Collect
Lord, you have taught us that all our doings without love are nothing worth: send your Holy Spirit and pour into our hearts that most excellent gift of love, the true bond of peace and of all virtues, without which whoever lives is counted dead before you. Grant this for your only Son Jesus Christ’s sake, who is alive and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.
or
Faithful Creator, whose mercy never fails: deepen our faithfulness to you and to your living Word, Jesus Christ our Lord.
Post Communion
Loving Father, we thank you for feeding us at the supper of your Son: sustain us with your Spirit, that we may serve you here on earth until our joy is complete in heaven, and we share in the eternal banquet with Jesus Christ our Lord.
Readings
Old Testament – Genesis 3.8–15
They heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man, and said to him, ‘Where are you?’ He said, ‘I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself.’ He said, ‘Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?’ The man said, ‘The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit from the tree, and I ate.’ Then the Lord God said to the woman, ‘What is this that you have done?’ The woman said, ‘The serpent tricked me, and I ate.’ The Lord God said to the serpent,
‘Because you have done this, cursed are you among all animals and among all wild creatures; upon your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life. I will put enmity between you and the woman,and between your offspring and hers; he will strike your head, and you will strike his heel.’
Psalm
1 Sing merrily to God our strength, ♦
shout for joy to the God of Jacob.
1 Out of the depths have I cried to you, O Lord; Lord, hear my voice; ♦
let your ears consider well the voice of my supplication.
2 If you, Lord, were to mark what is done amiss, ♦
O Lord, who could stand?
3 But there is forgiveness with you, ♦
so that you shall be feared.
4 I wait for the Lord; my soul waits for him; ♦
in his word is my hope.
5 My soul waits for the Lord, more than the night watch for the morning, ♦
more than the night watch for the morning.
6 O Israel, wait for the Lord, ♦
for with the Lord there is mercy;
7 With him is plenteous redemption ♦
and he shall redeem Israel from all their sins.
Epistle – 2 Corinthians 4.13 – 5.1
But just as we have the same spirit of faith that is in accordance with scripture – ‘I believed, and so I spoke’ – we also believe, and so we speak, because we know that the one who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus, and will bring us with you into his presence. Yes, everything is for your sake, so that grace, as it extends to more and more people, may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God.
So we do not lose heart. Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day. 17For this slight momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure, 18because we look not at what can be seen but at what cannot be seen; for what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal.
For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.
Gospel – Mark 3.20 – 35
… 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.
‘Truly I tell you, people will be forgiven for their sins and whatever blasphemies they utter; but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit can never have forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin’ – for they had said, ‘He has an unclean spirit.’
Then his mother and his brothers came; and standing outside, they sent to him and called him. A crowd was sitting around him; and they said to him, ‘Your mother and your brothers and sisters are outside, asking for you.’ And he replied, ‘Who are my mother and my brothers?’ And looking at those who sat around him, he said, ‘Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.’
Sermon on Trinity 2
A crowd was sitting around him; and they said to him, ‘Your mother and your brothers and sisters are outside, asking for you.’ And he replied, ‘Who are my mother and my brothers?’ And looking at those who sat around him, he said, ‘Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.’
Where do we find Jesus in the gospel narrative? Most of the time we find Jesus in the middle of the crowd as in this story – just like all of us most of the time. In other words, Jesus is an ordinary person. Since we are ordinary people, we do understand where Jesus finds himself, don’t we?
We are surrounded by crowds. (Whether it is what they used to call “the in-crowd” – you might remember a song with that in its title – or whether the crowd is “the unfortunate”, the cast-off, the outsider, the poor, the diseased, the distressed, the stranger, the prisoner, anyone who is “not like us” doesn’t matter.) We are surrounded by a crowd all the time just as Jesus was.
That is true, isn’t it? As youngsters, we have our family around us. When we are teens, we have our “gangs”. When we leave home, we have our mates – good friends or life-partners. In work, our fellow workers. At the pub, our drinking buddies. Doesn’t the list go on?
The crowd surrounds us. I have asked you to think about the crowd before, haven’t I? Nameless and faceless, whispering and shouting, comforting or accusing, embracing or ignoring – the crowd is part of our lives.
