Proper 5 (June 5-11)
Texts: Mark 3:20-35;
Gen. 3:8-15; 2 Cor. 4:13-5:1
A NEW WAY OF BEING HUMAN
We had two very special baptisms planned for today, for [names
withheld for privacy], and needed to postpone them. There are extra
details to consider when crossing boundaries of culture, language,
and religion. There are also legalities to think through involving
their home country of Iran, where it is currently against the law to
convert from Islam.
It challenges us to think more deeply about what baptism means. Two weeks ago on Pentecost I
raised the question about whether one even needed to convert
religions to be a faithful disciple of Jesus. Central to the
Pentecost story is the way in which Jesus' Holy Spirit transcends
language and culture, calling all people to live as though we are
one family. We asked whether Pentecost implies transcending not only
language and culture but religion, too. The primary example of whom
to raise this question is Mahatma Gandhi, who was a faithful
follower of Jesus as a practicing Hindu and lived very much as a
brother to all people, even those who counted him an enemy.
What I want to suggest this morning is that baptism and discipleship
transcend language and culture and even religion because Jesus came
to invite us into a new way of being human. I sometimes name this
with the word "anthropology," and this is precisely the reason why.
When we study anthropology, we study those things which transcend
language and culture and religion to find all those things which
make us human. Jesus came to offer us a new way of being human that
also transcends those things. Now let's be clear. It doesn't take us
out of those things. As human beings, we still need language and
culture and religion. But Jesus' new way of being human can bring
its newness into any and all of those things, and, at the
same time, redeem the way in which all languages and cultures and
religions are flawed.
This is why baptismal language is so radical. St. Paul talks about
dying and rising with Christ; he talks about being drowned. This is
because we have to do nothing less than die to the old way of being
human and rise to the new way, which means a radical reorientation
within our languages, cultures, and religions. Paul also uses
language involving a First Adam and a Second Adam, or an Old Adam
and a New Adam. This is anthropological talk! We are trapped in the
Old Adam, the old way of being human, and the New Adam, Jesus, gives
us a new way of being human!
This is hugely important stuff we are talking about! If we can't
learn as followers of Jesus to raise our level of discourse to the
anthropological level, then we remain trapped within the viewpoints
of our own cultures and languages and religions. And these things
divide us as a human family. Even our theologies, which usually find
themselves inside a certain religious context, divide us. None of
these things will ever unite us into God's one new humanity (Eph
2:15) without the Bible's anthropology that transcends culture and
language and religion. As we said on Pentecost, our human way of
uniting is based on dividing us into us-and-them. Our way of seeking
peace, of trying to stop violence, uses violence. That's why the
chief thing that Jesus came to save and redeem is our anthropology,
our way of being human.
This is also abstract. So let's get a bit more concrete by looking
at our Gospel story more closely. Jesus is getting flack from his
own family. He's doing far-out things that give us glimpses of this
new way of being human, and so it looks strange. He goes around
forgiving everyone, and there's lots of healing because of it. He
treats perfect strangers -- unclean lepers, no less! -- as if they
are brothers and sisters. It appears crazy! This new way of being
human! And so Jesus' family seems to almost team-up with the
authorities from Jerusalem who accuse him of being in league with
Beelzebul, the chief of demons.
Jesus, as usual, has a clever response. He almost never argues
head-on with opponents but instead uses questions. Mark signals us
that his question is even like a riddle. It is the first use of the
word "parable" by Mark to describe Jesus' teaching, and parable
in Mark has the character of a riddle, something that transcends
common logic and reasoning.
"How can Satan cast out Satan?" asks Jesus. It seems like a
rhetorical question, doesn't it? And Jesus follows with, 'If a
kingdom or house is divided against itself, that kingdom or house
cannot stand.' Common logic says that Satan would not try to cast
out Satan and divide his kingdom. But remember that Mark has given
us the clue that this is a parable, a riddle, a question defying
standard logic. And, sure enough, consider the context: the
authorities from Jerusalem have just tried to accuse Jesus of being
in league with Satan, or with one of Satan's cohorts, Beelzebul. It
is a prelude to casting him out, which they will later succeed in
doing by having him sentenced to death on the cross. So the second
part of the equation, the casting out Satan part, has just happened. But what
about Satan casting out Satan, the first part of the
equation? Here's the thing: the Jerusalem authorities will never
see themselves as Satan. No, as well-meaning people always do, they
see themselves as doing God's work! God wants us to cast out the
evil doers, right?
