It Takes One to Know One!

The Holy Gospel According to St. Mark, the 3rd Chapter

The crowd came together again, so that Jesus and the disciples could not even eat. When Jesus’s family heard it, they went out to restrain him, for people were saying, “He has gone out of his mind.” And the scribes who came down from Jerusalem said, “He has Beelzebul, and by the ruler of the demons he casts out demons.” 

And he called them to him, and spoke to them in parables, “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 up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand, but his end has come. 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.

“Truly I tell you, 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.”

Then his mother and his brothers came; and standing outside, they sent to him and called him. A crowd was sitting around him; and they said to him, “Your mother and your brothers and sisters are outside, asking for you.” And he replied, “Who are my mother and my brothers?” And looking at those who sat around him, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.”

Back in 1847 Dr. Semmelweis was in charge of two clinics in Vienna.  One was a teaching hospital where students learned everything from birthing babies, to autopsies and everything in between.  The other was a maternity clinic for... you know... the regular folks.  The “regular folks” clinic didn’t have any doctors or medical students.  It had midwives.  The thing was, in the fancy, high priced, teaching hospital, women and babies died from fever... A LOT!  But over at the low-rent clinic with the midwives, things were MUCH better.  Women BEGGED to go to the low-rent hospital, no matter what their social status.  

After studying the situation, Dr. Semmelweis figured out that if the doctors coming to deliver a baby from dissecting a diseased cadaver would WASH THEIR HANDS... infant mortality dropped... from 20% to less than 1 %!  Now, you would think this discovery would have made him a hero, but the opposite turns out to be what happened.  His colleagues were angry... insulted even, that their tried and true methods were being questioned… that they could even kill people!  Even the doctors who had been washing their hands, stopped washing in protest!  The death rate tripled, but the scorn and the ridicule kept coming and eventually it got to be too much.  Everyone thought Dr. Semmelweis was crazy!  He fought for years, but eventually he just gave up... and he began to drink... A LOT.  He lashed out at his family and they had him committed to an insane asylum where he was beaten, left in a dark cell and died of... you guessed it... a fever.  Twenty years later, a man named Louis Pasteur proposed his “germ theory” and the idea of washing hands to keep people from getting sick took off around the world. 

The Scribes and Pharisees thought Jesus was insane too.  THEY thought he was the “criminally dangerous” kind of insane.  Jesus’s family thought he was the “sad/to be pitied and quietly spirited away” kind of insane.  Different translations of the Bible say it in different ways, but to those who were looking in from outside, Jesus had gone out of his mind.  One translation says he must be mad.  Another that he was crazy.  Another says he had the Devil and another that Jesus was beside himself.  

The thing is... from their rational, logical, well thought out, experienced point of view... he was!  Jesus was bonkers!  Jesus wasn’t AT ALL normal.  Jesus did things and said things that went against what everyone KNEW was true.  Who in their right mind would TOUCH a leper?  WHO?  What sort of rational human being would, with only twelve, fairly dim witted followers, take on the entire Roman Empire?  Who would do that?  Who would suggest if someone asks you for a coat, you give them the rest of your clothes too, so you were left naked in the street?  Blessed are the poor?  Really?  Have you BEEN poor?  It’s not that much of a blessing!  That sort of thinking was... WELL... it’s CRAZY!  

Frederick Buechner, a Presbyterian pastor and author, wrote, “A Christian is one who is on The Way, though not necessarily very far along it, and who has at least some dim and half-baked idea of whom to thank.”  So add “dim” and “half-baked” to the labels of crazy, mad, out of your mind and beside yourself and you’ll be getting closer to what it means to be a follower of Jesus.  Because, you see, FOLLOWING Jesus isn’t simply an exercise in looking back in time and saying from the safety of 1700 years of Western, Christian, cultural dominance that Jesus was right and the Scribes, Pharisees and his family where wrong.

No, faithful following is not well researched, thoughtful analysis done with a cool, refreshing beverage in hand, from the safety of a sofa located sometime in the distant future!  Faithful following is doing our half-baked best, to walk “The Way” RIGHT NOW.  Faithful following is living the “Jesus Way”... living that odd, different sort of life of radical compassion, inclusion, generosity and self-sacrificial love the best we can, all the way, full out, right to the point where the world says we’re suckers!  To the point our family and friends look at us and think to themselves or even say out loud, “Those folks have a screw loose!  They’re a few fries short of a Happy Meal!  They’re bent, berserk, and batty... crazy, cracked and certifiable.  They’re daffy, disturbed and delirious, eccentric, flaky, goofy and haywire.  Insane, kooky, looney and nuts!  Those Lutherans and Episcopalians meeting over there on Eastern Avenue are just plain ODD, peculiar, screwy, tilted, unhinged, wacky, and zany!"  

Much too much of Christianity today has decided to look at the challenges, troubles and struggles we face with a changing culture and declining membership, and simply double down on what we’ve always done.  They’ve decided to do Church today the way it worked back in the glory days, only now with added furry and indignation!  Unfortunately, I believe that will work for the Church just as well as Dr. Semmelweis’s colleagues refusing to wash their hands with furry and indignation worked for the mothers and infants of Vienna back in 1847!  

Faithful following means taking a different path and I believe you are I are on that sort of path.  It’s a road that is admittedly unfamiliar and much less traveled, but I think those tend to be the paths of faithful following.  I know not everyone sees it that way, but if this lesson and the story of Dr. Semmelweis teach us anything, it’s that the world is never changed and the Kingdom of God is never brought further into being by choosing the road the world would call sane, rational or normal!  Robert Frost put it this way:

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

What we’re doing here is nuts.  It is.  We’re taking that Road Not Taken!  It’s a poet’s road, a prophet’s road, an artist’s and a dreamer’s road.  It’s different.  It makes no sense, like being born from above and the cross, an instrument of torture and death, being the source of life… it makes no sense!  But even with none of it making any rational sense, I believe what we are doing here is the faithful following of The Jesus Way to which we have been called and I believe it will make all the difference... not just for us, but for those who are out there, right now, who are longing and searching for just this sort of road.  Thank God for the privilege of allowing us to be the quirky, kooky, nutty ones called to shine the light of Christ for them, so they might join us along The Way.  Amen.