“All in the Family” (Sermon for Pentecost III)

June 10, 2018 (Sermon at Bethlehem Lutheran Church in Los Alamos, NM)

ΚΑΤΑ ΜΑΡΚΟΝ 3.20-35

20Καὶ ἔρχεται εἰς οἶκον: καὶ συνέρχεται πάλιν [ὁ] ὄχλος, ὥστε μὴ δύνασθαι αὐτοὺς μηδὲ ἄρτον φαγεῖν. 21καὶ ἀκούσαντες οἱ παρ’ αὐτοῦ ἐξῆλθον κρατῆσαι αὐτόν, ἔλεγον γὰρ ὅτι ἐξέστη. 22καὶ οἱ γραμματεῖς οἱ ἀπὸ Ἱεροσολύμων καταβάντες ἔλεγον ὅτι Βεελζεβοὺλ ἔχει, καὶ ὅτι ἐν τῷ ἄρχοντι τῶν δαιμονίων ἐκβάλλει τὰ δαιμόνια. 23καὶ προσκαλεσάμενος αὐτοὺς ἐν παραβολαῖς ἔλεγεν αὐτοῖς, Πῶς δύναται Σατανᾶς Σατανᾶν ἐκβάλλειν; 24καὶ ἐὰν βασιλεία ἐφ’ ἑαυτὴν μερισθῇ, οὐ δύναται σταθῆναι ἡ βασιλεία ἐκείνη: 25καὶ ἐὰν οἰκία ἐφ’ ἑαυτὴν μερισθῇ, οὐ δυνήσεται ἡ οἰκία ἐκείνη σταθῆναι. 26καὶ εἰ ὁ Σατανᾶς ἀνέστη ἐφ’ ἑαυτὸν καὶ ἐμερίσθη, οὐ δύναται στῆναι ἀλλὰ τέλος ἔχει. 27ἀλλ’ οὐ δύναται οὐδεὶς εἰς τὴν οἰκίαν τοῦ ἰσχυροῦ εἰσελθὼν τὰ σκεύη αὐτοῦ διαρπάσαι ἐὰν μὴ πρῶτον τὸν ἰσχυρὸν δήσῃ, καὶ τότε τὴν οἰκίαν αὐτοῦ διαρπάσει.

28Ἀμὴν λέγω ὑμῖν ὅτι πάντα ἀφεθήσεται τοῖς υἱοῖς τῶν ἀνθρώπων, τὰ ἁμαρτήματα καὶ αἱ βλασφημίαι ὅσα ἐὰν βλασφημήσωσιν: 29ὃς δ’ ἂν βλασφημήσῃ εἰς τὸ πνεῦμα τὸ ἅγιον οὐκ ἔχει ἄφεσιν εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα, ἀλλὰ ἔνοχός ἐστιν αἰωνίου ἁμαρτήματος 30ὅτι ἔλεγον, Πνεῦμα ἀκάθαρτον ἔχει.

31Καὶ ἔρχεται ἡ μήτηρ αὐτοῦ καὶ οἱ ἀδελφοὶ αὐτοῦ καὶ ἔξω στήκοντες ἀπέστειλαν πρὸς αὐτὸν καλοῦντες αὐτόν. 32καὶ ἐκάθητο περὶ αὐτὸν ὄχλος, καὶ λέγουσιν αὐτῷ, Ἰδοὺ ἡ μήτηρ σου καὶ οἱ ἀδελφοί σου [καὶ αἱ ἀδελφαι σου] ἔξω ζητοῦσίν σε. 33καὶ ἀποκριθεὶς αὐτοῖς λέγει, Τίς ἐστιν ἡ μήτηρ μου καὶ οἱ ἀδελφοί [μου]; 34καὶ περιβλεψάμενος τοὺς περὶ αὐτὸν κύκλῳ καθημένους λέγει, Ἴδε ἡ μήτηρ μου καὶ οἱ ἀδελφοί μου. 35ὃς [γὰρ] ἂν ποιήσῃ τὸ θέλημα τοῦ θεοῦ, οὗτος ἀδελφός μου καὶ ἀδελφὴ καὶ μήτηρ ἐστίν.

[NRSV]

20and the crowd came together again, so that they could not even eat. 21When his family heard it, they went out to restrain him, for people were saying, “He has gone out of his mind.” 22And the scribes who came down from Jerusalem said, “He has Beelzebul, and by the ruler of the demons he casts out demons.” 23And he called them to him, and spoke to them in parables, “How can Satan cast out Satan? 24If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. 25And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand. 26And if Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand, but his end has come. 27But no one can enter a strong man’s house and plunder his property without first tying up the strong man; then indeed the house can be plundered.

