Daily Devotion – June 3, 2021 – Dr. Pat Taylor Ellison
Mark 3:20-35
3:20 and the crowd came together again, so that they could not even eat.
3:21 When his family heard it, they went out to restrain him, for people were saying, “He has gone out of his mind.”
3:22 And the scribes who came down from Jerusalem said, “He has Beelzebul, and by the ruler of the demons he casts out demons.”
3:23 And he called them to him, and spoke to them in parables, “How can Satan cast out Satan?
3:24 If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand.
3:25 And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand.
3:26 And if Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand, but his end has come.
3:27 But no one can enter a strong man’s house and plunder his property without first tying up the strong man; then indeed the house can be plundered.
3:28 “Truly I tell you, people will be forgiven for their sins and whatever blasphemies they utter;
3:29 but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit can never have forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin”–
3:30 for they had said, “He has an unclean spirit.”
3:31 Then his mother and his brothers came; and standing outside, they sent to him and called him.
3:32 A crowd was sitting around him; and they said to him, “Your mother and brothers and sisters are outside, asking for you.”
3:33 And he replied, “Who are my mother and my brothers?”
3:34 And looking at those who sat around him, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers!
3:35 Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.”
Here we have a day of chaos in Jesus’s ministry. He is in his hometown. People are saying he has gone crazy. He has cast out a demon, and those who want to find fault are saying he is doing his ministry in Satan’s name. Scribes from Jerusalem, people with a certain amount of religious authority, are saying troubling things about him, which probably whips his hometown people into a frenzy.
Jesus is trying to teach them how unreasonable the talk about him is, that Satan would never cast out his own demons. He is also trying to say that, since his teachings come from God, that people who are attributing his holy works to the Devil are blaspheming, a very costly sin indeed. He wants people to see that he is doing the will of the Father and is unwilling to stop, no matter what people may say of him.
His family members are trying to restrain him, to pull him out of the crowd. But if he goes with his family members, Jesus may feel that, given the state of the crowd and the accusations, leaving with them may put them in danger too. And he wants everyone to know that he is focusing his loyalty and his remarks of God and the centrality of God to his work and teachings.
If you were trying to fulfill a calling from the Lord, and people called you crazy, what do you think that you would do? I’m not sure what I would do. I might back off. Or I might double down but try a different tactic, as Jesus does. He knows he is seen in a particular way in his hometown, a way that will make it difficult for people to perceive him as the Son of God, the Messiah. It must have been disappointing to him, and very frustrating for his family. Doing the work of God has a price. Jesus was willing to pay it, and he did. How often are we asked to do something for the Kingdom of God that will truly cost us something? And how big was Jesus’s love for the Father and devotion to the Father’s work that he was willing to bear the pain of this day and the others that followed? That is Messiah work.
Gracious God, Thank you for loving us. Thank you for giving us strength to do hard things & love enough to sustain us when we need it. Amen.
