Our Scripture lessons today are so rich that each one deserves the full time allotted for our sermon this morning. Yet let me, for brevity’s sake, simply state the essence of each here at the outset: 1) the Genesis narrative illustrates how, when found out in our own sin, we scapegoat. Adam blames Eve, Eve blames the serpent and in effect both blame God the creator of Eve as also creator of the serpent. 2) The lesson from 2 Corinthians teaches how the free grace of God in Christ Jesus stirs about in us and through us so that in more and more people thanksgiving increases, glorifying God – even in defiance of terrible affliction-- since we have an eternal home with God in the heavens. 3) The gospel lesson today puts the foregoing two lessons into the context of the great conflict of good and evil: between the Satan bound and determined to bring God’s creation to ruin but God our Creator and Redeemer at work to undo the Satan’s cruel tyranny, redeeming the creation by creating the new community gathered around Jesus where we learn to do the will of God on the earth as it is done in heaven. So the rule of God breaks in upon the earth and the kingdom of the devil is rolled back.
Consequently, Jesus is – and remains – controversial. Even his family members think that he is out of his mind. Representatives of the Jerusalem establishment, feeling the sting of Jesus’s ministry of mercy against their merciless exploitation in the religion business, accuse him of being in cahoots with the devil himself. Why? For violating traditional taboos for the sake of healing of the afflicted. "He is possessed by Beelzebul, and by the prince of demons he casts out the demons." In a wrestling match in, it is sometimes difficult to know who is who. The combatants are all tangled up with the one another.
In the midst of this controversy, Jesus tells a little a little parable to reveal who is who and what is at stake. No one can enter a strong man's house and plunder his goods, he says, unless he first binds the strong man; then indeed he may plunder his house. The picture is, indeed, grim and drastic. Jesus likens us to hostages or captives, perhaps so fully captivated that we have grown accustomed to our captivity, consider it normal, business as usual, having internalized our oppression. Willingly or unwillingly, in either case we are the goods held captive within the strong man’s house.
And the strong man? In context it is clear that the reference is to a prince of the devils, Beelzebub, the Satan. These are the unholy spirits who oppose the Holy Spirit. Their demonic purpose is to usurp, defy and subvert the reign of God our creator. Why? As Martin Luther succinctly put it: they want to be God and do not want to be God to be God. You could thus say that at root such unholy spirits are motivated by envy. They see nothing in another but what they want for themselves to take possession of it as parasites. And so they deceive hapless humans with all the false promises instigating and others the same obsessive envy that inspires them beginning with, as in Genesis 2, the serpent’s false assurance, "You shall be as God knowing good and evil." And so, succumbing to envy, we are taken captive, imprisoned in the strong man's house by our own complicity in the primordial sin.
Finally, Jesus likens himself to a home invader who has broken into the strong man’s house to bind him and plunder his goods. A militant picture! This is what is controversial about Jesus: he breaks into this strong man's house and binds him to liberate his captives. If that were not perplexing enough, this home invader does not accomplish his work of liberation with violent force or deceptive false promises. He does not fight demonic fire with demonic fire. He simply rebukes the unholy spirits with the authority of the creator reclaiming his own creation for the blessing he intends.
Breaking into the strong man's house this way is both bold and vulnerable. It is bold because he dares to bind and plunder the powerful one but it is vulnerable because all he has to do this is his word and Spirit. We see bold vulnerability in the declaration that all sins will be forgiven but the sin against the Holy Spirit. Bold because of the amnesty he declares overall the liberated captives whatever their degree of complicity. Vulnerable, because he claims to do so in the power of the Holy Spirit victorious over the unclean spirits. That leaves us at a crossroads before the controversial Jesus. Will we leave even family behind to join in the improbable gathering around Jesus and in doing do to the will of God? "Who are my mother and my brothers?" 34 And looking around on those who sat about him, he said, "Here are my mother and my brothers! 35 Whoever does the will of God is my brother, and sister, and mother."
Let the controversy be clear: Jesus breaks into our lives uninvited like a home invader. In binding the powers that control is, he sets us free. But! Do we want this freedom of life led by the Holy Spirit rather than the unclean spirits? We can hanker after the fleshpots of Egypt. Take flight at the scary journey of freedom on the way to an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison? Prefer deadening security to the pilgrim journey to Promised Land, where awaits us a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens?
The apostle speaks to this Christian anxiety, saying: we do not lose heart. Indeed, we take courage and strength in seeing that in all our troubles on this pilgrim way the Holy Spirit is at work conforming to Jesus. In principle and in power we are broken free from the captivity of our desires to unholy things motivated by greed and envy. This complicity resurfaces again and again so long as we also must live in the unredeemed world where we are bombarded with the propaganda of envy and greed. The Holy Spirit has much work still to do in us on the way. This is what the apostle means when he says that although our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed every day. For this slight momentary affliction is preparing us, purifying us, refining us, sanctifying us. We are not deceived by present appearances any longer, not captured the glitter and allures of this passing reality. Because we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen; for the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal. What is promised to us is still not seen. What is promised to us is seen in Jesus, the controversial Jesus, in whom we live now by the same Holy Spirit which conducted him through the cross to the crown. So when we fail, even as Christians, we no longer scapegoat but take responsibility for our sins before God confessing and repairing the damage to those sinned against. And thus, we do not lose heart just because we see in our own lives that we have been claimed by a new Lord, Jesus Christ, whose Holy Spirit is at work in us, in whom we share the same hope.