Wednesday, June 9, 2021

"You Can't Fight In Here. This Is the War Room."

The Rev. Brad Sullivan

Emmanuel Episcopal Church

June 6, 2021

Proper 5, B

Genesis 3:8-15

Mark 3:20-35


“You Can’t Fight in Here.  This Is the War Room.”



Strange as it may sound, today’s Gospel reading made me think of a scene from the movie Dr. Strangelove, where The U.S. President, and a Russian Ambassador, and the top U.S. General are all trying to avert nuclear armageddon when the general and the Russian ambassador start fighting, and the President shouts at them, “Gentlemen, you can’t fight in here!  This is the war room!”  That reminds me of our Gospel story today as I hear the scribes saying to Jesus with similar irony, “Jesus please, you can’t heal people here, we’re doing God’s work!”



How could they think healing people was bad?  How could they think casting out demons was bad? 


Well, healing and casting out demons wasn’t necessarily bad in and of itself, of course, but what if Jesus was turning people to trust in him, rather than in the religious system?  What if, even worse, Jesus was teaching something different about God than they were, and was therefore, of course, teaching something terribly, terribly wrong about God?  


That, we understand.  Think of a new pastor at a new growing congregation.  It’s not a church like the established churches are used to, and even some of those established church’s members are going to that new church.  They are on fire, they are serving within the community in ways the established churches haven’t been doing for decades, and the established churches are all threatened by this new congregation.  They don’t like the pastor.  He’s doing things wrong, the church services are weird, and they feel threatened by them doing really well and doing things differently than what they know to be the right way.  “Oh sure, they’re doing good work there, but “Yeah, you’re right…they still pray weird.”


We get that.  We understand the scribes feeling threatened by Jesus, thinking he was leading the people down a wrong path, in spite of his healing and casting out demons.  So what did they do?  They demonized Jesus, saying he was doing demonic work casting out demons.  It didn’t make much sense then either.


Jesus was fighting a spiritual battle against demons and cosmic powers, against spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places (I grabbed that from Ephesians).  To be fair, it wasn’t much of a fight against the demons.  Jesus was like One Punch Man, but still, seeing this, the scribes chose to fight with him about it, who was right and who was wrong, and Jesus’ response was basically, “Gentlemen, you can’t fight in here.  This is the war room.”  Jesus was saying, “I’m fighting a war against demons,” (which was again pretty easy for him “Get out of there, demon!”  “Ok.”) and the scribes were fighting with him about that?  That was the difficult battle, people working against healing and love because they don’t agree with the person who is doing it or the methods they use.  


That is still the difficulty we have today.  We understand how crazy it is for the scribes to fight against Jesus when he was casting out demons and healing people.  We understand how crazy it is for our church or any church to rally against another church when we see them doing good, healing ministry with the community…even if they pray weird, but when that church is ministering with the wrong kinds of people, or letting the wrong kinds of people be ministers, what then?


They’re still doing great works within the community, still healing and working with people to transform their lives, but it’s just the wrong kind of people doing the ministry?  What if it’s staunch conservatives doing the ministry?  What if it’s flaming liberals doing the ministry?  What if the ministers are people whose beliefs and ideologies not only go against my beliefs and ideologies, but go against who I am as a person?  


I don’t have a clear cut answer on this one, however, I will say this about our beliefs and ideologies.  The scribes had beliefs and ideologies which led them to discount some people as unworthy of being a full part of their community, of their world.  The scribes were concerned with purity and people being religiously correct enough to be acceptable for God.


Jesus, not so much.  Jesus was concerned with people causing actual harm to one another.  Are you being clean and pure?  Jesus didn’t seem to ask that.  Are you causing actual harm to someone else?  That’s what Jesus seemed interested in.  Are you excluding people you deem unworthy or impure?  Are you keeping for yourself far more than you need while others struggle just to have enough?    Are you so certain of your own righteousness that you tear others down, condemning them, rather than choosing to love them and take the risk of being wrong as you see God working in their lives too?  That seems the way of Jesus in his spiritual battles, in his war room.  


Yes, there is a war room, even for Jesus, but as Paul wrote in Ephesians 6, “…our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.”  (Ephesians 6:10-12).  Jesus was certainly against these spiritual forces of darkness, against these spiritual forces of darkness as they manifest in people.  We don’t read too much, however, of Jesus being against people themselves.  He wasn’t out there stirring up hatred and division, shouting about the folks people should be against.  He warned his disciples privately against the teachings against some of those rather less than helpful leaders, but his focus was not to turn people against each other.  


Jesus’ focus was on healing people, bringing people together, showing love, offering grace, living forgiveness.  That was Jesus’ way.  Healing, communion, love, grace, forgiveness, that was Jesus way, even when fighting spiritual battles for and along side folks whom others felt were the wrong sorts of folks. Healing, communion, love, grace, forgiveness, that was how Jesus fought spiritual battles in his war room, and strange as it may sound, there’s no fighting in the war room.  At least there’s no fighting in Jesus’ war room.  There’s striving against spiritual forces of darkness, and those battles are fought with healing and communion, with grace, and love, and forgiveness.

No comments: