Him off a cliff and be done with Him. In the ensuing uproar, Jesus simply walks away, leaving them to their hostility and doubt. Now the show’s really over. As far as we know, Jesus never returns to Nazareth again.

Alive in Us

In John 14.12, Jesus tells the disciples, “The one who believes in Me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these.” Jesus’s ability to live prophetically—to know God’s vision, to accept God’s calling, and to make God’s presence known in the here and now—is also available to us. The Spirit of the Lord is upon our lives, too. The same words from Isaiah that define Jesus’s role and responsibilities also define what we must do. We too are spiritually equipped to declare God’s favor to the poor, the captive, the blind, and the oppressed. We too are qualified vessels through which God’s love, truth, and justice flow into a world of hatred, deception, and inequality. This great gift of prophetic living isn’t given to launch us to stardom. It’s not designed to exalt us above those who’ve not yet figured out that it’s possible. Prophetic living is simply allowing God’s Word to come alive in us so that all we think, say, and do activates God’s presence wherever we may be.

One final observation: When we honor our prophetic calling, those who know us best will be the least likely to accept us. They’re too focused on who we are—on our weaknesses and vanities—to believe we can become what God invites us to be. They may even question the legitimacy of our faith with such virulence they’d rather we were dead than doing the work God calls us to do. That’s the way it always goes. But the Word of God tells us differently. The Spirit of the Lord is upon us. God has anointed us to proclaim the good news of God’s love, acceptance, and freedom. Knowing that is enough to drown out the naysayers. Do God’s work. Speak God’s Word. Activate God’s presence. Leave the skeptics to their outrage. Live prophetically.

To live prophetically is to become vessels through which God’s love, truth, and justice flow into a world of hatred, deception, and inequality.

Too Much

“If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life maimed than to have two hands and to go to hell.” (Mark 9.43)

Centipede

I left college brimming with lofty ambitions and no earthly idea how to make them happen. I kept falling into low-paying positions—private high school English teacher, church music director, freelance movie critic, among others—that required taking odd jobs to stay afloat. After writing a Christmas pageant for my church, a gospel theater troupe engaged me to write a contemporary musical they could produce in Los Angeles and hopefully tour the country performing. They gave me the premise: three talented sisters get famous singing for their local congregation and must deal with tensions between faithfulness and worldly success. I thought it smacked a little too much of Dreamgirls. (The L.A. Times critic agreed in his unflattering review). But it was good money. So I threw myself into cranking out a script worth every cent I’d been paid. In my original version, every imaginable gospel stereotype turned up to, as the Bard put it, “strut his hour upon the stage.”

As we began assembling scenes we’d rehearsed separately, it was all too apparent I’d written too much by half. The first complete run-through timed out at nearly four hours. The producer and director sat down with me to discuss drastic cuts needed to trim the show’s length. They gently assured me they loved everything I’d written. Yet as good as it was, it wasn’t good enough to fasten an audience to its seats until midnight. “Folks will start walking out at 10:30 and by the time it’s over there won’t be a soul in the place,” the producer said, reminding me one or two nights of that would hasten the show’s untimely end. The problem was, I’d fallen in love with every character, every scene and song, every point I wanted the play to make. 

Once it became clear I would push back on the cuts they suggested, the director threw up his hands. “If you had a baby that with 10 arms and legs, would you force it live like a centipede? Or would you have its extra limbs removed so it could succeed?” he asked. Then he said, “These kids have worked really hard to get this play up on its feet. Are you ready to destroy that just so you can hang on to ideas you love so much?” I took out my red pen on the spot and hacked away, sadly—yet firmly—accepting losses that, not five minutes before, seemed too terrible to contemplate. Despite the Times’ reservations, The High Life was hit in L.A. and enjoyed a profitable East Coast tour that helped pay my rent for a couple of years.

