Richard Davenport

June 9, 2024 – Proper 5

Mark 3:20-35

                You see it in crime dramas and thrillers all the time. You’re at home, minding your own business, cooking dinner or getting ready for bed or whatever the case may be, when all of the sudden there’s a noise.  It’s not a pet and there shouldn’t be anyone else in your house, but…there it is again.  Footsteps. Someone’s in your home who doesn’t belong.  The only reason they would be in your home is because they’re up to no good.  If they’re willing to break into your home, there’s no telling what else they might be willing to do and none of it will be any good for you.

                What do you do?  If you have a means of defending yourself, you might try that.  You don’t know what the other person or people have and you might not be able to get to your weapon from where you are.  You can try calling the police if your phone is handy and won’t give away that you’re there.  You might try and hide, if there’s a place to go.  If you do hide, you’ll have to hope you don’t end up stuck in a bathroom like that scene from The Shining, as a crazed psycho tries to break your door down.

                Of course, it doesn’t have to be a person. Something impersonal, like a fire or a tornado, is just as deadly.  It may not be actively seeking you out, but if it finds you, you won’t make it out unscathed, if you survive at all.

                What’s your plan then?  You aren’t going to reason with them.  You aren’t going to overpower them and it doesn’t look like you can escape them.  You’re trapped.  It’s a pretty awful scenario.  There’s nothing you can do about it except hope they don’t find you.

                When the Bible talks about Satan, it uses a couple of different ideas.  Satan is a liar, the Father of Lies, he’s called.  He’s also described as a prowling lion, looking for people to devour. In either case, he has dedicated his entire existence to rebelling against his Creator, and so he is evil in everything he says and does.

                That kind of fear, that kind of tension isn’t what we usually think of when we talk about slavery.  The Israelites living as slaves in Egypt were subjected to hard labor. Their lives were not their own. They couldn’t go where they wanted or live where they wanted.  Their days were dictated by Pharaoh.  As unpleasant as all of that would be, it doesn’t illicit that same kind of terror. It isn’t the same as the knowledge that you may very well be about to die and that you’re powerless to stop it.

                All of the classic demon possession movies are great for stirring up a fear of demons and the influence of evil supernatural beings. Unfortunately they scare you with all of the wrong things.  Are demons going to make you levitate, make your head spin around, make you grow fangs, and that sort of thing?  Not likely. The Bible never describes demons as doing anything of the sort.  But it’s all of that crazy, sensational stuff that gets us all worked up.

                Satan has little interest in all of that. Those aren’t the kinds of things that carry eternal consequences.  When Scripture describes Satan as a prowling lion, we think of the proud lion with his big mane standing up on rock and roaring as his displays the huge fangs in his mouth.  Satan would like nothing better than for you to think of him that way, because if you do, then you forget all about the prowling lionesses who actually do the hunting, creeping ever so slowly up to their prey and pouncing before you even know they’re there.  Even then, Satan isn’t seeking to tear and rend.  He is there to tempt.  He is there to bring you despair.  He is there to lie and mislead.  He is there to sow dissention and discord.  He is there to enslave.  Not that he can force you into slavery.  He doesn’t have that power.  But he can make you think slavery is all there is to look forward to.

                If you’ve ever been to the circus, you’ll often see all sorts of animals doing tricks, lions, bears, elephants.  The elephants at the circus are guided around by these thin little ropes that could never stop an animal that can weigh upwards of 5 tons.  The trick is that the elephant doesn’t know that.  He starts out his circus career, not with a little rope but with a heavy iron chain, a chain he can’t escape from.  Eventually he learns that the chain can’t be broken and so he stops trying. Then his handlers switch to lighter and lighter chains until they get to a little rope that he believes is just as inescapable as the chain that enslaved him to begin with.  It’s a lie, but it works because he never believes otherwise.

                Satan loves these kinds of lies, this kind of deception.  He wants nothing more than to keep everyone in slavery, but he has no power to make it happen directly.  So he feeds you what you need to enslave yourself.  If you’re a world-changer.  If you’re someone who wants nothing more than to make the world a better place, then he’ll show you all of the different ways you can do that. Yes, Satan will be glad to show you how to help the world.  He'll give you all sorts of ideas for solving the problems of poverty, hunger, crime, and anything else. 

