“Enter
a Strong Man’s House” by Rev. Paul Berghout (@FatherPB)
Piety
Once
you spoke in a vision, and to your faithful ones you said: “On a champion I
have placed a crown; over the people I have set a youth.” Psalm 89:20
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; that is the end
of him. But no one can enter a strong man’s house to plunder his property unless
he first ties up the strong man.
Mark 3:24-27
Study
We
are now in the Third Weel in Ordinary Time.
During this week, our first readings come from the Second Book of
Samuel. The Lord anoints a young David as King of Israel. With his army, David captures the city of
Zion. In the festivities that followed, Samuel offers the delightful image of a
joyful David at the Ark of the Covenant, “dancing before the LORD with abandon
... with shouts of joy and to the sound of the horn.”
In
Mark's Gospel this week, we have many familiar stories. The scribes, hearing of
his many healings, accuse Jesus of being possessed by Satan. He replies that a
house is divided against itself cannot stand. Mary and other relatives arrive at a home
where Jesus is teaching, but Jesus does not go to them, saying, “Whoever does
the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.” He tells the parable of
the sower and the seeds which fall on fertile ground and rocky soil. These
parables require and demand that we have a better understanding of what Jesus
is teaching.
We
dedicated Sunday to promote the love and knowledge of Scripture as if it was our
new annual “Bible Sunday” for Catholics! Bishop Desmond Tutu likes to say:
“When the missionaries came to Africa,
we had the land, and they had the Bible. Then they said, ‘Let us pray’ and
asked us to close our eyes. When we opened them, they had the land and we had
the Bible”. He adds, “And I think we got the better deal.”
The
Bible is the written word of God, but the [whole] Word of God is Jesus as we
pray in the Angelus Prayer: “The Word
was made Flesh: And dwelt among us.”
This
is why Catholics and Orthodox Christians believe, as the Catechism teaches (no.
108), that the Christian faith is not a "religion of the book"-- Jesus
never said assemble a book and pass it around. Instead, he established a Church
that discerned which books comprise Sacred Scripture. Although both Catholics
and Protestants have the same 27 books in the New Testament, Protestants have
39 books in their Old Testament because they follow the Hebrew canon. Catholics
have 46 books in the Old Testament because we follow the Septuagint or Greek
version. However, it is essential to know that we take almost all of the New
Testament references to the Old Testament from the Septuagint version. That version clearly was the version the
first Christians used. Plus, who could have known that 400 years after Martin
Luther, we found many Hebrew copies of Septuagint in the Dead Sea scrolls at the
Qumran Caves?
My
mnemonic device to remember the missing seven books not found in the Protestant
Bible-- “To be with Sweet Jesus My Man” (7)
Tobit,
Baruch, Wisdom, Sirach, Judith, 1 and 2 Maccabees.
Our
Sunday Gospel featured professional fisherman. They had in hand circular
fishing nets, weighted around the perimeter.
They threw these nets from a standing position into shallow water to
catch large shoals of fish at one cast.
Am
I a “Fisher of Men?” And I don’t mean girls looking for a date! Jesus did not
say, “Come after me, and we’ll talk about fishing for men.” He said, “Come
after me, and I will make you fishers of men.”
There
is a delightful story about a young Asian girl named Yi (pronounced “Yee”). Yi
first heard this verse at Vacation Bible School, but she heard it in the King
James Version of the Bible, which begins like this, “Go YE,
therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the
Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.” Yi didn’t understand
that in the King James English, the word “ye” means “you.” This young girl
thought her name was in the Bible! She became genuinely excited that Jesus was
telling her — “Ye” – to personally go spread his message to the world, that
Christ has died, Christ is Risen, and Christ will come again!
Our
Readings Sunday and throughout the week mention “light” several times.
Ceramic
oil lamps are among the artifacts most frequently found in archaeological
excavations in the Holy Land. These are
the same types of lamps that Psalm 119:105 refers to, “Your word is a lamp
for my feet, a light on my path.”
Illumination
can refer to either visible light or intellectual light. The Bible uses the
word "light" to represent intelligence. When Jesus said, "I
am the light of the world," he means that he is the expresser of Truth
in all its aspects.
Faith
is light. Once the flame of faith dies
out, all other lights begin to dim. Isaiah says, “The people who
walked in darkness have seen a great light; upon those who dwelt in the land of
gloom a light has shone.”
The
light that is the remedy for the gloom of sin is repentance: “Jesus began to
preach and say, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” The light
is on for you (the slogan for Wednesday confessions during Lent).
The
new reality requiring repentance is the onset of the kingdom--the reclaiming of
the world for God’s rule, dispossessing the control of Satan and binding the
strong man so we can take BACK our house from Satan.
Blaise
Pascal said, “In faith, there is enough light for those who want to believe and
enough shadows to blind those who don't.”
The
man or woman of God welcomes the light that searches their deeds and finds them
true. If we are going to “enter the strong man’s house,” we should be armed
with an understanding of Jesus’ teaching.
An
igloo can reach 61 degrees when warmed by body heat alone. The Gloom and
chill busters is a faithful believer who has the light of Christ, in the state
of grace.
Action
Our
faith comes from hearing, Romans 10:17, says—
The
organs for speaking and hearing are the lungs, windpipe, larynx and vocal
cords, throat, nose, and mouth. These are also breathing organs.
The
spirituality of breath is rooted in this biological reality. Breath prayer is an ancient Christian prayer
practice. The Jesus Prayer is usually
said by inhaling with, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, and exhaling
on, “have mercy on me, a sinner.”
St. Paul wrote
some letters, called epistles, but in his days, the people read these aloud;
all of Scripture is at root an oral phenomenon.
Since only 1 out of 10 in the Roman Empire could read, Christians heard
the Bible read at Mass.
If
you don’t hear testimonies…
If
you don’t hear the Bible read…
If
you don’t hear lessons in Sunday school…
…then
you will dry-up and won’t have much faith. Why? Because faith comes from
hearing. It’s a good practice to read
some verses of the Bible, then re-tell it to someone else, adding your personal
experience.
But,
given the short attention span of hearing, Romans 10:17 also says, “and what
is heard comes through the word of Christ.”
St. Paul teaches
in this same section that the source of the problem is not the lack of
"hearing" in itself, but rather the lack of a faithful (obedient)
hearing. Obeying the gospel. An obedience that is qualified by faith.
What
comes after hearing about Jesus in obedient faith?
Calling
on the Name of the Lord, as Romans 10:13 says: “Everyone who calls upon the
name of the Lord will be saved.” Calling on “the Name” of the Lord is
linked to baptism (see Acts. 2:21, 2:38). “Lord is a divine title for
Jesus” (Catechism 449), and it’s the thematic expression of baptism. To call on
the name of the Lord is to express faith in Jesus’ saving work in a baptismal
liturgy so you could then be baptized. The Council of Trent describes Baptism
as the instrumental cause of our justification, which is the means used by
Christ to cleanse us from guilt, fill us with the grace of divine life, and
adopt us as children of God.
Since
faith comes from hearing, and since faith is a light, the Methodist minister,
the Reverend Dale Schoening, spotted this sign: “If God can make a bug’s butt
light up, think what He can do for you.”
Amen.
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