Faith Suicide

Sunday’s Gospel (Mark 9.38-50) resounds with echoes of my backstage episode. The disciples come to Jesus in alarm. Someone outside Jesus’s tight-knit circle has been touched by the gospel flame and is now working wonders in His name. The disciples try to stop the impostor, no doubt believing Jesus will appreciate their efforts to control His message. But Jesus’s response surprises them. Rather than acknowledge their good intentions, He praises the outsider for reaching people He might never meet. “No one who does a deed of power in My name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of Me,” Jesus explains. “Whoever is not against us is for us. For truly I tell you, whoever gives a you cup of water to drink because you bear the name of Christ will by no means lose the reward.” (Mark 9.39-41) In other words, this person the disciples are so eager to shut down is a true friend—a partner whose efforts advance Christ’s mission. Instead of taking offense at him, they should be grateful and support him!

The warning that arises from this situation is issued not to the outsider, but to the insiders. In attempting to control Christ’s message and discredit the witness of another, they put the outsider’s faith at risk. “If any of you put a stumbling block before one of these little ones who believe in Me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea,” Jesus says. (v43) To ancient minds, the Sea is the most fearsome, deadly place there is. To die at sea is to be lost forever, completely erased from memory, unburied, leaving no proof you existed. Intentionally throwing oneself into the Sea is utter madness. Yet Jesus tells us it’s by far a saner alternative than what we do to ourselves when we contest another Christian's witness. Believers whose faith doesn’t fully square with our own are not against us. They’re for us. And when we try to censure and obstruct their belief, we end up committing a thing worse than faith suicide. Better we should vanish entirely than cause them to stumble, Jesus says. The question concealed in His statement asks us, Are we willing to destroy others just so we can hang on to ideas we love? It’s a big question we all have to answer.

The Trash Heap

As dramatic as this suicidal image is, Jesus isn’t content to stop there. He goes on to summon a series of shocking visuals that remind me of the director’s centipede analogy. When we answer Christ’s call and our faith begins to grow it assumes a life of its own. We easily become fond of certain characteristics, behaviors, and rituals that support the points we want to make with our lives. If we’re not keenly aware of the shape our faith takes, it can become grotesquely deformed and inept. Too much of a good thing is never good. “If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life maimed than to have two hands and go to hell,” Jesus advises in verse 43. He says the same of clumsy feet and shortsighted eyes that result in tripping over our good intentions. Better to be lame or blind than land in hell, Jesus says.

The mere mention of “hell” makes a lot of people uncomfortable—which is exactly what Jesus means to do. If we’re to fully appreciate what He’s saying, we have to account for His terminology. Jesus uses Jewish slang here, a metaphorical reference to Gehenna, a valley southwest of Jerusalem where residents burn their rubbish. It’s a foul, suffocating, constantly smoldering trash heap—the most oppressive of all places to live, and hence a common term first-century Jews used to imagine eternal punishment for evildoing. Like drowning, it is a fate worse than death. And we can’t escape Jesus’s implications of what comes of our determination to hang onto ideas and behaviors that cause harm to others and us. It’s not our deficits that send us to the trash heap. It’s our insistence on placing too much value on debilitating ideas and practices that turn us into centipedes stumbling over our faith and tripping up other sincere believers. We mean well, but it’s too much.

Sunday’s Gospel expects us to examine how we live out our faith, to recognize detriments we create by refusing to let go of notions that create divisions and undermine the “little ones” Jesus loves so dearly. It’s not our show. God, our Producer, and Jesus, our Director, warn us that assuming everything we hold dear is vital to their story is a deadly proposition. Our brothers and sisters will suffer. We will suffer. Perhaps it’s time for all of us to reach for our red pens, prayerfully evaluate how much is too much, and start hacking away—not for our sake, but to protect those who stand with us on the Lord’s side, whether we agree with them or not.

Stubbornly hanging on to personal beliefs and philosophies can turn us into faith centipedes. We easily wind up tripping over ourselves and, worse still, risk causing other believers to stumble.