But this riddle from Jesus means for us to look deeper. The oldest
tradition of who Satan is, in fact, is that Satan is the Accuser. He
is the Prosecuting Attorney, the one who makes the accusation of the
majority against a minority that they think guilty of evil doing,
guilty of being in league with the demons. We know, in this
instance, that the Jerusalem authorities are wrong. Jesus, God's
Son, is not guilty of anything. They are the guilty ones
by virtue of making a false accusation. So what this riddle is
trying to get us to see is that the Jerusalem authorities have just
provided a splendid example of Satan casting out Satan. They think they are doing God's work
of casting out the evil one, while Jesus is inviting us to see that
they are actually doing satanic work, the work of accusation.
But I believe, if we are to rise to the level of anthropological
discourse, that this riddle means more than simply the fact that
they got it wrong in Jesus' case. Our entire human way of staying
together in community is being judged here. "Satan casting out
Satan" names how human beings have cohered in groups since the
beginning of our species. It is what, up to now, defines our
species. Our group formation into languages, cultures and religions
is based on being over against someone else. We are always able to
have a group identity for ourselves based on someone else being
different or wrong. There is underlying our group's identity an
accusation against the others. (Notice that the First Reading tells
the same story in a different way: it is all about blaming and
accusation from the very beginning. The man blames the woman whom
God gave him; the woman blames the snake whom God made; so they are
both also blaming God.) What Jesus is trying to get us to see is
that our anthropology, our whole way of being human, can be named as
"Satan casting out Satan."(1)
How do we know that? Again, the context. This riddle about Satan
casting out Satan is surrounded by an episode involving Jesus and
his family. His flesh and blood family is accusing him of being
crazy. He names his real family, then, as those who do the will of
God. What is that will? Forgiveness. The only unforgivable sin
against the Holy Spirit is refusing forgiveness itself. One can't be
forgiven if you refuse it. The Holy Spirit has come into this world
in order to do nothing less than offer us a new way of being human
based on forgiveness rather than on accusation and casting out. It's
the only way that we can live in peace as God's one human family.
Yet we continue to choose the way based on casting out. The human
family remains a house divided, a family divided.
Think about your own families for a moment. Can you stay together if
you are always making accusations that imply a casting out? Can you
avoid being a house divided if you don't live by forgiveness rather
than by what we've named this morning as satan casting out satan? I
also want to be clear that I'm not
saying by naming forgiveness that we can never in our families name
the hurtful actions which threaten to divide us. The way to
forgiveness is not by ignoring the hurtful actions and
their consequences (which is my personal tendency). It also doesn't
mean that in a sinful world there aren't still families which don't
end up living apart, because sometimes the consequences of hurtful
actions mean not living together any longer. (I'm not sure Jesus'
family stayed together very well, based on this morning's Gospel
story!) But even in those cases of living apart, don't you still
find meaningful ways of trying to be family? In divorces involving
children, for example? Do the bonds of family ever completely split
apart if the bottom line is forgiveness rather than casting out? So
"forgiveness" in this sense is not some mushy sentiment that glosses
over all the hurts. It is itself the bottom line of trying to see
all human beings as family and thus finding meaningful ways to live
as if that's true. When we are family, don't we try to avoid the
splittling apart? The old way of being human is based on many human
families defined against each other. The new way of being human is
based on trying to stay together as one human family, treating all
others as brothers and sisters -- needing, above all, forgiveness.
What we're saying, in short, is that our way of being human up until
now has been a way of dividing into groups based on languages,
cultures, and religions that have a casting out behind them instead
of a forgiveness that compels us to see the whole human race as a
family. Jesus came to redeem that old way of being human that will
always mean a house divided which cannot stand. And he is offering
us a new way of being human which sees every single person as a
brother or sister in God's family with whom we live in a
relationship of forgiveness, the only power which can keep families
together.
Notice, once again, that we are not talking about salvation as an
escape to another place called heaven where we are then forever
divided from a portion of the human family who are in another place,
hell. That way of understanding salvation comes from the old way of
being human based on casting out. It is Christians falling right
back into a religious way of being human that no longer transcends
culture and religion. The way of salvation which Jesus came to offer
us is the only way to being human able to finally live together as
one human family. As scholars like N.