28“Truly I tell you, people will be forgiven for their sins and whatever blasphemies they utter; 29but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit can never have forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin”— 30for they had said, “He has an unclean spirit.”

31Then his mother and his brothers came; and standing outside, they sent to him and called him. 32A crowd was sitting around him; and they said to him, “Your mother and your brothers and sisters are outside, asking for you.” 33And he replied, “Who are my mother and my brothers?” 34And looking at those who sat around him, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! 35Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.”

[THE MESSAGE]

20-21 Jesus came home and, as usual, a crowd gathered—so many making demands on him that there wasn’t even time to eat. His friends heard what was going on and went to rescue him, by force if necessary. They suspected he was getting carried away with himself.

22-27 The religion scholars from Jerusalem came down spreading rumors that he was working black magic, using devil tricks to impress them with spiritual power. Jesus confronted their slander with a story: “Does it make sense to send a devil to catch a devil, to use Satan to get rid of Satan? A constantly squabbling family disintegrates. If Satan were fighting Satan, there soon wouldn’t be any Satan left. Do you think it’s possible in broad daylight to enter the house of an awake, able-bodied man, and walk off with his possessions unless you tie him up first? Tie him up, though, and you can clean him out.

28-30 “Listen to this carefully. I’m warning you. There’s nothing done or said that can’t be forgiven. But if you persist in your slanders against God’s Holy Spirit, you are repudiating the very One who forgives, sawing off the branch on which you’re sitting, severing by your own perversity all connection with the One who forgives.” He gave this warning because they were accusing him of being in league with Evil.

31-32 Just then his mother and brothers showed up. Standing outside, they relayed a message that they wanted a word with him. He was surrounded by the crowd when he was given the message, “Your mother and brothers and sisters are outside looking for you.”

33-35 Jesus responded, “Who do you think are my mother and brothers?” Looking around, taking in everyone seated around him, he said, “Right here, right in front of you—my mother and my brothers. Obedience is thicker than blood. The person who obeys God’s will is my brother and sister and mother.”

All in the Family

+ In nomine Domini. Amen.

Do you remember these people?

Archie Bunker
Edith Bunker
Gloria Stivic
Michael Stivic

If you are of my generation [and above] you know that I am naming the characters in what was from January 12, 1971 through April 8, 1979 one of the most watched – and many would say, the greatest – television series of all time: All in the Family.

Carroll O’Connor, Jean Stapleton, Sally Struthers and Rob Reiner make their way into our homes each week in this popular and controversial sitcom that broke with social convention and dealt with issues previously considered unsuitable for a television comedy: racism, infidelity, homosexuality, women’s liberation, rape, reliigion, miscarriages, abortion, breast cancer, the Vietnam War, menopause, even impotence.¹ As creator Norman Lear put it, the show was about “real people dealing with real issues.”

The 205 episodes made us laugh and cry, helped us see our shortcomings and possibilities of hope – in short, established in American social culture words and images that became icons of who we were, and in many ways, still are as a people.

Our language changed when watching All in the Family so that we began to hear and sometimes (depending on our persuasions) use terms which while laughing, made us cringe: dingbat, stifle, meathead were no longer just words, they often came into speech as not funny and sometimes hurtful.

We often began to refer to a well-used armchair in a home as an “Archie Bunker Chair” – in fact, you can see the original one in the National Museum of American History in the Smithsonian in Washington, D. C.

The premise of the show – how working class people living in Queens, New York live from day-to-day amid [as our liturgy of Evening Prayer says] “the changes and chances of life; and what can happen when the values of the Greatest Generation meet and clash with the values of the Baby Boomers. Prejudice and Bigotry, Sweetness and Understanding, Kindness and Tolerance all dwell together.

In other words – it is so very much like the Gospel According to Mark‽ The Gospels are [we might say] the Storybooks of the Life of Jesus. In their composition they span the last five decades of the 1^st Century. They each have a different aspect, a different viewpoint [even a different agenda] when telling the story of Jesus – but they all deal with what happens when Promise comes into the world, when Grace and Forgiveness meet Prejudice and Bigotry, when Love and Hope come up against the rigidity of Fear and Anger.

This is [as you know] the “Year of Mark”, the Second Year in our Three-Year Cycle of working our way through the first three Gospels. While we do not read in our worship each week the Gospel in its sequential telling, we do have some weeks where the stories fall one after the other.

Last Sunday, Jesus and his followers ate some grain while walking through a field on Shabbat, and not only that inside the synagogue he healed a man with a withered hand. The Pharisees, we are told, were more than upset and began to lay plans with the henchmen of King Herod about what to do with this upstart who broke all religious rules in order to do good and not evil.

