A Trusting Moment: Jesus and the Leper

Trust. It’s a good word. We think of “trust falls”, in which someone closes their eyes and falls backwards, trusting the rest of the team to catch them. We think of living with difficult decisions, made possible because we trust the people who made the decision. There are also times and situations in which trust has been broken and lost. Illustrations from life abound. Trust is basic to life, and lack of trust makes life hard to live.

But what happens when trust is broken? How can we learn to trust again once someone has betrayed our trust? If we have failed someone else, how can we rebuild trust so that they can trust us again?

The questions become more difficult when the church and our faith as followers of Jesus are involved. Some people find it hard to trust God because they have been hurt by someone in the church. Difficult life situations can leave us feeling as though we cannot trust anyone, even God. God has done all that can be done to heal our broken trust: God sent Jesus, God’s Son, who died on the cross in our place. What more could God do to demonstrate God’s love? However, the question remains, how can we learn to trust God again? How can we learn to trust other people again?

These questions are in my mind as we reflect on the Scripture passages this morning and ask what God is saying to us through our reading of “God’s Word Written”.

Psalm 32

This is called “a psalm of David”. So many of David’s psalms refer to this kind of experience: “While I kept silence, my body wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer.” We don’t know the specific situation – whether it was while he was on the run from King Saul and feeling as though he would never escape, or whether it was one of his family problems after he became king. Whatever the situation was, David felt that he could not trust anyone; his problems were overwhelming, and he cried out to God for help.

David assumed that his troubles were his own fault, so he confessed his faults to God and asked God for help. He described the result this way: “Therefore let all who are faithful offer prayer to you; at a time of distress, the rush of mighty waters shall not reach them. You are a hiding place for me; you preserve me from trouble; you surround me with glad cries of deliverance.”

This may be our experience also. When we get into trouble so that others no longer trust us, we can confess our fault. God forgives us and restores us, and in time our friends and acquaintances may also realize that we are now worth trusting. But what happens when the situation is not our fault? What then? Consider the story from Mark 1, a brief passage about the healing of someone with a debilitating skin disease.

Mark 1

Our translations normally refer to the healing of a leper, so I observe briefly concerning the disease itself. Leprosy today is a skin disease that did not exist in the Near East during the time of the Old Testament. The “leper” in our story would have had some kind of skin condition, ranging from a case of what we might call eczema to something really disfiguring. The basic problem came when the sore was oozing and the liquid was held to be contagious and unclean.

Modern leprosy is mildly contagious and (among other things) can destroy the nerve endings in limbs. Until recently there was no good treatment for it, and people could lose fingers or toes to fire because they had no feeling in them. Lepers used to be treated in isolation wards, but today someone with the modern disease can live an almost normal life.

Leprosy in the OT – the variety of skin conditions covered by the Levitical Law – was not necessarily physically debilitating, but it made the person with the skin problem ritually unclean. Since an oozing sore could contaminate others in the community, they had to remain separated from everyone else – a little bit like people today who must spend two weeks in quarantine when they return from a cross-border trip. The community would care for the afflicted person, but the afflicted one could not come into the synagogue and worship with the rest of the community until they were again “clean”.

We do not normally think in these categories: Ritually clean and ritually unclean. It’s hard for us to wrap our minds around them.  Truth to tell, we do use them, although we don't use the language and may not understand them. When we shame people for views that don't fit our narrative, or when we engage in cancel culture, we are using this way of thinking, in which the person we shame becomes unclean and must be avoided lest they contaminate us with their uncleanness.

We also meet these categories in Canada today through other religions and cultures. I teach World Religions at Providence, and I take students in my class to visit various places of worship in Winnipeg. When we go to Shaarey Zedek in Winnipeg, a conservative synagogue across the river from the legislature, I see a sign that “holy objects” such as the special clothes one wears to Sabbath prayers (a yarmulke or prayer shawl, for example) should not be taken into the washroom. Although they would not become physically unclean, they would be in some sense spiritually contaminated.

Similarly, when we visit the mosque in Winnipeg, we remove our shoes before we enter the prayer hall – a matter of ritual “cleanness”. Muslims today observe these categories carefully. I heard of one Muslim family in which they held that men should not touch women before going into prayers, so – in order to annoy her brother – a young girl in the family would touch him just before he went into prayers. Then he had to go and do a ritual washing to be “clean” again.

