Last Sunday our gospel text was Mark 3:23-35. The story here is the pressure Jesus is getting from his family and then the religious leaders. Neither one is happy with him. For his family, Jesus was avoiding them and his ministry was attracting so many people that his own family couldn’t get into their own home to eat. This put cultural pressure on Jesus’ family and with Rome as an occupier, a Jewish family didn’t need that kind of undue attention. They also didn’t want to be shunned by the larger community for being bad hosts!

The religious leaders show up and see the power and influence Jesus has and since they have nothing in the way of true spiritual authority to match it, they simply demonize Jesus.

We demonize what threatens us because we just don’t want to understand it.

Jesus was drawing crowds, his teaching was influencing those crowds, and those miracles were certainly drawing bigger crowds. They needed to find a way to deal with him before it got out of hand. Also, they were worried about the Romans and undue attention.

What gets missed in this story?

The crowds.

His family and the religious leaders didn’t give one care for what was happening to the people in the crowds. Jesus had to point them out.

“Here are my mother and my brothers!”

We are very good at missing the Kingdom of God as believers. My last post pointed out two stories, one from each of my traditions (one I left and one I have joined). I’ve thought of this Gospel story in light of those two stories and see similarities.

On the one hand is the evangelical denomination that is leaning hard into nationalism and political pandering. Their ideology brings them to the conclusion that Christians must have political power and America will be saved. The most important thing to save (though they don’t have the words for it because they lack historical context a lot of the time) in their view is Christendom. The influence of Christendom for 500 years or more in western civilization has become a balm and all we want is our “old time religion” back.

On the other hand is my historical tradition church where I now reside out and out demanding Christendom be returned to the ACNA. And, of course, that great tradition of Christendom is not complete when we have women being ordained! This is the great sin of the ACNA in their view.

And in both fights for ideology, what is missed? People.

The people following Jesus knew they were blind and lame and sick and bound up. They came to Jesus and when Jesus touched them, those maladies fell away and light flooded into their world.

What mattered was being set free, not the rigid ideology.

Jesus is busy teaching hungry people about the presence and power of the Kingdom of God as he sets them free from physical oppressions. He isn’t consumed with cultural norms or religious ideologies, nor does he care if he is vilified as being demon possessed. People are being set free and the Kingdom of God is coming in reality.

This is why the Lord is turning up the volume on me right now to get about the business of interceding for the American Church. The people needing the gospel are getting shoved to the side from time to time while the American Church whines about traditions and ideologies and pines for the “good ol’ days.”

We don’t need Christendom! We need to give it a good and proper funeral and be on with our lives as the people of God!

There, I said it. And BOY, did that feel good.

And I know I won’t be church homeless. I know I will always be able to find the Body of Christ somewhere.