Second Sunday after Trinity Mark 3:20-end Genesis 3:8-15
Who’s Who 2024 is the 176th edition of one of the world’s longest established reference books, brought up to date for this year with just under 500 new names. The latest annual update includes names from science, technology and medicine, as well as business and leisure, literature, art and music, and more. With almost 500 new names, it is probably an interesting read. But what makes a ‘who’? I suppose that, when it comes to an entry in the reference book, it is all about context and achievement. And we may be able to see why it might be helpful to have these entries, indeed for reference. But we all know that there are many other names that don’t make it into the Who’s Who, but who are, in their own right, still ‘who’s’…
In the account of Genesis chapter 3, we find Adam and Eve, here called ‘the man and the woman’ after they have eaten from the forbidden fruit tree. Once their eyes were opened to what they had done and they realised that they were naked, they made coverings for themselves and went into hiding. But the Lord God looks for them – ‘where are you?’ he asks, and finds them and the whole miserable story of their disobedience comes out. It is interesting that the realisation of their nakedness is in the context of their downfall. Before, they had nothing to hide and they feel safe; now they do, and it makes them see themselves for the first time as they really are: fallible, weak, vulnerable, unworthy; especially in the company of an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-present, holy God. It has an effect on who they think and feel they are.
Identity is important. From the moment we are born, our notion of who we are is being formed in context: our parents and other family first deciding where we belong and affirming who we are. This is in the negative as well as the positive sense. Not every child, sadly, grows up in a loving and safe environment. Jesus grew up in a family who valued him. But in Mark 3, something else is going on. When his family heard what was going on with him in his role of teacher and prophet, they wanted to restrain him; to them, having known him in the past, he is out of his mind. They might have been afraid of what the crowds – and the religious authorities – might do to him. The scribes had been demonizing him, even though he cast out demons and challenged his critics, saying, ‘How can Satan cast out Satan? If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand. And if Satan has risen against himself and is divided, he cannot stand, but his end has come.’ It’s what often happens: when people don’t fit into a certain group’s category, they get labelled in such a way that they can be abused and others won’t take them seriously. The scribes tried to do that with Jesus, so they can safely side-line him. But the label is wrong. Jesus is the stronger one, who has overcome temptation and is bringing in the Kingdom of God. His reproof of being labelled is the most severe in the Bible: ‘Truly I tell you,’ Jesus says, ‘people will be forgiven for their sins and whatever blasphemies they utter; but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit can never have forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin.’ – for they had said, ‘He has an unclean spirit.’
From the moment Jesus began his ministry – his baptism and temptation in the desert affirming his identity as God’s Son – his work has revealed him as the person he is: the Messiah, now reclaiming for God what had been lost. In other words, the real Strong One has arrived and finds his house being burgled, so he is taking action. God’s Kingdom, in which people will find freedom and a new identity, is being proclaimed and inaugurated.
A believer will find his or her true identity through faith in Jesus. The scribes are wrong: there is no-one saner than Jesus, who will prove his power and his identity even more in what is to follow. He knows who he really is. And we also can know who we are, by hearing God’s word. How do we know who we are? By knowing whose we are. Amen.