Most of us don’t use the language of clean and unclean, but the people in Jesus’ day saw life this way. People with this skin condition were “unclean” and contact with them made others unclean. Such people normally lived outside the village and avoided contact with people until the condition was healed or went away. We can overstate their exclusion – their families cared for them and loved them; but to be called “leper” was a bad thing. The passage begins, “A leper came to him, begging him …”: These are the words of someone who has become desperate because of his affliction.

Observe the sequence that follows.

1) The leper says, “If you want to, you can heal me.” 2) Before he answered at all, Jesus reached out and touched him. 3) Jesus says, “Of course I want to. Be healed (clean).” 4) Immediately the sufferer is healed. 5) Jesus gives him two instructions:

• Don’t tell anyone what happened. (Right! How can he possibly avoid telling what happened? We call this “the Messianic secret”. Jesus knew that people were looking for a miracle-worker as the Messiah, and he kept quiet about his identity so that he could teach his disciples more about the Messiah as a suffering servant.)
• Go to the priests so that they can verify your healing and you can rejoin the community. Jesus heals him physically and spiritually and communally.

6) The healed man started to tell his story over and over, and Jesus retreated into seclusion to continue his ministry with his disciples.

Application

Come back to our question: How do we rebuild trust/learn to trust again once trust has been broken? What does this encounter between Jesus and the “leper” teach us?

When the problem lies between us and God, the Psalm tells us to bring our brokenness to God. In God there is healing and new life. The story in Mark 1 tells us how a broken person learns to trust again. The sufferer calls out to Jesus for help. That is one basic step required to rebuild trust: Admit the problem. Name the brokenness. Ask for help.

In the gospel reading, the broken man asked Jesus, the Messiah, for help. Our opening hymn this morning contains the words, “We are each other’s bread and wine.” That is, we are the Body of Christ to each other. Some churches have a confessional booth where the broken person can confess to a priest, who then acts and speaks on behalf of Jesus. In Anabaptism, we act on behalf of Jesus for each other. The “priesthood of all believers” means that any one of us can act as a priest for any other. Sometimes people think that it means we are a priest for ourselves and that we approach God directly without any human help. We do indeed have direct access to God: It is a wonderful gift. But more importantly, we can confess our brokenness to each other, and our brothers and sisters mediate the presence of Christ to us.

The first step, then, is that the broken person admits their brokenness. That admission – calling out as the leper in Mark did – leads to an equally important response. Note what Jesus did. Even before he spoke words of healing, “Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him.”

Separated by a pandemic that has tortured “huggers” by forcing them to stay six feet away from people, some of us are hungering for a hug. I think this leper was like that. For months, perhaps for years, no one would touch him, because touching him would make them also ritually unclean. Jesus ignored such fears and reached out and touched him. This simple act of acceptance spoke more than any words could have. The leper says, “If you want to, you can heal me.” Can you hear the anticipation of rejection in his voice? “No one wants to help me. I am an outcast! I am worthless!” Jesus’ first action is to remind him, “I love you. I care for you. You are valuable!”

The second step, then, is to respond to the broken person with simple acceptance, with a simple demonstration of that person’s value – whether it is through a handshake, a hug, a high five, or any other action that communicates clearly, “You are valuable, and I care about you.”

This communication comes from each of us as individuals and from all of us as a community. Another of our favourite hymns says it clearly:

Heart with loving heart united, met to know God’s holy will./ Let his love in us ignited more and more our spirits fill./ He the Head, we are his members; we reflect the light he is./ He the Master, we disciples, he is ours and we are his.

May we all so love each other and all selfish claims deny,/ so that each one for the other will not hesitate to die./ Even so our Lord has loved us; for our lives he gave his life./ Still he grieves and still he suffers, for our selfishness and strife.

Since, O Lord, you have demanded that our lives your love should show/ so we wait to be commanded forth into your world to go./ Kindle in us love’s compassion so that everyone may see/ in our fellowship the promise of a new humanity.

We reach out in love and acceptance individually and corporately, because the truth is that we are all broken people, and we all need to learn to trust again.