Flesh

He had compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd; and He began to teach them many things. (Mark 6.34)

He is our peace; in His flesh He has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us. (Ephesians 2.14)

A “Lusty” Bunch

Of late, I’ve been tearing through Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years, Diarmaid MacCulloch’s chronicle of our faith’s origins and evolution. To call it epic is to undersell it. Nearly all of its 1000-plus pages serve up at least one startling detail that sets off far-reaching implications for what the Church will become and our faith will come to mean. The history is so vast the author can’t escape getting lost in the weeds. Still, a picture of our ancestors emerges to startle us with how real and personal their passions are. In another context, we would call them a “lusty” bunch—given their obsession with flesh. Paul isn’t straining for metaphor when he describes the Church as “the Body of Christ.” It isn’t poetic reach that inspires John (writing after Paul’s death) to preface his gospel by framing Jesus as “the Word made flesh.” It is no accident that early Christians choose the table—rather than the cross—as the centerpiece of their liturgies, or why they model their houses of worship on banquet halls instead of temples. They revere the table as the place where they physically encounter Christ’s flesh and blood in communal bread and wine.

So great is the Early Church’s flesh obsession that it’s immediately plunged into crisis over whether Gentile males should physicalize their confession of Christ via circumcision. Shake your head in disbelief if you like. Yet the controversy nearly rends the Church in two and had the Apostles not intervened, Christianity very well might have amounted to no more than a footnote in human history. From there, the first few centuries are consumed with increasingly subtle divisions over the “nature” of Jesus’s flesh and how faith plays out in our flesh. Some believe Jesus wasn’t made of flesh at all; others teach He was fully human and then made divine when God declared Him “My Son” at baptism. Meanwhile, some Christians believe Paul’s insistence that faith frees us from religious law grants us permission to indulge our flesh however we please. In other circles, believers fixate on another of Paul’s tenets—the mastery of one’s flesh—to the point they climb atop poles to subject themselves to hunger and harsh weather and some even integrate self-flagellation into their worship. And most ironic of all: while various groups rip at one another’s flesh, they erect massive cathedrals and monasteries as testaments of their devotion to Christ. By the late sixth-century CE, the entire known world—from Europe to China—is dotted with elaborate structures whose external similarity conceals rabidly divergent dogmas and practices.

Doctrines and rites we accept as fundamental—the Virgin Birth, Incarnation, Lord’s Supper, and Trinity—were hot topics in the Church’s formative years. They were every bit as volatile as current debates about gay inclusion, the ordination of women, birth control, marital equality, and human sexuality in general. And with those comparisons, everything comes full circle. Contrary to what we’d like to imagine, we’ve not outgrown our infantile obsessions with flesh nor our fondness for infighting. We may have found new things to argue. What we’ve yet to discover, however, is the antidote to hostilities sprung from our varying persuasions and fetishes. This is the Church’s great tragedy and, if not reversed, may very well be its undoing.

Unity

So it is not for nothing that unity plays the decisive role in Sunday’s readings. In 2 Samuel 7, we read of God’s call for David to “build Me a house to live in” (v5), a house of worship “for My people Israel… so that they may live in their own place, and be disturbed no more.” (v10) This calling comes with a covenant attached, one of the Hebrew Bible’s greatest promises, often celebrated in songs like Psalm 89 that venerate David as the channel by whom God establishes Israel’s perpetuity. “My faithfulness and steadfast love shall be with him: and in My name his horn shall be exalted,” verse 21 says (giving Freudians among us pause). “Once and for all I have sworn by My holiness; I will not lie to David. His line shall continue for ever, and his throne endure before me like the sun. It shall be established for ever like the moon, an enduring witness in the skies,” verses 35-37 sing. In exchange for David’s obedience in building God’s house, God promises Israel will always have a home where its people will dwell in unity.

When we turn to the Christian texts, however, we crash into the fragile nature of unified faith, realizing magnificent houses of worship amount to nothing if those dwelling inside them aren’t united. Of course, Jesus has no church; the great outdoors is His cathedral and He turns hillsides, lakeshores, and boat decks into pulpits. This presents a constant problem for Him and His disciples, as crowds engulf Jesus wherever He goes. Mark 6.31 tells us the multitudes become so overwhelming that “they had no leisure even to eat.” They try to break away, sailing across the lake. But word that Jesus is on the move spreads quickly and by the time He and the disciples reach the other side, people have rushed to get there ahead of them. “As He went ashore,” verse 34 tells us, “He saw a great crowd; and He had compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd; and He began to teach them many things.” Seeing Jesus in the flesh—and watching Him work wonders in the flesh of others—draws the crowd to Him. But it is His teaching that binds them together.

Hostile Barriers

This brings us to Ephesians 2.11-22, where Paul paints the lamentable picture of a burgeoning faith community that confesses Christ as its Shepherd, yet persists in behaving like unpastored sheep. We’re back in the flesh wars here, as Paul strives to neutralize the circumcision debate for what must feel like the nth time. And to get us as close as possible to the heat of this controversy, suppose we paraphrase his premise in its crudest terms. “This obsession with genitals is utter nonsense,” he says. “Your flesh means nothing now that you are in Christ. And if you make flesh your focus, your very skin becomes a barrier that destroys unity within the Body.” Now let’s return to the text, adding emphasis to drive home Paul’s message: “For He is our peace; in His flesh He has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us.” (v14)

Answering Christ’s unparalleled call to a community of righteousness insists that we overcome our fascination with what’s below the waist and practice peace that only exists in Christ’s flesh. Male or female, straight or gay, celibate or partnered, circumcised or not—these issues create hostile barriers that Jesus suffered and died in the flesh to eradicate. It is through His death and resurrection that we, as Christ’s Body, are gathered. It is through the bread and wine that we are united in Christ’s flesh. Until we let go this centuries-old skin game we’re addicted to, we’ll be no different than the hordes that chase Jesus from coast to coast. We’ll be like sheep who've lost their Shepherd, and nothing like the magnificent cathedral Paul describes in Ephesians 2.20-22, “built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus Himself as the cornerstone. In Him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in Whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling-place for God.”

Will we be gathered and shepherded in Christ? Or will we continue to clash over skin? Will we persist in building walls of flesh that tear us apart? Or will we find Christ’s peace and be built together into God’s dwelling-place? If we attend closely to Sunday’s texts, these questions should answer themselves.

As a result of our infantile flesh obsessions, we’ve become like sheep who’ve lost their Shepherd—like magnificent houses of worship fallen into ruin.

Post-Script: Before You Go…

I realize I’ve thrown a lot at you and impinged on your time with a longer-than-usual post. But before you go, I invite you to take two minutes and let today’s readings settle while watching this simple video I put together. Nothing dazzling here—just footage of sheep on an Irish hillside set to the worship song, “He Is Our Peace”. If you can spare the time, I believe it will help bring today’s reflection to a peaceful, reassuring conclusion.

Podcast link: http://straightfriendly.podbean.com/2012/07/21/flesh/

The Yet-Unanswered Prayer

You were all called to travel on the same road and in the same direction, so stay together, both outwardly and inwardly. You have one Master, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, Who rules over all, works through all, and is present in all. Everything you are and think and do is permeated with Oneness. (Ephesians 4.4-6; The Message)

According to John’s gospel, just before going to Gethsemane where He’ll be taken from the disciples, Jesus prays for us. “I ask not only on behalf of these,” He prays, perhaps glancing around the table at His closest friends, “but also on behalf of those who will believe in Me through their word, that they may all be one.” He repeats this request twice—three mentions of “oneness” in all—and then concludes, saying, “I made Your name known to them, and I will make it known, so that the love with which You have loved Me may be in them, and I in them.” For several weeks, it appears that Jesus’s prayer is answered. The disciples prove amazingly resilient. In 50 days’ time, they somehow absorb Jesus’s death, resurrection, and ascension. Pentecost finds them exactly as Jesus prays that they’ll be: together, in one place, with one purpose. The Holy Spirit—God’s great binding force—falls on them and fills them and the Church’s work begins. But the disciples quickly discover there’s a huge difference between sitting together and working together. In short order, they’re fragmented into various schools of thought about what it means to be a Christian, what that requires, and how it works. It’s been that way ever since.

