TENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME
9 JUNE 2024
As
a faithful Jew, Jesus knew the truth contained in the first two chapters of
Genesis. He knew that God created the
world out of love. God created human
beings in his own image and made them stewards of the beauty of creation. God intended an intimate relationship with
men and women. God told our first
parents not to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. God was not withholding anything from
them. They are not creators. They are creatures.
Jesus also
knew the truth contained in the third chapter of Genesis. Satan slithered into a world of intimate
relationships and lied to our first parents.
Satan convinced them that God was withholding something from them. In eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge
of good and evil, they expressed their pride and became separated from
God. Realizing their nakedness, they
then separated themselves from each other by blaming one another for their
predicament.
As fully
divine and fully human, Jesus knew the reality of evil and the lies of
Satan. As a baby, his parents had to go
into exile in Egypt to avoid the murderous rampage of King Herod. Herod had lied to the Magi about his
intentions to worship the newborn king of the Jews. As an adult, Jesus spent forty days in the
desert to prepare for his public ministry.
There, he resisted Satan’s lies and refused to allow him to slither into
the relationship between his Father and him.
He realized that he would become the offspring of Eve’s descendant who
would crush the head of the serpent.
With that realization, he began his mission of defeating Satan’s
power. That is why he worked so many of
his miracles casting out demons from possessed people. His miracles were intended to be signs
inviting people to believe in him and his mission.
Instead,
his casting out of demons gets him in trouble.
His natural family travels from Nazareth to his new home base in
Capernaum to try to protect him. They
have heard the rumors that he is out of his mind and do not understand what he
is doing. Hostile scribes are sent from
Jerusalem to do an investigation. They
are part of the religious leadership who are threatened by this uneducated
rabbi from Galilee. They are adamant in
their refusal to believe in him. They
are antagonistic and accuse him of being in league with Beelzebul, the prince
of demons.
Jesus
easily refutes their accusations. He
acknowledges that Satan is very strong and that Satan continues to slither into
people’s lives to wreak havoc with relationships. But, Jesus is stronger than Satan and will
eventually defeat him with his death and resurrection. Jesus invites those caught in Satan’s lies to
acknowledge the truth of his lies and repent.
Anyone who sees the light shining through his casting out demons can
repent and be reconciled. However, he
warns the scribes that they are in danger of blaspheming the Holy Spirit. In other words, if they persist in such
willful blindness and refuse to repent, they choose to close themselves to the
forgiveness the Father offers them through him.
Then Jesus
turns his attention to his human family.
He does not condemn them for their inability to see. Instead, he widens the definition of his
family. Anyone who becomes a disciple
and does the will of the Father are brothers and sisters. The model for doing the will of the Father,
of course, is his own mother.
As
disciples of Jesus Christ, we are brothers and sisters. Satan continues to slither into our lives to
weaken and destroy relationships. Jesus
invites us, as his family, to open our eyes to see the ways in which we buy
into Satan’s lies and fail to live as the family of Jesus Christ. He invites us to repent and stop blaming
other people for the divisions we experience.
Satan is alive and working hard in our deeply divided world. Jesus wants us to look beyond what divides us
to see what unites us in him.
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