T. Wright have been trying to teach us, the language of
salvation in the New Testament involves God's way in Jesus Christ of
saving the whole creation, of bringing God's heavenly intentions for
the creation to earth.(2) God's
bottom line is a power of forgiveness aimed at uniting us, not a
power of accusation aimed at dividing us.
What's at stake here? Brothers and sisters, I believe that since
we've reached the era of Weapons of Mass Destruction, it grows more
urgent that you and I are part of a movement which lives out a whole
new way of being human based on forgiveness. Yes, the age-old way of
being human based on Satan casting out Satan has been the way, up
until now, of our species surviving as a species, by at least giving
us a relative peace within our own groups. But here's Jesus
conclusion to his riddle: "And if Satan has risen up against himself
and is divided, he cannot stand, but his end has come." Jesus is
saying that we have, in fact, been
a house divided. Human beings have always found ways to divide
ourselves based on the satanic way of accusation. That way of being
human has come to end in the cross, and Jesus' new way of
forgiveness is the only true way forward. And you and I are called
to be part of it. The alternative is that older way of seeing
salvation as an escape from a world that will forever remain
divided. Which way of salvation do you want to be part of? In order
to see the choice more clearly, I think we have to raise our level
of discourse to that of anthropology: that Jesus comes to invite us
into a whole new way of being human.
What does that mean? I think it means doing more of what we've been
doing: calling our community to treat each other as family,
especially when it comes to the least of us, such with our recent
efforts to help the homeless in Kalamazoo County. I think it means
doing more as citizens coming up on this fall's elections, more to
begin bridging the gap of this partisan polarity. I've distributed
some suggestions for summer reading(3)
that we might be part of the solution this fall to a politics so
thoroughly based on accusing the other and casting out. Our nation
needs us!
And I also think we've already been doing a pretty good job, judging
by [names withheld for privacy] wanting to be part of our family
here at Prince of Peace through baptism. They sense something good
is happening here that calls us to live as one human family. They
sense that it is based on Jesus' whole new way of being human, the
way of forgiveness. Let us celebrate that meal of God's one human
family now, for all are welcome. Amen
Paul J. Nuechterlein
Delivered at Prince of Peace Lutheran,
Portage, MI, June 10, 2012
1. In John's Gospel, Jesus explicitly says that
the satanic goes back to our beginnings as a species: "You are from
your father the devil, and you choose to do your father's desires.
He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the
truth, because there is no truth in him" (John 8:44). This verse has
fallen into disrepute in recent years as being anti-Semitic. But if
we raise our level of discourse to the anthropological, it
transcends the culture and religion of Jesus' Jewish audience. Jesus
is speaking about our species, our way of being human from the
beginning. He is not making an anti-Semitic remark; he's making an
anthropological statement of fact. The event that defines us and
creates us as a species is collective murder based on the lies of
the satanic accusations. In the Pentecost
sermon two weeks ago, we also interpreted Jesus in the
Farewell Discourse as characterizing the satanic process underlying
human anthropology as being wrong about sin, righteousness, and
judgment. In Mark's Gospel, we are seeing this same anthropological
process named as "Satan casting out Satan."
2. This has been a main emphasis for Wright since The
Resurrection of the Son of God in 2003 (Vol. 3 in the
series Christian Origins and the Question of God). The popularized
version of the latter book is Surprised
by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of
the Church (2008). All of his New Testament
commentaries, the For
Everyone series, also provide tremendous help in
reading the New Testament with new glasses so that we might continue
in our progress to rethink heaven, the Resurrection, and the mission
of the church. His latest two efforts bring his readings of Jesus
into this overall context: Simply
Jesus: A New Vision of Who He Was, What He Did, and Why He
Matters (2011) and How
God Became King: The Forgotten Story of the Gospels
(2012). His scholarly book on Paul is due in 2013 (Vol. 4 in the
series Christian Origins and the Question of God), tentatively
titled Paul and the Faithfulness of God.
3. The primary book is Parker Palmer's Healing
the Heart of Democracy: The Courage to Create a Politics
Worthy of the Human Spirit. But others are: Mahatma
Gandhi: Essential Writings, ed. by John Dear; The
Word of the Lord to Democrats and The
Word of the Lord to Republicans (e-books) by Brian McLaren.