1 Samuel 8:4-11, (12-15), 16-20, (11:14-15) Psalm 138  2 Corinthians 4:13-5:1 Mark 3:20-35

Jesus said, “Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.”

After our great festive celebrations of the last several weeks – Ascension and Pentecost and Trinity Sunday, this morning’s lessons seem to bring us down off that pedestal to the reality of the day-to day-world. In our first lesson the great prophet Samuel is grumpy with the Israelites for demanding a king; in Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians, we are told that “our outer nature is wasting away;” and in our lesson from Mark’s Gospel, Jesus speaks of unpardonable sin and seems to rebuff, quite irritably, his own family.

Last week we read of the calling of Samuel, and we learn from today’s lesson that Samuel would be the last of the great judges of Israel. Israel until this time, had be ruled and guided by judges who, like Samuel, were called and directed by God.

Looking more closely at our Old Testament lesson from Samuel, we find the Israelites, after centuries of leadership by judges and prophets, demanding a king so that they could “be like other nations.”  Samuel had tried unsuccessfully to remind and persuade the elders of Israel that God was their King, that their obedience to God left no need for an earthly king.  But Samuel had grown old, and his sons had betrayed their calling to follow in their father’s footsteps as judges over Israel, and they had perverted justice.

We read that Samuel prays to the Lord and is assured that this demand by the elders of Israel is not an indication that the people have rejected Samuel and his sons as judge over Israel, but that the people of Israel have rejected God as being King over them.  In verse 8-9, we read God’s words to Samuel, “Just as they have done to me, from the day I brought them up out of Egypt to this day, forsaking me and serving other gods, so also they are doing to you.  Now, listen to their voice.”

But, God adds an important caveat – “Only, you shall solemnly warn them, and show them the ways of the king who shall reign over them.” In the verses that follow, Samuel lists the many duties and taxes that a worldly ruler would extract from them. But, the people of Israel are not willing to listen to Samuel’s warnings about the price they would pay for an earthly king’s rule.  As our lesson concludes in verses 19 and 20, we hear the plea of the Israelites, “We are determined to have a king over us,” whom, they say, “will go out before us and fight our battles,” and we can “be like other nations.”  [1Samuel 19-20 NRSV]  The Israelites would have an earthly king to rule their lands and their hearts.  God’s chosen people would then be like other nations.  Why, then, would they need God?

In our Gospel lesson from Mark, Jesus is speaking of this same state of mind that had possessed the Israelites of Old Testament times.  It is a state of mind that desires the replacing of that that is of the Holy Spirit with that that is earthly and perceived as separate from God.  In blunt terms, it is seeing evil as goodness and goodness as evil.  The scribes in our account this morning tried to label Jesus’ actions of casting out demons as an action of evil while reason assures us that evil cannot, in fact would not, desire to cast out evil.

In our account of the Israelites, it is not so much that an earthly king for their people was an evil thing, but that this earthly king represented their rejection of God as their true and only king.  In a similar way, the scribes in this confrontation with Jesus cannot distinguish goodness from evil.  Their willingness to understand is clouded by their earthly agenda to uphold their power over the religious traditions as theydetermine the traditions need to be upheld.

This state of mind is closed to the action of God’s spirit – a state of mind in which we sacrifice good for evil – when our earthly desires circumvent the action of the Holy Sprit.  This closed mindedness, Jesus says in our lesson from Mark, is the unpardonable and eternal sin.  When we, as humans, choose to partake in this ongoing sin  – when we habitually reject God in favor of earthly desires and obsessions, this ongoing sin becomes an unpardonable and eternal rejection of God.  And, God, though never ceasing to love us, respects our will to reject him.

This struggle between the evil and the good is the dilemma that, at worst, is the basis of our rejection of God and, at best, causes our continuous wholehearted search for guidance.

In his book, The Cost of Discipleship, Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes that we should not be surprised at the difficulty of faith if we are “consciously resisting or disobeying the commandment of Jesus.”

Specifically, Bonhoeffer asks, “Is there some part of your life which you are refusing to surrender at his behest, some sinful passion, maybe, or some animosity, some hope, perhaps your ambition or your reason?  If so, you must not be surprised that you have not received the Holy Spirit, that prayer is difficult, or that your request for faith remains unanswered.”^[1]

There is more clarity in the final section of our Gospel lesson, in which Jesus seemingly harshly dismisses the members of his biological family.

Jesus’ message is that our earthly biological bond with our family members is no comparison to the strength of those relationships and connections that are established in the Holy Spirit where Jesus Christ is Lord of all.  His message is that we are to use the kingship of Christ as the bond of our relationships – a bond that is far more powerful than any earthly biological bond.

How are we to react to this message?  As we are faced daily with heart-wrenching statistics of drug addiction and abuse, suicide, and violence inflicted upon our precious and vulnerable children, it is the responsibility of the religious community to reach out with the message that God is our King and we are his people. When we stop misplacing the blame? When will we take the responsibility to implant the true image of God in our children – that they might grow up protected from this sense of emptiness and meaninglessness that is the manifestation of a life void of authority that is all-powerful, all merciful, all-loving. Fame, fortune, power, prestige, wealth are not our kings.  God in Jesus Christ is the King of creation.  Whoever does his will is a child of God, gathered into the eternal kingdom where there is only one true God.

^[1]Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1959)66.