Next Sunday, you will hear one of the great “Seed” Parables of the Gospel, this one about the Mustard Seed.

But today, we have this episode – or rather three episodes – of Jesus and his followers with those whom Jesus and his followers encounter. It is a particular way of storytelling that the Gospel Writer Mark seems to love – interrupting a story to tell another story then returning to the original for the conclusion.

If you pull out your bulletins to page 7, you can see what I mean.

Jesus returns home [that would be Nazareth]. The crowd follows and gathers so large that Jesus and his followers cannot even get inside to the dinner table. His “family” [actually the Greek says οἱ παρ’ αὐτοῦ which is an idiom; literally “those closest around him”] come out to rescue him because people are saying that Jesus has lost his mind – literally in the Greek “he was outside himself.”²

I love this part, in fact, it’s one of my favourite sentences in the Gospels. It brings me great comfort to know that the One I follow was (and still is) considered by many to be a bit crazed. 🙂

Then there is the interruption: the story of the religious authorities who come from Jerusalem to challenge Jesus.

Yes, Nazareth and Jerusalem are a great distance apart from each other – but don’t get too worried about details here, this is remember story.

What they say is that Jesus is doing things under the influence of Beelzebul [a Canaanite god of Baal, seen as a major demon]. Beelzebul or Beelzebub is often another word for the Devil and in demonology is capable of flying, known as “Lord of the Flyers” or (and yes this is where the title of the 1954 book by William Golding arises) “Lord of the Flies.”

I love the way that Eugene Peterson translates this in his version called The Message:

“The religion scholars from Jerusalem came down spreading rumors that he was working black magic, using devil tricks to impress them with spiritual power. Jesus confronted their slander with a story: “Does it make sense to send a devil to catch a devil, to use Satan to get rid of Satan? A constantly squabbling family disintegrates.”

And then the interruption in this part of Mark’s Gospel is itself interrupted by Jesus statement about “blaspheming against the Spirit of God.” It’s often a difficult thing to understand by folks, especially when taken out of context. So what is this sin that can’t be forgiven?

As my long-time friend and community organizer Dr. Steve Meilleur puts it, “The only unforgivable sin is to believe that there is one!”

I think that explains it, and captures what Jesus is saying to the crowd, especially to his detractors.

And now the story returns to Jesus family. They are outside the house. Jesus’ followers tell him that they are outside and they are asking for him. “Your mother and your brothers and sisters are outside, asking for you.” (!)

Let’s let Eugene Peterson tell the rest:

Jesus responded, “Who do you think are my mother and brothers?” Looking around, taking in everyone seated around him, he said, “Right here, right in front of you—my mother and my brothers. Obedience is thicker than blood. The person who obeys God’s will is my brother and sister and mother.”

And when I read the text of this week’s Gospel to Fletcher Catron – my long-time friend, cycling partner, attorney and learned Biblical Scholar he said this: “Be sure to tell the congregation that there are hidden manuscripts of Mark’s Gospel that give the next sentence, ‘Then Jesus went out and gave his mother a hug!’”

Yes.

You see it is indeed and in fact the most important thing in the Gospel. It is the family the “related ones” who count in life and in death and especially in this thing Jesus kept calling “the Kingdom.”

It is not who is in and who is out, who is religious and who is not religious, who belongs and who should be removed. It is not about things like Walls and Restrictions and Limitations, not at all, not in the Gospel, not for followers of Jesus.

You see what happens is that we tend to draw circles around ourselves.

[Actually, when I preached this, I switched and began with using myself as an example. As in “I draw circles around myself. And there, I notice, is Jesus standing on the outside of my circle with those I have excluded, asking me to join him.” And so forth. Then I added the fact of the community itself drawing circles which are erased, redrawn, erased, etc. After the Service, one of the members asked me, “Hmmm. That means that we are supposed to extend the circle all the way to Korea, doesn’t it?” Yes.]

We say, “Well yes, we are supposed to love our neighbor. And we are followers of Jesus, so we’ll do that. We will love each other in this congregation.” There.

And then along comes Jesus whom we find standing on the other side of that line with the ones we have excluded, and says to us, “Over here, these are my brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers and uncles and aunts and cousins –” And he erases the line.

And so then we go along with Jesus and we redraw the line to include those folks too.

And then, guess what?

There is Jesus standing beyond that line asking again, “What about these people over here? The ones you do not really like or care for or who are so different from you, or?”

And we find the line erased again.

And so it goes, and so it goes, and so it goes.

It is the Gospel. We are indeed “All in the Family.”

Deo Gratias (+)

The Rev. Benjamin Larzelere III
Retired