Mark 3:20 -35 (NRSV)
Then he went home; and the crowd came together again, so that they could not even eat. 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.” And he called them to him, and spoke to them in parables, “How can Satan cast out Satan? If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand. And if Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand, but his end has come. But 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.
“Truly I tell you, people will be forgiven for their sins and whatever blasphemies they utter; but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit can never have forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin” — for they had said, “He has an unclean spirit.”
Then his mother and his brothers came; and standing outside, they sent to him and called him. A crowd was sitting around him; and they said to him, “Your mother and your brothers and sisters are outside, asking for you.” And he replied, “Who are my mother and my brothers?” And looking at those who sat around him, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.”
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Exegetical Note by Paul Nuechterlein, from the Girardian Lectionary page for Proper 5B (link in comments below):
V. 29, NRSV translation: “but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit can never have forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin.” There are multiple problems with this translation (and many similar translations). “Never” and “eternal” translate the Greek word aiōnion, which does mean “eternal” in the context of Greek philosophy, but we need to remember that this is a Jew speaking to other Jews. They thought in more temporal terms of an old corrupt age marked by sin and corruption, and a new age brought about by God which would set right what humans have corrupted. The two uses of aiōnion in this sentence reflect that Jewish thinking as well as the immediate context of Jesus’s challenge to the scribes. This present age is characterized by the human sin of sacred violence and keeps the human family a house divided. The new age of God which Jesus is inaugurating will be characterized by forgiveness. Blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is to resist the coming of the new age of forgiveness and thus remain stuck in the old age. So a better translation of this verse would be something like, “But whoever may blaspheme towards the Holy Spirit holds no place in the new age of forgiveness but is trapped in the old age of sin.”
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"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. [...] 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.”
"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."
[...]
"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."
- Paul Nuechterlein, from a sermon delivered at Prince of Peace Lutheran, Portage, MI, June 10, 2012 (https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-b/proper_5b_2012_ser/)
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"[I]t's the whole dynamic of forgiveness that is being reacted against, which is why this is a particularly strong parable for the scribes. It's a particularly strong parable for the religious leaders, for Christian religious leaders thereafter, because of course it's religious leaders, we are the ones who are tempted to blaspheme against the Holy Spirit by refusing to see people being forgiven and brought to creation. We throw around words like blasphemy as an accusation when God can forgive all our blasphemies, that's not a problem. But he so so longs for us to be [in] on the dynamic of being forgiven into created life.
[...]
"Looking around at them sitting around he said, “Behold, my mother and my brother. Whoever does the will of my Father” - I have willed to come to me - “that one is my brother and sister and mother.” In other words, this is simultaneously what he's doing with relation to his blood relatives but also an indication to those who are coming from Jerusalem and attempting to, after Pentecost, attempting to hold back Jesus's presence in the new house that he was building as he was spreading the wholeness and holiness of God amongst all nations and all people.
"That is what the work of the Holy Spirit looks like, that is what is being brought into being: his family, his kingdom, the one where he is with his sisters and brothers and mothers. This brand new sibling-icity - sorority, fraternity - which is what he is making possible, and that the dynamic behind this, the creative spirit is bringing into being by forgiving us, opening us up, plundering - taking out all Satan's favourite tricks to produce division, sickness, downcast, saddened lives - all of that is being done by the one who wants to open us up into belonging to his family."
- James Alison, from video, "Homily for Sunday 10 in Ordinary Time 2021" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qf_29p6il0E)
[Source of exegetical note by Paul Nuechterlein and link to his 2012 sermon, and for discussion and reflections on all of the lectionary texts for this week, see: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-b/proper_5b/]
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