Liar, Lunatic, or Lord? - Third Sunday after Pentecost

Liar, Lunatic, or Lord? - Third Sunday after Pentecost

Author: Pastor Scott Schul
June 09, 2024

Friends, the validity, truthfulness, and relevance of Christianity and its claims of forgiveness, salvation, and eternal life depend upon one person, Jesus of Nazareth.  He claimed to be more than just Mary’s son.  He said he was God’s son.  The Bible states that three days after his execution by crucifixion, he experienced the greatest of all miracles, resurrection from the dead, an event that brought about the final victory over sin and death for all of humanity.

Was Jesus who he said he was?  Was Jesus who his disciples believed he was and who the Bible states he was?  These are the questions every Christian and prospective Christian must ask and answer for themselves.  This is why today’s Gospel is of critical importance to all of us.  It takes us into a pivotal incident in Jesus’s life when the people of his day were wrestling with these very questions.

So let’s take just a moment and enter into that story, because it’s not just their story.  It’s ours as well.  Picture yourself there, in Galilee.  Jesus is at home, amidst the familiar surroundings of the sea, the fishing trade, and family.  It’s not a quiet homecoming though.  Imagine all the strangers flocking there to see Jesus, and the noise of nonstop questions and conversations.  There’s so much chaos from the needy crowds that neither Jesus nor his inner circle of followers can even take time to eat.

Amidst all this commotion, out bursts Jesus’s family, who try to restrain him “for his own protection” they say, because everyone’s saying he’s gone insane.  That’s just the opening Jesus’s religious opponents have been seeking, and so they also take their shot at Jesus, arguing that he’s no holy man; he’s possessed and ruled by demons.

Don’t turn your eyes away from what’s happening.  Dwell in this moment friends.  Feel the discomfort and ugliness of this conflict.  Pull up a chair and be part of it, because at some point each of us must have this very confrontation with Jesus and decide for ourselves if he is who he says he is.  Because if he isn’t, then there’s no reason for us to be here.

I stood at that crossroads as a young teenager.  I went to church because it was expected, and not particularly out of any conviction about Jesus.  At some point I came into possession of a little paperback book written by a guy named Josh McDowell, called “More than a Carpenter.”  All these years later, with 13 years of parish ministry experience and a seminary degree behind me, I’m sure I’d have some theological differences with the book were I to re-read it today.  But at the heart of the book was a challenge that shook my world and forced me to honestly assess what I believed.  McDowell asserted that when it comes to Jesus, there are only three options: he is either a lunatic, a liar, or the Lord.  That’s exactly what’s at stake in today’s Gospel lesson.

Some try to add a fourth option for Jesus.  They reject the notion that he was divine and instead grant Jesus faint praise as a wise and gifted moral teacher and philosopher.  That was Thomas Jefferson’s view.  But in his book Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis says that’s a foolish claim to make.  As Lewis writes, “A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher.  He would either be a lunatic—on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg—or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse.”

Lewis then adds, “You can shut [Jesus] up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon, or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God.  But let us not come up with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher.  He has not left that open to us.  He did not intend to.”1

So if we can’t reduce Jesus to a mere teacher of wisdom, who is he?  The religious authorities said he was a liar.  They couldn’t fathom that Jesus could be working all these miracles and at the same time remain outside of their tradition, in opposition to some of their longstanding teachings.  They were the final authority on doctrine and theology, weren’t they?  For them, the only reasonable conclusion had to be that Jesus was getting his power from somewhere sinister, and that he was possessed by demons and serving the powers of evil.

Jesus refuted them with simple logic, essentially saying, “How can I be casting out demons and overthrowing their power if I’m in their service, if I’m merely their pawn, their tool, their toy?  That makes no sense.  A house divided against itself cannot stand.”  He’s right.  Jesus was not a liar.

But maybe he was a lunatic.  That’s what his family was arguing that day.  But why would they say such a thing?  It wasn’t just Jesus’s claim of divinity that caused them to feel that way.  They couldn’t see beyond the reality of normal life.  They were simple, agrarian people living in a backwater town on the edge of the Roman empire.  They were insignificant people in an insignificant town, the kind of place where you’re born, you struggle to scratch out a living, you die, and you’re forgotten.  This was not a town or a family that produced world-changing theological or military leaders.  This was a place where it was enough just to survive.

And in that day and age, how did a poor family survive?  By sticking together and supporting one another, not running all over the country with twelve strangers and a gaggle of misfit followers, contradicting the highly trained theological elites and stirring up the powerful military leaders.  Who would do such a thing?  Only someone who had lost their way and lost their mind would separate himself from family, the one institution which offered a reasonable shot at survival.  Jesus’s kin didn’t think he was a liar, but they did conclude that he was a lunatic.

But Jesus rebutted their argument by showing that their definition of family, based in biology, was too small.  Jesus wasn’t abandoning family; he was redefining it, expanding and amplifying its importance to include everyone who follows the will of God.  Friends, Jesus was no lunatic.

But was he Lord?  That’s something each of us has to decide.  It’s why that little book I mentioned was so important to me.  It brought me to that decision point, and with the grace of faith and the insight of logic I concluded that Jesus was my Lord.  What will you decide?

Of course, that’s only half the answer.  Knowing Jesus is Lord and following him are very separate things.  Don’t forget that in the Gospels, it was the demons who first correctly identified Jesus.  But we wouldn’t call them Christians.  It’s not enough to merely know who Jesus is.  We’re called to something much bigger than that.  He says we are beloved, and offers us forgiveness and eternal life.  He only asks us to trust him with our lives and eternities, place our hope in him, follow him, surrender our will to his and, ultimately, just like him, take up our cross, regardless of the cost.

No one in their right mind would do that for a liar or a lunatic, would they?  But would you do that for your Lord?  That’s the question each of us must face.  Because if Jesus isn’t who he says he is, Christianity is one big lie, and deserves nothing from us.  But if he is Lord, as I believe, he deserves everything we have to give.  Who do you say he is?

Citations
1 C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, in The Complete C.S. Lewis Signature Classics (HarperOne, 2002), 40–41.

Gospel Text: Mark 3:20-35

[Jesus went home;] 20and the crowd came together again, so that [Jesus and the disciples] could not even eat. 21When his family heard it, they went out to restrain him, for people were saying, “He has gone out of his mind.” 22And the scribes who came down from Jerusalem said, “He has Beelzebul, and by the ruler of the demons he casts out demons.” 23And he called them to him, and spoke to them in parables, “How can Satan cast out Satan? 24If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. 25And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand. 26And if Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand, but his end has come. 27But 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.

28“Truly I tell you, people will be forgiven for their sins and whatever blasphemies they utter; 29but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit can never have forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin”—30for they had said, “He has an unclean spirit.”

31Then his mother and his brothers came; and standing outside, they sent to him and called him. 32A crowd was sitting around him; and they said to him, “Your mother and your brothers and sisters are outside, asking for you.” 33And he replied, “Who are my mother and my brothers?” 34And looking at those who sat around him, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! 35Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.”

 

Copyright Rev. Scott E. Schul, 2024 All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in whole or in part without written permission. 


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