Text:  Mark 3:20-35                                                                                           3^rd Sunday after Pentecost

Broken Homes

            In the name of him who has made us members of his Father’s family, dear brothers and sisters in Christ:  Ranking high in popularity and historical significance, along with the Gettysburg Address and his two inaugural speeches, is the famous speech Abraham Lincoln made on June 16, 1858, to the Illinois Republican delegates who had just chosen him as their candidate for the national Senate. Like many of Lincoln’s speeches and other writings, this speech contained several quotations and allusions to passages in the Bible.  In fact, the speech is now most commonly referred to as the “House Divided” speech because it contains the line, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”  I’m sure most of you are at least vaguely familiar it.  (And just as a side note:  most historians agree that the speech was morally courageous but politically incorrect, and that it ultimately cost Lincoln the election.  Illinois voters instead chose Democrat Stephen Douglas for the Senate that fall – but of course, had Lincoln won he would have been working hard as a freshman Senator in 1860, and probably would not have been elected our 16^th President.  So, you see? Even in our political system sometimes it pays to be morally courageous and politically incorrect.)

            In any case, we see that Lincoln borrowed the thought that made the speech so memorable from today’s Gospel reading in which Jesus, in response to the absurd accusation that he was in league with the devil and that he was using satanic power to free people of Satan’s demons, says, “How can Satan drive out Satan?  If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand.  If a house is divided against itself, that house cannot stand.  And if Satan opposes himself, he cannot stand; his end has come.”

            So when he spoke the words, Jesus was talking about the relative strength and unity of Satan’s kingdom of darkness.  Lincoln, of course, was referring to the divisions in policy and philosophy that would very soon tear our fragile young nation apart and plunge it into what became the Civil War – the bloodiest and most destructive conflict our nation has ever suffered.  By far, more Americans died in that war than any other in our history, and the losses were especially felt because the total population back then was only a fraction of what it was when we fought other major conflicts like WWI and II.  In the Civil War, hardly a family was not touched by death; many households suffered multiple losses, and other whole families were wiped out completely.  And because the war was fought entirely on US soil, there was intense devastation to the nation’s material security.  Especially in the South, homes were destroyed, crops and livestock ruined, cities burned; machines, mills, railroads all put out of commission. Those things ensured that the suffering of the people continued long after the bullets stopped flying.  All in all, it was all a tragic waste of life and property.

            And certainly the worse injury was to the nation’s soul.  It’s one thing to fight a foreign power.  They’re usually strangers with an unfamiliar language and different customs.  You don’t feel any particular kinship toward them. And so you naturally tend to distrust them, and you don’t have high expectations of them.  In time of war, it’s your house united against theirs. But in a civil war your enemies are your fellow citizens.  Your homeland is divided.  Your neighbor whose crops you helped bring in last year, whose children play with yours, who sits in the pew behind you in church … suddenly he becomes your mortal enemy.  Sometimes even families are divided: brother fighting against brother, or sons against their father.  That’s why civil wars are always especially harsh and brutal – even more so than wars between different countries.  They are carried out with a high level of ferocity and bitterness because there’s a sense of anger in the opposing sides born of the feeling of betrayal and disgust that the very people who share our history, and with whom we were once harmoniously united in various wholesome relationships, and who should share the same values and goals as we, don’t – and they’re willing to kill us over the differences.  And unlike conventional wars in which separation of the parties after the hostilities allow some time for healing, the conflict of a civil war goes on long after peace is declared because the former combatants end up living side by side.  Naturally they are defensive and suspicious of each other.  The result is that smoldering resentments continue to burn because there’s new fuel being added all the time; old wounds are kept painful and sore because renewed offenses, intended or not, keep tearing off scabs and rubbing in salt.  Our own Civil War ended in 1866 – but it probably wasn’t really over until about 1945.

            And the same sad results are apparent with smaller scale civil wars that divide smaller houses.  It surprises many that fights within churches are often so bitter.  It seems strange that Christians who regularly join together in God’s house to extol the virtues of grace and love can suddenly turn into the most hateful, vengeful, unforgiving, and conniving opponents you’ve ever seen.  But it really shouldn’t surprise.  The reason such opponents become so mean is because they’ve been hurt so badly. Their formerly loved and trusted friends are now fighting against them.  It happens in the houses of families too, often between generations, and of course, between husbands and wives.  These divisions can be the most extreme.  Be it by sudden betrayal or by years of psychological warfare and abuse, estranged couples very often make fearsome opponents for one another, hating each other more passionately than they once loved one another.  And in all such cases, divided houses lead to broken homes and crushed hearts that never quite seem to heal.

