Transitioning Jesus

Mark 3:20-35

Jesus went home and the crowd came together again, so that they could not even eat. When his 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.”

In this Gospel story Jesus is transitioning from being just Mary and Joseph’s son… from being just his siblings’ brother… from being just the smart kid in Bible class (all of which is what he had presented on the outside to his family and community for the last 20 years)… and he’s transitioning into being the Son of God… into being the sibling of all of humanity… into being the Messiah.  I realize that the word “Transitioning” is obsessively and exclusively applied to gender transitioning these days but I picked that word on purpose.  I picked it on purpose because the reality is that we all “transition” constantly throughout our lives and ALL of those transitions, including gender transition, are simply part of the ongoing human work we all do throughout our lives to align our inside and outside selves to become the person God is calling us to be.  

The common denominator with every sort of transition is that it is work to get our outsides to better align with our insides.  Just think about all the transitions you’ve made in your life.  Kid to adult.  Single to married.  School to work.  Work to retirement.  Living with family to living alone to living with a roommate to living with a partner to living without a partner.   In every one of these transitions, either our outsides or our insides inevitably make the change first and then we’re left with the very hard work of getting the rest of us caught up.  Here's an example most of you will get.  When you retired, your outside self was suddenly at home!  How long did it take to transition your inside self to be comfortable at home as well?

Our transitions are hard for us, and they are also hard for our family and our community around us.  Those around us knew us one way on the outside, sometimes for decades.  Now, from their perspective, this thing has happened in the blink of an eye and it’s all different!  You might have been thinking about retirement for years, but the day you transitioned from being at the office to being at home, it still felt like a whiplash for you AND particularly for your family!  In those whiplash-y moments people often say things that are unthinking, reactive, unhelpful and unsupportive, things maybe along the lines of, “he’s got a demon” or “she’s just plain nuts!” or “who is my mother and my brothers?” 

Jesus offers good advise here, both for those who are transitioning and for those around them.  He says, “Truly I tell you, people will be forgiven for their sins and whatever blasphemies they utter.”  Jesus is suggesting the way to handle these transitions is with forgiveness and GRACE.  Forgiveness and grace for those doing the deep and difficult work of transition AND forgiveness and grace for those who are trying to move beyond their moment of whiplash and into a place of being supportive.  Forgiveness and Grace is what Jesus’ family needed from Jesus as they came to see him.  They were genuinely worried to death about what was happening with him and out of their fear, started off with less than the best words.  Forgiveness and Grace is also what Jesus needed from his family, as he himself responded to their whiplash reaction with less than the best words, “Who are my mother and brothers?” 

Forgiveness and Grace is what is needed all around and it turns out that they are powerful enough to cover a much greater multitude of sins that we might have previously imagined.  Forgiveness and grace cover almost EVERYTHING.  

Only when you get to blaspheming the Holy Spirit does forgiveness and grace come to an end and blaspheming the Holy Spirit is actually a whole lot harder to do than you might have been led to believe.  You can’t blaspheme the Holy Spirit by accident, or casually, or with the slip of the tongue.  The Greek makes it clear.  To blaspheme the Holy Spirit you have to oppose God RELENTLESSLY.  To blaspheme the Holy Spirit, you need to insist that God has never, and will never, do anything new and you have to set your heart in stone and insist that God (God mind you… the One who created all things) will never, can never, must never be part of this person’s work aligning their outside self with their inside self.  

This lesson, then, is a call for us to allow God to be God.  To allow God to call and guide each one of us and all of creation through the changes and transitions needed to allow them to fully embrace and outwardly express the person God made them to be from the beginning.  It is a call for us to be open to God doing new things and trust that God might actually know better than us, both the outsides and the insides, of the people around us.  It’s also a call for each of us to set out on our own journey to discern who God is calling us to be as our authentic selves in this moment of our lives and this lesson is a call for us to be gentle, and filled with forgiveness and grace for those on that journey and for those who do their very best to be supportive of you on your journey and still haven't gotten it exactly right.  Lastly, with that call in this lesson there is also a promise.  A promise that as we sit in the darkness and chaos of our insides and outsides being out of sync, God will find a way to turn on the lights and the Holy Spirit WILL COME and provide the next step.  Amen.