Ironically, this concept of “oneness” is the Early Church’s major bone of contention. Is the Jesus movement an exclusively Jewish sect? Or can everyone join? Even after God definitively reveals the answer to Peter (“Everyone”), it takes a while for the rest of the Church to get onboard. Once they get that worked out, a new question of “oneness” rears up. This issue isn’t so easy, as Church leaders try to understand what it means relative to God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. For centuries, the Church engages in battle over the Godhead, and much of its dissension arises from Jesus’s prayer. Are God and Jesus One? If so, how does Jesus’s dual role, as human and divine, fit into that? And what of the Holy Spirit? Early Church theologians can’t decide what they’re looking at: one God, two Gods as One (with the Spirit as a sort of amorphous helper), or Three in One. The debate gets so heated that Christians turn on one another—some going so far as to murder fellow-believers with differing opinions—and, to this day, the deepest schisms in Christ’s Body directly result from the “oneness” controversy.

Paul sees this coming and, in his letter to the Ephesians, attempts to thwart it. “You’re on the same road,” he reminds us. “You have one Master, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, Who rules over all, works through all, and is present in all. Everything you are and think and do is permeated with Oneness.” One faith: it’s the glue that holds everything together. As Paul sees it, that we believe is more important than what we believe. Jesus prays two things for us: that we will believe in Him and be one with God, with Him, and each other. It is raw faith—not how we refine it—that holds us together. Names we slap on our church doors don’t matter. Varying baptism techniques are irrelevant. Most of all, debates that subvert Christian unity are useless. We are permeated with Oneness, Paul says, with power that joins us together through raw faith.

It’s estimated that there are over 30,000—30,000-plus!—distinct “brands” of Christianity in the world. So we must ask ourselves, “For what?” More than that, we must realize it is we—with our cravings for certainty and compulsions to be right to the exclusion of everyone else—who stand in the way of Jesus’s yet-unanswered prayer. When we make raw faith the common denominator, liturgical nuances and doctrinal disputes lose their grip. We’re traveling the same road in the same direction. Either we honor Christ’s desire and travel as one, or we end up with 30,000 nils. Either we see Christianity as an all-inclusive circle, or we grind it down to a giant zero.

Crazy

When His family heard it, they went out to restrain Him, for people were saying, “He has gone out of His mind.” (Mark 3.21)

Psychology

We’re often more frustrated by what the gospels don’t tell us than trying to decipher the mysteries they set before us. As modern readers, we expect them to filter Jesus’s life through a psychological lens: focus first on His thoughts and feelings, then show us how they play out in His behavior and accomplishments. But the writers come at biography from the opposite angle. They concentrate on Jesus’s words and deeds as evidence of His ideas and emotions. So little is said about His inner workings that Mark 3:20-35 (Sunday’s Gospel) catches us off-guard. The passage is one of very few to consider the psychology behind Jesus’s actions. Even then, it’s not about what He thinks. It describes what others think of Him—their suspicions about what makes Him tick. And their conclusions aren’t flattering. Those closest to Him (His family) believe rumors that He’s gone crazy. Those most threatened by Him (theologians) believe He’s possessed. Not flattering.

The strangest aspect of this episode is that Mark doesn’t go into detail about what brings it on. He gets Jesus up and running right away: no preface (like John) stating his views of Jesus, no detailed account of Jesus’s birth and lineage like we find in Matthew and Luke. In Mark, John the Baptist declares, “Prepare the way of the Lord” and—boom!—there Jesus is, fully grown and ready to get started. Mark dashes off a few high points: the baptism, wilderness temptation, assemblage of the disciples, and a few exorcisms and healings, a couple of which upset the religious establishment for occurring on the Sabbath. But we don't find much insight as to what's going on in Jesus's head, or why people think He's insane.

Jesus Makes Sense

The crowds around Jesus keep growing. By the time we reach the third chapter, verse 20 says they’re so large that Jesus and His followers can’t even find a quiet place to eat. Up to this point, Jesus doesn’t say very much in Mark. So what follows comes out of the blue: “When His family heard it, they went out to restrain Him, for people were saying, ‘He has gone out of His mind.’ And the scribes who came down from Jerusalem said, ‘He has Beelzebul, and by the ruler of the demons He casts out demons.’” (v21-22) In a time when the countryside runs riot with healers and exorcists, we wonder what makes people say Jesus is crazy. Why would they flock to Him if they truly thought He’d lost His mind? What causes His family’s concern—to the point that they would rush to pull Him away from His work? Do they believe He’s crazy, too? Why would learned religionists theorize that He’s doing the devil’s work by relieving people of vexing spirits? None of this makes sense until Jesus opens His mouth. Then we get it. People think Jesus is crazy and/or possessed because He makes sense. The surest way to sound nuts during nutty times is to speak soundly, sensibly, and assuredly to the situation. Which Jesus does.

