The Fountain - Marcel Duchamp 1917
The Fountain may look like a cheap joke, but the fundamental motive was to call into question how art is defined and to shine a light on the 'rules' we use to attach meaning and merit to works of art. Jesus in the parable of the 'divided Kingdom' calls into question the 'rules' that give merit and meaning to life.
Jesus - The Disruptor : Mark 3: 20 – 30/2 Corinthians 4:13 – 5:1
The events of the last few days marking the D-Day landings in Normandy give us pause to reflect on the sacrifice of those men and women who put their lives on the line for the sake of the freedom of Europe and the future of generations to come. All those who have commented on the heroism of the ordinary men and women of the armed forces ask the same question. ‘Would this generation be prepared to make the same sacrifice?’
And then there is another dimension to the story of D-Day, the cost of civilian life. Thousands of French citizens died in the bombing raids that flattened Cherborg and Caen, and yet the invading armies were welcomed in by a grateful people. France was liberated from the grip of Nazi power and given back its dignity as a nation.
The invasion of France in 1944 provides us with an excellent analogy to understand the parable of the ‘Kingdom divided against itself’.
Jesus the Liberator
In our readings Mark records an incident when Jesus liberates a man in the grip of evil forces, like a Kingdom in the grip of enemy forces. To liberate this kingdom the ‘Strong man’ who has captured it must be bound and thrown out.
Jesus puts the problem like this: “No one can enter a strong man’s house and carry off his possessions unless he first ties up the strong man. “ Mark 3: 27
Jesus’ enemies, however, accuse Jesus himself of using evil powers to drive out evil, replacing one devil with another! Such a person, though, would, Jesus points out, be like a ‘Kingdom divided against itself’. You can’t drive out evil with evil.
In other words, we might say, a Kingdom or a person in the grip of forces beyond their control can be said to be possessed and in need of liberation by someone with the intention not to bind them, but to give them their life and dignity back.
Jesus the Disruptor
This is a strange parable, for Jesus seems to be suggesting that he is the thief in this tale who relieves the strong man of his booty!
‘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.’ Mark 3: 27
Such language reminds us of the bondage in which humanity finds itself. We are held in the grip of powerful forces that control our lives. Only the one who has defeated evil not by evil but by love, one who has replaced the rule of evil with selfless service can offer us freedom.
Mark pictures Jesus as a ‘Distruptor’. As we saw last week he changes the 'rules' by which we live in the world, making room for a new dynamic of love and freedom that he calls ‘The Kingdom of God’. In this new world of freedom we are no longer in the grip of forces that control us, but given the grace to take our lives back.
Freedom in the Holy Spirit
Jesus uses strong language because he knows the strength of the enemy. He carries with him many attractive possessions all offering immediate reward, but he cannot offer freedom because in return for those attractive possessions he wants control of our lives.
What Jesus offers us is a different driver, the Holy Spirit who comes into our lives as a gift not a reward. The freedom the Holy Spirit brings is indeed a freedom from possessions,that is, things that possess us!
The strong man in Jesus' parable is in fact weak for he is a captive of his possessions; if he is to be really strong then he must first be captured by the Holy Spirit who brings life and freedom.
Perfect freedom then is found in service to God and neighbour. When the Holy Spirit guides our choices and decisions not in the pursuit of the ‘temporary’, short term interests, but in what Paul calls the ‘eternal and unseen’.
‘We fix our eyes not on what is seen but what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, what is unseen is eternal.’ 2Cor. 4: 18.
It could be said that our society has moved in exactly the opposite direction. We have as a Nation lost that vision of faithfulness to future generations that we will see and pursue short term interests that may rob those generations of a future.
We will need that spirit of sacrifice that motivated a whole generation of young men and women to forgo their youth so that those who came after might have theirs.
Rev Simon Brignall