Step One: Admit our brokenness. Step Two: Accept the broken one openly and fully. Then there is a third step. Rebuilding trust is a lifelong process, and it is frankly impossible without divine intervention. Jesus touched the broken man, and then he did more. He healed him. Healing and saving were not two different things in Jewish thinking. By saying “Be clean,” Jesus was saying also, “Be whole.” That is one reason he sent him to the priests to be pronounced clean: That pronouncement meant also that he could worship with God’s people in the synagogue. He was restored to right relationship with God and with his community.

Step Three, then, is to embrace this lifelong process of building trust within our community. Trust-building is a hard and time-consuming process, but when it is done right the effects are remarkable. In an essay titled “Sesame and Lilies”, John Ruskin wrote the following:

During the [riots] of 1848, all the houses in Paris were being searched for firearms by the mob. The one I was living in contained none, as the master of the house repeatedly assured the furious and incredulous Republicans. They were going to lay violent hands on him when his wife, an English lady, hearing the loud discussion, came bravely forward and assured them that no arms were concealed.  “You are English, we believe you; the English always tell the truth,” was the immediate answer, and the rioters quietly left.

The English people no longer have this reputation, but in the 1800s this was indeed how they were known. This took place at the height of the influence of the English Evangelical movement and is a remarkable testimony. When rioters leave quietly because they trust the speaker, you can see how powerful trust is. Equally, when we break trust, it takes time to rebuild it. We work at this as individuals and as community, and as we work God does the miracle of making us clean.

The broken and healed man couldn’t keep quiet about what had happened to him. That’s another sermon, but you can see it coming: God’s action in and through us is the source of our witness to the world. God’s healing is a spark of divine fire that warms up the whole world around us.

28 June 2020

Steinbach Mennonite Church

Texts:

Psalm 32: 1-7

The Joy of Forgiveness

Of David. A Maskil.

 ¹Happy are those whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. ²Happy are those to whom the Lord imputes no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit.

³While I kept silence, my body wasted away through my groaning all day long. ⁴For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer. Selah

⁵Then I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not hide my iniquity; I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the Lord,” and you forgave the guilt of my sin. Selah

⁶Therefore let all who are faithful offer prayer to you; at a time of distress, the rush of mighty waters shall not reach them. ⁷You are a hiding place for me; you preserve me from trouble; you surround me with glad cries of deliverance. Selah

Mark 1: 40-45

Jesus Cleanses a Leper

⁴⁰ A leper came to him begging him, and kneeling he said to him, “If you choose, you can make me clean.” ⁴¹ Moved with pity, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, and said to him, “I do choose. Be made clean!” ⁴² Immediately the leprosy left him, and he was made clean. ⁴³ After sternly warning him he sent him away at once, ⁴⁴ saying to him, “See that you say nothing to anyone; but go, show yourself to the priest, and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded, as a testimony to them.” ⁴⁵ But he went out and began to proclaim it freely, and to spread the word, so that Jesus could no longer go into a town openly, but stayed out in the country; and people came to him from every quarter.

A Strange Habit of Life

Jesus’ family thought he was crazy. Maybe people today think that we are crazy too, when we choose to follow Jesus the Messiah. I want to examine this idea through the gospel reading from Mark, as well as the OT and NT readings.

Mark 3

Why did people think that Jesus was crazy? The gospel text says, “Then Jesus entered a house, and again a crowd gathered, so that he and his disciples were not even able to eat. When his family heard about this, they went to take charge of him, for they said, ‘He is out of his mind.’ And the teachers of the law who came down from Jerusalem said, ‘He is possessed by Beelzebul! By the prince of demons he is driving out demons.’”

Two responses to Jesus. What was Jesus doing that led his family to say, “He’s out of his mind”, and the teachers of the law to say, “He’s possessed by a demon!”? First, he was healing people and casting out demons himself. His actions caught people’s attention, so that crowds started following him to listen to his teaching and to see what he would do next.

Second, Jesus made implicit claims about his identity. In chapter 1 he cast out an evil spirit, who identified Jesus clearly before he left the possessed man: “What do you want with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are – the Holy One of God!” The people heard this spirit speak, and they started speculating about Jesus.

In chapter 2, four men dug a hole in the roof of the house where Jesus was teaching. They lowered their friend, a paralyzed man, through the hole in the roof, for Jesus to heal him. Jesus response was not a simple healing. Instead, he said, “Son, your sins are forgiven!” If the event in chapter 1 started people talking, this action poured fuel on the fire of their thoughts. “Why does this fellow talk like that? He’s blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone?”

