MARK 3: 20-35

Marginally Mark…Pentecost +3…Revised 2018

MK reports Jesus focussing on the issue of division. Jesus doesn’t simply shut His eyes to it & hope it will go away when His accusers go away. Instead, He tackles it & those involved head on in what MK calls ‘parables’. Jesus ‘comes out swinging’!

First, His family come & accuse Him of being ‘beside Himself’; out of His mind! They want to take possession of Him! Possessed by your family?! Can we think of  people being ‘possessed’ by their families today? Ending up in division? Hot on their heels, Jerusalem based scholars (scribes) come & accuse Him of being taken over by ‘Beelzeboul’. The name probably suggesting Jesus is possessed by one of the idol gods on offer among surrounding peoples. At very least, a force inimicable to God! What irony! Nonsense like this needs to be called out, still, today! 

Jesus addresses both complaints & complainants together; though one, the family, is an ‘insider’ attack & the other very much an outsider one. He is angry because divisiveness is the root cause of much evil in a world God created & described as ‘good’. Is there any justification for, excuse for, most of the divisions in our world today? (Never mind about ‘back then’!)

Perhaps hardest for us to follow is Jesus’ reference to a divided Source of Evil, except for the fact that it’s clearly an attack ridiculing the accusations His religious enemies make. Is the relevance of this incident to today’s world that evil, in one form or another, is taking over so widely & causing so many divisions?  How many ways can we name? How many are we ourselves caught up in, or affected by, willing, or not? Jesus refutes the ridiculousness of the accusations against Him by making equally ridiculous fun of them! Are we brave enough to do that?

Jesus’ family doesn’t come to accept Him as Whom He really is, till it’s too late to play any part in frustrating the coming course of events which will bring Him undone humanly speaking. Does our family accept us? Are we accepting of others in our family circle - even one drawn large? His enemies, of course, remain enemies to the end; never accepting He’s the long promised One Who Is To Come. Pharisees aligning themselves with Herodians, their natural enemies, is in itself a sign of how desperate divisiveness can be. Beware when we see politicians we’ve elected, or had foisted upon us, playing dividing games; right, left, & centre. Don’t let’s join in!

Divisiveness, from within or without, brings God’s plans to grief in either the short term, the long term, or both! God is a putting together, a bringing together, God. A ‘pulling together’¹ God. Perhaps a key to today’s preaching needs to be ‘pulling ourselves together’ to become ‘pulling together’ people. Mind you, being divisive as Jesus says He is, may be a necessary temporary step in a process of bringing about pulling together.

                                                      

¹ Richard Leonard, SJ., in a recent on-line article on the Trinity