Jesus is judged by rulers as being a demon, “By the prince of demons he drives out demons.” Jesus offers a reply, “‘How can Satan drive out Satan?'” “If a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand.” “No one can enter a strong man’s house to plunder his property unless he first ties up the strong man.” “All sins and all blasphemies that people utter will be forgiven them. But whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never have forgiveness.”
Jesus is preaching to the people about a new Way to live together, the Community of God, and is curing them of diseases. Rulers know this. Yet, for all the good Jesus is effecting, the rulers judge him a demon. The rulers also judge that they speak and act for God. Thus, for the rulers, Jesus’ challenge to them consequently makes him ungodly, demonic. But Jesus is asserting there is another energy in the world. It is an energy beyond the control of the ruler class and the mirror-image God they invented who judges challengers as demonic. The other energy is the power of the people. That power is the Spirit. Perhaps when Jesus talks in today’s Gospel about “the strong man” who must be “tied up,” he is talking about the Spirit. The Spirit is the strength of each person and all of us collectively to be the fullness of our creation. To sin or to blaspheme against the Spirit could mean that a person or a group is tying up their power of the Spirit. Sometimes others tie up our Spirit, like rulers who willfully deny us, personally and communally, our strength. Their domination ties up our strength for communion. Their harm ties up our strength for love. Their destruction ties up our strength for healing. Jesus then says that “whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never have forgiveness.” Is it possible that such a sin will “never have forgiveness” because the perpetrator does not seek forgiveness? The ruler and the person they coerce out of their power don’t think they’re doing anything wrong. They think the tying up they do is of ‘God.’ It is of the Old God – the judgmental God who judges his challengers as being demons. From the Gospel story, rulers and we coerced by them, do not seem to know the tying up that is done – of the Spirit, of others, and of themselves.
A repeated phrase of late is, ‘You can’t cure stupid.’ Stupid is associated with stupor, meaning having our mind dulled, stunned. It proposes a person has been struck dumb, made stupid usually by an external force. In a sense, their strong man has been tied up. Whether by a political party, a conspiracy theory, or a laziness in reasoning, they are being plundered of their power, their Spirit. Do we want to give up on people or succumb to their control and cede our power? If we instead want to consider how to “cure stupid,” we need to model our Spirit which revitalizes their Spirit. Our Spirit energizes the ‘stupid’ person out of the ties that bind them. It is likely what others have done for us when we have been ‘stupid.’
Prayer: Beautiful Spirit, keep us open to learning, growing.
Question: What is my self-awareness, especially during conflict?
June 9, 2024 Gospel Mark 3:20-35 Tenth Sunday in Ordinary Time