            Which are exactly the sorts of battlefield victories that our opponent, the devil, exults in.  And that brings me back to this morning’s Gospel reading in which Jesus says that Satan’s house is not divided.  No, instead we see that though Jesus has handed him some tactical defeats by delivering some people who were demon possessed, Satan is still working (as always) with single-minded purpose to thwart the loving designs of the Lord God and bring people to ruin and misery. Satan’s house isn’t divided – but he’s “fighting like a demon” to divide other houses and create more broken homes.

            Specifically, in this morning’s lesson, we see that he is attacking the house of Jesus—and he’s doing so with a great deal of success. First we see Jesus’ own family, his mother and brothers, coming against him.  They think he’s gone mad, the poor boy; he’s so determined to keep teaching the crowds that constantly flock around him that he can hardly find time for a quick bite to eat.  He’s been on the go for weeks now, moving from town to town teaching all over Galilee.  How can he keep up this feverish pace?   They think he’s working himself to exhaustion and a nervous breakdown, so they’ve decided to do an intervention.  Since he’s obviously not going to take care of himself, they’re going to do it for him.  They’ve come to take custody of him, by force if necessary, and lead him back home where he can rest – and more importantly, where they can keep an eye on him.

            Now, we can have no doubt that their intentions are good; but the simple fact is that they stand against him in disbelief, and they are trying to interfere with his divine mission.  Jesus is about his Father’s work, and he knows what he’s doing. Yes, he’s working overtime; but that’s because the task he has to accomplish is so great, and so it requires some sacrifice of personal comfort.  But he’s not foolish or reckless about it.  We know that he took his disciples on retreat now and then for breaks in their hectic schedule.  And the family needn’t worry about his not having time to eat, for elsewhere he said, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me.”  It would seem that Jesus was never quite so content as when he was feeding hungry souls with God’s Word.  That’s what he is doing now as his family stands outside trying to shut him down.  The very people who should be encouraging and supporting him are against him.  And so, the earthly house of Jesus is divided: it’s a broken home.

            And so is his heavenly Father’s house divided against him.  We see that some scribes have come down from Jerusalem, from where they work in the Temple of the Lord, God’s house on earth.  These are the great Bible scholars who have committed their lives to studying and understanding God’s Word.  They are the highly respected elders of God’s House. And they have been looking forward to the coming of the Messiah all their lives.  No one should have had more appreciation for Jesus’ work than them. But now they’ve come down from Jerusalem to investigate this wandering prophet who’s been creating such a stir in the North Country, who some claim may well be the hoped for Messiah.  And they’ve witnessed his mastery of Scripture, they’ve heard his sublime teaching and interpretation, and they’ve seen him rescue people from demons that tormented them – they’ve weighed it all, and they’ve concluded that Jesus must be an agent of the Devil.  Why?  Because Jesus isn’t teaching the same sorts of things that they are.  So entrenched are they in their traditions and misconceptions that even though they see him defeating Satan with their own eyes, they cannot draw the logical conclusion.  Namely, that if he’s against Satan, and we’re against him, maybe we’re the ones who are on the wrong side of the divide.  Instead, they willfully refuse to believe in him, and attempt to silence him through evil accusations that they hope will discredit him in the eyes of the people. The elders of God’s house are fighting against the Son of God; and because they are, God’s home is broken.

             But then, it’s really been that way for a long time.  It’s been broken since our first parents took a side opposed to God our Father when they disobeyed him.  They listened to Satan rather than God.  And when they did, they plunged the house of God into a great cosmic civil war, dividing the Lord from his dearly loved but now rebellious children.  And we can see in today’s Old Testament how that immediately affected the home of Adam and Eve, pitting them against each other, as Adam lamely accuses his wife for his own failure to obey; and how both of them, ashamed of themselves, attempt to run and hide … attempt to keep themselves distant from the Lord – exactly as Satan would like it.

            But we also see how the Lord works to bring an end to the division.  When Adam and Eve run away and so break up God’s household, the Lord pursues them and calls them back to himself by his Word.  He takes the initiative to heal the division in his house.  And, as we heard again this morning, he promised them a Savior who would end all the divisions by ultimately defeating Satan by crushing his head.  We see that promise in the process of being fulfilled with Jesus at work in this morning’s Gospel, doing exactly the same thing:  calling estranged, oppressed, fearful sinners to himself by his Word. He gathers them into a house and carefully teaches them about God’s loving plan for their salvation, and he defeats the forces of the Devil that afflict them and ruin their lives.  And as they sit as listen to his Word, believing in what he says, he calls them his family:  “Here are my mother and my brothers” – “the ones who sit and listen to me, they are the united house of God – not the ones who stand against me and try to silence me, no matter their how good intent, how noble their pedigree, or how high their credentials.”