What Mark and the other writers don’t tell us (as it need not be told to their intended readers) is that Jesus has come to people stranded in an upside-down world. The land God gave them has been stolen—again. While they await their King, they live under Caesar’s thumb. Their synagogues ring with psalms of God’s goodness and provision. Yet the soundtrack of their lives is replete with dirges of sorrow and hunger. Corruption, injustice, and poverty have warped their minds. Despair has dislodged hope. They substitute religiosity for faithfulness. Nothing is as it seems or what it should be. Deceit masquerades as honesty; virtue is met with suspicion. If we didn’t live in similar times, it would be difficult to conceive how jaded and unhealthy Jesus’s world is. Since He is Truth and Life, however, He speaks truth and life. So, of course, people think He’s crazy, as His words and actions don’t conform to their daily reality.

We get a taste of just how twisted things have got when the scribes—the most learned leaders of their day—assume that freeing people of diabolical influences proves Jesus is possessed. How crazy is that? Yet it makes sense to them until Jesus dismantles their logic. “How can Satan cast out Satan?” He asks. “If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand.” (v23-24) He cautions against attributing His work to “an unclean spirit,” saying such a sin is unforgiveable. That’s when His mother and brothers show up and insist that He stop talking and leave with them. In this topsy-turvy culture, the family unit is the only stable institution. Rumors that Jesus has gone mad are shaming His family. Their demand must be honored. Yet instead of submitting to His kinfolk’s crazy fears and insufficient grasp of Who He is, Jesus redefines family. He looks around at those nearest Him, who find eternal truth at the heart of His puzzling statements and demeanor. “Here are My mother and brothers! Whoever does the will of God is My brother and sister and mother,” He declares. (v34-35)

Believe the Good News

So where are we in this story? Well, that depends on what shapes our psyches. If we allow this crazy, mixed-up world of ours to control how we perceive others and ourselves—if we surrender to its oppressive ideologies and suspicions—then we belong with the backward crowd: amateur critics, learned fools, and fearful family members. But if we set our hearts on being like Christ—if we refuse to yield to uninformed opinions, religious nonsense, and loved ones’ pressure to conform—we will speak truth and life to those who long for hope and healing. We will see the world not as it is, but as it should be. We will heed the first words of Jesus that Mark records: “The time has come. The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!” (Mark 1.15)

In Romans 12.2 we read: “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect.” Do we know that people say we’re crazy to believe God loves us, regardless where we come from and who we are? Of course we do. Are we aware that many religious folks attribute our pursuit of faithfulness to satanic delusions? Sure we are. Do we have friends and family who put more credence in what others tell them about us than what we know to be true? It’s highly likely. In this Gospel, Jesus serves as living proof that conformity to the world’s upside-down ways is not His way. Succumbing to group pressure, cynicism, and fearful mindsets won't lead to transformation. The kingdom of God is near. Leave the crazy nonsense behind. Believe the good news.

The truth of Christ sounds crazy to a crazy, mixed-up world.

Postscript: “All That I’m Allowed”

This song is new to me. I recently heard it in a supermarket and stopped in my tracks. I can’t quite articulate how it connects with this post, but somehow—for me, at least—it does. Perhaps it’s because Elton John also gives witness to the power of speaking truth and life to an upside-down world. “I always hoped that I’d do better, that I’d come out on top for once,” the song says, adding, "The barriers get in the way, but I see hope in every cloud." And when we forego conformity to nonsensical opinions and fears, that’s what happens. We come out on top.

May we all be thankful for all that we’re allowed.

Podcast link: http://straightfriendly.podbean.com/2012/06/10/crazy/