Jesus did not back down, but referred to himself as the Son of Man, a title meaning “the Messiah”, as he healed the man’s paralysis. At the end of chapter 2, Jesus is confronted by the Pharisees, and refers to himself both as the Son of Man and as the Lord of the Sabbath.

These actions were the real reason that his family thought he was crazy. He claimed unity with God. He claimed a direct unique identity as one with God.

The Trilemma

C.S. Lewis described the problem that Jesus presents us with as a trilemma. Let me explain. Jesus claims to be uniquely identified with God. If he had lived in India as a Hindu of that time period, this claim would not have surprised anyone. One school of Hinduism uses the phrase, “I am God, You are God” to express the essential unity of all reality.  If they had heard Jesus talk about “the Son of Man” and “the Lord of the Sabbath”, they would have agreed.

But Jesus lived in the Roman Province of Judea, and he was a Jew. First century Jews had a clear understanding that God is unique. The great Shema of Judaism says, “Hear Oh Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One.” Any suggestion that you are I or anyone else was somehow uniquely identified with God was blasphemy. In Jesus’ life, his claim to one with the Father was a basic reason that the Jews had him crucified. The penalty for blasphemy is death.

So we come to Lewis’ trilemma. Here is how he puts it in Mere Christianity:

I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to. … Now it seems to me obvious that He was neither a lunatic nor a fiend: and consequently, however strange or terrifying or unlikely it may seem, I have to accept the view that He was and is God

At this stage of his career, Jesus’ family did not accept the idea that he was God, but held to the idea that he was a crazy: a lunatic. The teachers of the law also could not accept that he was God, but held to the idea that he was allied with Satan. So, why did people (including his family) think that Jesus was crazy? They thought that Jesus was crazy because he identified himself as the one in whom God comes to earth. As he puts it in John’s gospel repeatedly, “I and my father are one.”

1 Samuel 8 and 2 Corinthians 4

Jesus made no effort to fit into people’s ideas of what he should be. He was simply himself: One with God; the Son of Man [i.e., the Messiah]; the Lord of the Sabbath. God’s people have been less ready to stand out from the crowd.

In 1 Samuel 8, the Children of Israel decided they wanted a king. The people living around them had a king, and they wanted to fit in. Samuel counselled against their choice. Giving their ruler the power of being king would lead to tyranny, he warned, but the people insisted: They wanted a king. God gave them a king – first Saul, and then David and his heirs. God even used their rebellion to prepare the way for the Messiah, God’s Chosen One, to come. But the point of the passage is clear: By deciding to be like the people around them, the Children of Israel rebelled against God. God wanted them to understand that God is king, rather than any human ruler.

In 2 Corinthians, Paul defends his authority as an apostle. The Corinthians were attracted to spiritual rock stars (Paul calls them “super-apostles”) who showed up in their midst, but Paul refuses to fit into their ideas of what he should be. Earlier in chapter 4, he refers to himself and the Corinthians as “earthen vessels”, that is, ordinary people who do not stand out from the crowd. Here he observes that their ordinariness is being transformed into glory.

We might wonder then: Do People Think We’re Crazy? They might! If people around us listen to our conversation and to our hymns and all that we say and do together, they might think we’re crazy. As with Jesus, their perception might come from our stated identity.

Look at the person beside you. Maybe you think they’re really cool or really dull. Maybe you wish they had sat closer to you or a few rows behind you instead. The fact is, however, that whatever else we think about each other, we all fit. We’re an ordinary group of Canadians, and no one would think twice about us, at least at first sight.

Then we start to sing and pray and read Scripture, and we say things like, “our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.” We start to talk about each other as people who reflect God’s glory. Pretty soon we are referring to each other as kings and queens, divine royalty. We come close to outdoing Shankara, the great Hindu theologian of 1400 years ago, who said to his students, “You are god!” If people really understood what we’re saying, they might indeed say, “You guys are crazy!”

A hundred years ago, Vachel Lindsay wrote a remarkable poem called “General William Booth enters into Heaven”. He pictures the moment that the founder of the Salvation Army, renowned for his work among the world’s poor, died and went to heaven. Listen to part of what he wrote:

Booth led boldly with his big bass drum—  

(Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?)  

The Saints smiled gravely and they said: “He’s come.”  

(Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?)  