            And this, my friends, should cause us all to take a good hard look at the divisions in our own broken houses and homes.  Where are the conflicts?  Certainly we have them here within the church.  There are any number of smoldering civil wars going on between our various members, within our synod, and between our synod and other church bodies – all divisions in God’s house.  And they’re all caused by exactly the same thing as the divisions that we see in this morning’s text.  Namely that one or both parties are not sitting and listening in faith to the words of Jesus.  They’re standing against him.  And I hasten to add that just like the people who are opposed to Jesus in the text, the people who stand against him now may be excellent, well studied Bible scholars, or they may believe that they have wonderful, benevolent motives for what they do and teach – but to the extent that they are not listening to the Lord and believing in what he says, they are serving Satan and breaking up the house of God.

            Or I ask you to examine the conflicts within your families.  What civil wars are raging in your home or the greater household of your extended family? How is fellowship in your home broken right now?  You know what causes it:  someone or some ones are not listening to Jesus and receiving his words in faith and trust.  It’s that simple.

            Or we could make this more personal and examine the divisions in the house where your own soul lives – I’m talking about you. What civil wars are being fought within your body?  In what areas have you decided that the teaching of Jesus does not apply to you? Maybe you have what you think are good motives.  There’s the noble cause argument:  “By disobeying God in this matter, I’m serving a higher purpose.”  Uh huh.  Along the same vein, but a little more selfish is this: “God wants me to be happy, right? Well, right now disobeying him makes me happy, so surely it must be okay with him.”  That’s a good one.  I hear that quite often.  Or how about these:  “Well, I know what’s right … but if I did what’s right, it would cost me too much, or people would think I was crazy, or so and so would be angry with me … better to not listen to Jesus than to suffer the consequences.”  Hmm … maybe in such cases we really aren’t thinking about all the consequences; because whatever rationalization we use to justify it, any time we stand against the teaching of Jesus, we’re joining Satan in his armed rebellion that divides the house and family of God – and friends, we all know how that civil war must end.  How much sense does it make to choose to serve the losing side?  

            But sometimes that’s awfully hard to see in ourselves.  Rather than look at his own failures, Adam tried to blame Eve.  Rather than listen to Jesus and try to understand what he was about, his family simply assumed he was out of his mind.  And rather than consider the possibility that they might be wrong, the scribes tried to make Jesus into some kind of evil villain, even though knew his work to be good.  All of which proves that we’ll go to just about any extreme to avoid the painful work of truthfully examining ourselves in light of Jesus’ teachings – which is all the more reason not to trust ourselves, and to listen more carefully to what he has to say.

            Because it’s by listening to Jesus, sitting in the house with him and absorbing his Words, that we are made the members of his united family.  By his Words he heals the divisions in God’s house and repairs God’s broken home.  And when your relationship with the Lord is mended it becomes possible to heal the divisions you have with the other members of God’s house.  Together, as we sit and listen to him, the selfishness, the hostility, and the shameful secrets and dark motives that keep us apart from the Lord and one another are revealed; and once brought into the light, they can be confessed and forgiven. This too happens by the words of Jesus. As we listen to him, we hear how he repaired the broken home of God – oddly enough, by taking our hopeless and losing side in the conflict.  Not that he rebelled against his Father, but that he paid the penalty of our rebellion.  Our God repaired his broken home when, on the cross, he engaged in a civil war with himself: the Father unleashing his terrible swift sword against the Son who stood as our champion in the battle, not to fight in our defense but to suffer, die, and lose the war in our place.  But now that civil war is over; and Jesus the Son is raised to God’s right hand where he continues the work of reconstructing God’s house by teaching us his Word.

You know, after the American Civil War, a lot of old rebel soldiers refused to admit that it was over.  They desperately clung to their long lost cause, hoping to keep this nation a house divided.  Let’s not make the same stupid mistake.  Instead, let’s keep gathering in this house to listen to the Lord Jesus, who by his Word of forgiveness repairs all our broken homes.  In his holy name.  Amen.

Soli Deo Gloria!