Just an Ordinary Coup...(Free Version)
Second Sunday after Pentecost- 1 Samuel 8:4-11, 16-20, 2 Corinthians 4:13-5:1, Mark 3:20-35
This Sunday is the second Sunday in the season after Pentecost. Depending on your tradition, this may be called “The Season after Pentecost” or “Ordinary Time.” This seems, well…ordinary. In our Western American culture pastors and Christians are often taught that every Sunday ought to be a flash bang Sunday! We need to create FOMO (fear of missing out).
But so much of our lives are lived in the ordinary. The Christian life is certainly more than making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for our little ones, driving to work, punching and clock, etc. But it is also not less than these things. God meets us in the ordinary. It is significant that this season happens after Pentecost. This is the season where we celebrate Life in The Spirit. God’s Spirit is with us in the Ordinary. And that’s beautiful.
Our Old Testament reading (1 Samuel 8:4-11, 16-20) reveals the ways in which humans often reject God’s authority in search of the flash-bang. Israel trades God's leadership in order to have a “king like other nations.” God warns them of what will come with that (a bunch of stuff they don't want), but they still go for it. Still, God does not give up on them.
In our epistle reading (2 Corinthians 4:13-5:1) Paul quotes Psalm 116 in saying that God will not give up on his people. After all, God didn’t give up on him! There is nothing too dark, to shameful that God will not make new! Why? Because resurrection! We know that there are certain things in this life that will pass away. Paul says that even the bodies that we currently have will pass away. But as Christians, the Church does not have to fear or lose heart when we face persecution or hardship. We await a building made not with hands, eternal life in the heavens.
Our gospel reading (Mark 3:20-35) is another way in which people reject God’s authority and cling on to things that don’t last. The scribes and even Jesus’ OWN FAMILY don’t get him. The scribes say he’s of SATAN, which, Jesus says, really reveals their own blindness. Satan is the one who divides. The Holy Spirit’s work is always about bringing things back to congruence, to intention, to proper identity. Jesus says here that his mission is the one who binds the strong man, and who plunders his possessions. The devil has the human race in bondage. And he holds the men and women who are held captive by sin.
Where do we often look to usurp God’s authority? Where do we prefer control and forget our identity and uniqueness as God’s people? And also in our need to be in control, where do we see God’s liberating work and reject it as wickedness or madness? Where do we see Satan’s work and call it good? We are so often tempted by money, experience, the focus on self, etc.
But, as Christians, We have been liberated from these false stories, these hollow paths. The strongman has been defeated through the one who is righteous, and the one whose power comes through strength. And this One is working in us!