The crowd plays the same sort of role in story of Jesus as it does in ours. And here we have the crowd telling Jesus that his family was there outside wanting to speak with him.
We today think Jesus’ reply is quite odd, don’t we? Most of us would be happy to welcome family, this special group of people, to embrace them, but Jesus asks who makes up one’s family. He has a very stark message for the crowd – his family is made up of those who do the will of God. Imagine that! Who would be his brothers and sisters, or his mother? Who would in all good conscience say they fulfill the will of God?
Such a pronouncement must have alienated the crowd gathered around him. Certainly, the whole crowd would have wondered whether they belonged in that family Jesus was willing to embrace. When Jesus defined his family with God as father and everyone else who does God’s will as his brother and sister and mother, doesn’t he overturn all the expectations which that crowd has?
Jesus’s statement is a radical re-invention of the individual, isn’t it? Who could redefine oneself as a person who does the will of God? Wouldn’t we hear what was reported about Jesus about ourselves?
People were saying, ‘He has gone out of his mind.’
The crowd had a different interpretation of family, didn’t “they”? The crowd was chuntering about whether Jesus was in his right mind. This was why his family was there.
When his family heard it, they went out to restrain him.
They still cared for him, and they did not want him to be condemned as being out of his mind, as we would say, or as the scribes said, “He has Beelzebul,” or in other words, “He is possessed by a demon.” His mother, brothers and sisters wanted to save him from that condemnation. That is why they wanted to see Jesus. They wanted to restrain him, so no harm would come to him from the crowd.
But then he redefines the family and he overturns all normal, everyday expectations. No one is automatically part of Jesus’ family now. Only those who would do the will of God. And who would dare to lay hold of that claim in their ordinary, everyday lives, the life the crowd leads?
Jesus doesn’t make anything easy, does he? – Well, he doesn’t if we take him seriously in our lives. – Would any of us claim to do the will of God exclusively? I know that I cannot. What would make me think that I could? – Even the one commandment Jesus left us, To love God and to love my neighbours as I love myself, never mind loving my enemies. That love would be a beginning.
But how many false starts have I made on this road? How many times have I tried to love my neighbour but just plain failed? How many times have I tried to love my brothers and sisters and parents – and failed? And they are my flesh and blood!
Jesus does not make it easy – his demands are absolute. Without love, as Paul says, I am nothing. Our Collect for today also suggests this. “Lord, you have taught us that all our doings without love are nothing worth …” But we know that we should not despair. The Holy Spirit and our new-found “brothers and sisters” are here to help, just as we are here to help them on the radical path to life in all its fullness, the life of love, “the true bond of peace and of all virtues”.
The faithful life is one of mutual aid in every part of our existence. We should not forget that, should we? If we look at the sacraments of the Church, we find we are always in mind, at birth with baptism, in illness with the chrism, at marriage, in the comfort of confession and absolution, and finally at death with a funeral. The sacrament of the eucharist is at the heart of it all, when we gather to share the nourishment afforded by the cross of our Lord. Sustenance and comfort is offered daily through sacrament and prayer. The Church gathers us all together in all of these significant daily life-events and helps us experience life in all its fullness.
We become a family in Christ, don’t we? There is an unbreakable bond of love which ties everyone together, like the ties of human family whether we like it or not.
“People were saying, ‘He has gone out of his mind.’”
Don’t we say this about people who act as if everyone was part of their own family? When I treat the stranger as if he or she were my brother or sister, don’t you look at me with a quizzical expression? Aren’t you thinking, ‘How can you be like that with someone you don’t know? You must be crazy!’
Crazy in the crowd’s estimation or not, when we are loving our neighbour, we are fulfilling the one commandment Jesus left his disciples. Living up to that single expectation Jesus had of all humanity would transform any crowd, wouldn’t it? Instead of a faceless crowd each individual becomes a focus for care, for love. — If this is “being out of my mind”, I pray that we all go crazy right now. Let us become brothers and sisters, and treat everyone else as dear relations just as Jesus treated the crowds gathered around him.