Week 3 Monday (Year 2)

Readings: 2 Samuel 5.1-7,10; Psalm 89; Mark 3:22-30

Jesus leads our thoughts from one kind of power to a deeper, more radical kind. His first response to the criticism that he casts out demons by the prince of demons, is to appeal to political and military common sense: there is strength in unity, and kingdoms are built in that way. This is how that kind of power works, consolidating, integrating, uniting. If Satan is fighting against Satan then his kingdom is already coming to an end. So it's unlikely that what is happening through Jesus is the work of Satan since his work is opposed to Satan's.

A second, reasonable, thought is that this means the house of Satan is already occupied, his kingdom has been penetrated, Jesus' work is reaching inside, to undo the power of Satan. He is casting out demons, healing bodies and hearts, converting souls and minds. That all this is happening through him means the strong man has already been overcome.

In a third moment our thoughts are led deeper, to thinking about the power that changes minds and hearts, the power of truth and love. They are words easily used, perhaps more often than not glibly used, and it is crucial that we remember always that they apply in the first place to God, and to the Son he has sent. Any access we have to truth and love, to appropriating truth and love, to being able to receive truth and love - these are matters of understanding and freedom, and the power that touches and changes human understanding and freedom is the most radical kind of power.

 

This is where the Holy Spirit is at work, enabling the acknowledgement of truth and the choice of what is good. To be able to place an obstacle there, to paralyse and frustrate this power, is mysterious. This is the eternal sin, the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit that is beyond forgiveness. It means closing down completely our capacity for receiving truth and love, shutting ourselves off from the healing power of Christ, making ourselves impervious to God's mercy. In a word, hell.

So the movement of the Gospel reading is from common sense about warfare and politics, to recognising the contrast between the kingdom of Jesus and that of Satan, to a kind of shock in realising what sin might mean: a mind closed to truth, a heart resistant to goodness. At this point in the ministry of Jesus we begin to realise that his work will generate resistance and opposition, he will not always be celebrated and honoured. Whatever the reasons for it are, human beings will not always be ready to acknowledge what is true and to love what is good. And they will come to hate the one who offers them these things.

Already the shadow of a deeper engagement falls across the preaching of Jesus, an ominous premonition of what his battle with the power of evil might yet require.