Walking lepers followed, rank on rank,  

Lurching bravoes from the ditches dank,  

Drabs from the alleyways and drug fiends pale—  

Minds still passion-ridden, soul-powers frail:—  

Vermin-eaten saints with mouldy breath,  

Unwashed legions with the ways of Death—  

(Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?)

…

Lindsay continues with the transformation that overtakes the crowd in Heaven:

Jesus came from out the court-house door,  

Stretched his hands above the passing poor.  

Booth saw not, but led his queer ones there  

Round and round the mighty court-house square.  

Yet in an instant all that blear review  

Marched on spotless, clad in raiment new.  

The lame were straightened, withered limbs uncurled  

And blind eyes opened on a new, sweet world.  

Drabs and vixens in a flash made whole!  

Gone was the weasel-head, the snout, the jowl!  

Sages and sibyls now, and athletes clean,  

Rulers of empires, and of forests green!  

The hosts were sandalled, and their wings were fire!  

(Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?)  

But their noise played havoc with the angel-choir.  

(Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?)   

O shout Salvation! It was good to see  

Kings and Princes by the Lamb set free.  

The banjos rattled and the tambourines  

Jing-jing-jingled in the hands of Queens.

That’s us too! Look around at each other. Divine royalty following our master into the very presence of God!

What Does This Mean Now?

What sets this “good kind of crazy” off from the real crazy? I remember Jonestown. Jim Jones led a cult he called “The People’s Temple” to found a commune in Indiana, which moved to California and finally to Jonestown, Guyana. More than 300 people died when he led them in a mass suicide. I remember David Koresh. Koresh led a cult called the Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas. Koresh and 79 others died in an FBI raid. I have no interest in being part of a cult that elevates its leader beyond all reason and destroys the members’ ability to think.

How is the good kind of crazy different from this? Consider why Jesus’ family changed their minds about him – because they really did change their minds. They observed him throughout his ministry. They saw how he loved people unconditionally and worked on their behalf. They heard to his teaching and recognized the Spirit of God moving through him. The longer they listened and watched and paid attention, the more they realised that Jesus was not crazy, nor was he possessed; they realised that he was just who he said he was.

What’s Your Story?

I have referred to C.S. Lewis often. He began his adult life as a bitter atheist, convinced that God did not exist and angry with God for not existing. Throughout his 20s, his atheism was challenged at various levels, and he came to believe in God. He did not, however, become a Christian. As Alistair McGrath puts it, Lewis could not see what difference Jesus could make to our lives today. The stories about Jesus were just too far away to be relevant.

Then his friend, J.R.R. Tolkien, said something that changed his mind. Tolkien pointed out (to use our 21^st century language) that everyone lives by what we call a metanarrative. Alistair McGrath describes the story that people like Jean Paul Sartre and Richard Dawkins live by:

We are here by accident, meaningless products of a random process. We can only invent meaning and purpose in life, and do our best to stay alive—even though there is no point to life.

McGrath continues with the story of Jesus:

We are precious creatures of a loving God, who has created for us something special that we are asked to do. We have the privilege of being able to do something good and useful for God in this world, and need to work out what it is. (from Lunches with C.S. Lewis)

We discover what God wants us to do by paying attention to Jesus. Jesus is unique in the world’s history. No other “great teacher” claimed to be God. The Buddha was clear that he was not God. Mohammed and Moses would have been horrified at the idea. Jesus says that he shows us God uniquely in himself. He provides a way to live, a strange habit of life that looks crazy, but proves to be the door into the heart of God’s love.

How do we know if this story is true? Lewis tells us that the best way to know if a story is true is by seeing how well it makes sense of the rest of reality. If we are no more than “the meaningless products of a random process”, then we cannot make sense of anything. What Lewis found as a young man, atheist and angry with God for not existing, was that belief in God made sense of everything from his own misfortunes in life to the horrors of World War One. As Lewis famously put it, “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.”

[Please note: This is not any kind of a developed argument here. You will have to go and do the work of understanding these ideas more fully on your own. A good place to start is Christian Smith’s book, Moral, Believing Animals, in which he describes several of the major metanarratives that people live by today. In this space, all I can say is that I found the story of Jesus to be true, and I have organized my life round it.]

As we read the story of Jesus, then, we discover how we are to live. We are not like the people around us (unlike the Children of Israel in 1 Samuel 8). We are ordinary people (like those in 2 Corinthians 4), who carry the glory of God inside of us. How do we do this? By choosing the story of Jesus to become the pattern for the story of our lives, a strange habit of life.

