Today’s gospel story (included below) happens just after Jesus has healed several people and appointed the twelve apostles. Immediately thereafter he is assaulted verbally and hemmed in by family, friends and foes. He is accused of being Beelzebul, otherwise known as “The Lord of the Flies.” The other shoe had dropped for Jesus and it was a heavy shoe!
I think it was Winston Churchill who said, “If you are going through hell keep going.” I am deeply moved by this reading because it does seem to mirror a similar pattern in my own life, and in the world. We ride a wave of praise, followed by a wave of blame. The Buddhists call this “dualistic thinking” and we can learn from their wisdom, which teaches us to avoid the trap of sinking into either mindset. Rumi, who was a Sufi writes:
Beyond our ideas of right-doing and wrong-doing,
there is a field. I'll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase 'each other'
doesn't make sense any more.
Namaste! Amen!
The Readings
Hebrews 9:2-3,11-14
Psalm 47: 2-3,6-9
Mark 3:19-27
Then 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.
The gospel passage is taken from the website below:
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