                Why would he do such a thing?  Because none of the solutions you’ll find will ever really solve the problem.  There will still be poor people, still be hungry people, there will still be criminals no matter how much time or money you throw at the problem.  When all of your efforts fail, you will either fall into despair, or he’ll dangle another solution in front of you and you’ll be off and running again, chasing an unattainable goal.  You’ve become enslaved.

                If some tragedy strikes you, he’ll show you how those things happen all over the world, how misery and grief are the way of things. Soon everywhere you look that’s all you’ll see.  Your eyes will slide right past the moments of joy and peace that are all around you too. You’ll quickly come to the conclusion that misery is what defines this world and you’ll find yourself despairing. You’ve become enslaved.

                Satan has all sorts of ways to get you there. He has all manner of carrots to dangle before you, all kinds of lies to whisper.  He doesn’t really care how you get there.  He just wants you to live out the rest of your life as a slave, a slave to self-gratification through pride or pleasure, a slave to despair through misery or death.        

                At this point you might be under the impression that the way out of this slavery is to realize that you’re in slavery.  You look at the lies and see them for what they are. You can be the elephant who finally sees that it’s just a little rope and you can leave anytime you want.  It doesn’t work like that.  This isn’t a self-help seminar.  This isn’t a feel good religion that’s going to tell you you can do it all on your own. 

                That’s just one more of Satan’s lies.  Even if you figure out that the current path you’re following isn’t the right one, you’ll never actually find the one you should be on.  You’ll just keep endlessly wandering in the hopes of somehow stumbling across it, but every path you find is still more of Satan’s lies.  He’s still whispering that you can make it happen.  The form may change.  The plan may change, but the outcome will not.  When you are the center of the universe, every path must eventually lead back to you.  It’s inevitable.  You’ve enslaved yourself and you’ll never find your way out.

                The Gospel reading for today deals with Jesus and his ministry.  There are a number of questions that stand behind what is going on.  I’m not going to dig into all of them here. Instead, I’m focusing on the questions they’re getting at:  where does Jesus come from and what is he here to do?

                Is Jesus a representative of Satan, sent here to drive out other representatives of Satan?  No, far from it.  The very idea doesn’t make any sense.  Jesus isn’t here to further Satan’s goals.  He’s here to do something radically different.  Whether you think of Satan as the crazed lunatic in your house that keeps you from leaving or whether you think of him as the pernicious whisperer who is constantly feeding you lies, either way, Satan is firmly in control and you are a slave. 

                Jesus doesn’t come to fight Satan in some kind of bare knuckled brawl.  Jesus comes to do the one thing Satan cannot do, the one thing he can’t stand.  Jesus tells the truth.  Forgiveness is possible.  Life is possible, but you can’t achieve it.  Jesus breaks into Satan’s lies.  He ties up Satan with words that can’t be refuted.  He tells you that no plan of Satan’s will ever achieve what he promises.  Everything you do ultimately ends in death.

                Jesus frees you, not by empowering you, making you smarter or stronger or any of those things.  He renders Satan powerless with the truth that God alone is the creator, he alone is the one with all authority in heaven and on earth.  He alone can forgive and grant life even in death. Christ seeks you out as you are hiding and shows you that Satan, scary as he might have been, is really nothing but hot air.  He leads you out of Satan’s clutches and shows you a world and a life very different from what Satan presented.  Jesus shows you a life where sins no longer haunt you, where death is no longer the end, where grief, despair, poverty, hunger, and all of the other problems we face fade away where sin is wiped clean.

                Jesus leads you out of darkness, out of hiding, and he leads you here.  He shows you the life you’ve been seeking but didn’t know how to find.  Here at his table you find life, you find forgiveness, you find peace, you find hope, you find the future world free of sin and you see your place within it.  Here you find the path, the one that comes from following Christ, who alone speaks the truth and sets you free from the life of endless sorrow and misery that Satan has helped you build for yourself.  In Christ, there is freedom.