Like Jesus, we care for people who are hurting and broken. Like Jesus, we refuse to participate in patterns that are harmful and destructive. Like Jesus, we listen for God’s voice within – both within each one of us, and within the community as a whole, through the Holy Spirit. Like Jesus, we immerse ourselves in the Scriptures, listening for God’s direction for each step of life.

People like the Branch Dravidians or the People’s Temple did not allow God to reshape their own stories with God’s story, told through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. We live in that story, as God reshapes our lives. It may look crazy to the people around us, but it is in fact the source of all that is good and true in our world.

10 June 2018

Grace Bible Church

Texts

1 Samuel 8:4-20:

⁴ So all the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel at Ramah. ⁵ They said to him, ‘You are old, and your sons do not follow your ways; now appoint a king to lead us, such as all the other nations have.’ ⁶ But when they said, ‘Give us a king to lead us,’ this displeased Samuel; so he prayed to the Lord. ⁷ And the Lord told him: ‘Listen to all that the people are saying to you; it is not you they have rejected, but they have rejected me as their king. ⁸ As they have done from the day I brought them up out of Egypt until this day, forsaking me and serving other gods, so they are doing to you. ⁹ Now listen to them; but warn them solemnly and let them know what the king who will reign over them will claim as his rights.’

¹⁰ Samuel told all the words of the Lord to the people who were asking him for a king. ¹¹ He said, ‘This is what the king who will reign over you will claim as his rights: he will take your sons and make them serve with his chariots and horses, and they will run in front of his chariots. ¹² Some he will assign to be commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and others to plough his ground and reap his harvest, and still others to make weapons of war and equipment for his chariots. ¹³ He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. ¹⁴ He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive groves and give them to his attendants. ¹⁵ He will take a tenth of your grain and of your vintage and give it to his officials and attendants. ¹⁶ Your male and female servants and the best of your cattle^[c] and donkeys he will take for his own use. ¹⁷ He will take a tenth of your flocks, and you yourselves will become his slaves. ¹⁸ When that day comes, you will cry out for relief from the king you have chosen, but the Lord will not answer you in that day.’

¹⁹ But the people refused to listen to Samuel. ‘No!’ they said. ‘We want a king over us. ²⁰ Then we shall be like all the other nations, with a king to lead us and to go out before us and fight our battles.’

2 Corinthians 4:13-5:1:

¹³ It is written: ‘I believed; therefore I have spoken.’ Since we have that same spirit of faith, we also believe and therefore speak, ¹⁴ because we know that the one who raised the Lord Jesus from the dead will also raise us with Jesus and present us with you to himself. ¹⁵ All this is for your benefit, so that the grace that is reaching more and more people may cause thanksgiving to overflow to the glory of God.

¹⁶ Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. ¹⁷ For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. ¹⁸ So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. 5 For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands.

Mark 3:20-35:

²⁰ Then Jesus entered a house, and again a crowd gathered, so that he and his disciples were not even able to eat. ²¹ When his family heard about this, they went to take charge of him, for they said, ‘He is out of his mind.’ ²² And the teachers of the law who came down from Jerusalem said, ‘He is possessed by Beelzebul! By the prince of demons he is driving out demons.’

²³ So Jesus called them over to him and began to speak to them in parables: ‘How can Satan drive out Satan? ²⁴ If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. ²⁵ If a house is divided against itself, that house cannot stand. ²⁶ And if Satan opposes himself and is divided, he cannot stand; his end has come. ²⁷ In fact, no one can enter a strong man’s house without first tying him up. Then he can plunder the strong man’s house. ²⁸ Truly I tell you, people can be forgiven all their sins and every slander they utter, ²⁹ but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven; they are guilty of an eternal sin.’ ³⁰ He said this because they were saying, ‘He has an impure spirit.’

³¹ Then Jesus’ mother and brothers arrived. Standing outside, they sent someone in to call him. ³² A crowd was sitting round him, and they told him, ‘Your mother and brothers are outside looking for you.’ ³³ ‘Who are my mother and my brothers?’ he asked. ³⁴ Then he looked at those seated in a circle round him and said, ‘Here are my mother and my brothers! ³⁵ Whoever does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother.’