“Binding the Strongman”

Amanda Hendler-Voss

January 22, 2012

I must be getting old.  I confess that I’m very low-tech for my generation.  I don’t own a smart phone, which actually made me feel pretty smart this week when I read that part of the iPhone is built by 13 year olds in China working 16 hour days.  We don’t have a flat screen tv, though my husband and son may soon conspire to get one.  And we currently listen to old mix tapes in our car since the cd player broke and we haven’t yet transitioned to satellite radio.  I have no idea what an iPad actually does, though it freaks me out when people snap photos with them.  But I really felt old this week when I watched a trailer for the movie the Ides of March.  The images flashed so quickly I could barely see what was happening, let alone get a good glimpse of Ryan Gosling. 

Now they say that quick edits transfix modern audiences.  A recent study shows that the average length of a shot in film is retreating at a gallop, due, of course, to our quick absorption of information.  I think that’s a sophisticated way of saying if something’s not flashing fast enough, the modern mind has a hard time sticking with it.  It’s amazing, for example, that you all are able to offer focused, unrelenting attention to this fifteen minute sermon.  

Technology certainly has changed us.  Have you noticed lately how hard it is just to read a news article in its entirety?  So it may come as somewhat of a shock when I compare the gospel of Mark to a modern day movie trailer, complete with brief, flashing scenes that crescendo in a dramatic finale.  This may sound like a stretch, but if you were to read the gospel of Mark from beginning to end and compare it to Matthew or John, you might notice that Mark’s gospel is kind of like “minimalist theater—collapsing a world of meaning into a few concentrated images,” clipped phraseology, and “vivid profiles.”[1]  As a trailer, Mark’s gospel would open with the leader appearing on the horizon, “and in a dramatic symbolic action” declaring “himself an outlaw.”[2]  I imagine the beating drums that punctuate so many movie trailers, and between each beat appear the faces of the powers and principalities against whom Jesus steels himself: the profile of a chief priest, representing the religious establishment…BAM…the face of Judas, eyes glinting with betrayal… BAM…an angry mob armed with clubs to arrest the peacemaker…BAM…the flitting eyes of Peter as he denies Jesus…BAM…the image of Pontius Pilate authorizing the execution of Jesus…BAM…the soldiers, their faces twisted in mockery…BAM.  The flashing images would crescendo with a shot of Jesus on the cross, crying out “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” just as the curtain temple rips in two.  And then the title of the gospel-film would appear, followed by a brief clip of one witness uttering against a background of complete silence, “Surely this man was the Son of God!”  As for the title, according to Ched Myers, the gospel of Mark could be summed up in this tag-line: Binding the Strong Man.    

If you haven’t heard that phrase before, it might sound unusual.  It comes from Mark 3:27, in which Jesus says, “No one can enter a strong man’s house and carry off his possessions unless they first tie up the strong man and then rob his house.”  According to Wikipedia, which thankfully came back online after its brief hiatus, a strongman is a political leader who rules by force and runs an authoritarian regime.  So who is Jesus referring to in this parable?  Is he talking about Satan, the universal force of evil?  Or could he be using this symbolic language to talk about the authoritarian leaders of his day?  Could the strong man be a reference to the oppressive Roman Empire?  Could Jesus be talking about the religious establishment, which colluded with political power rather than challenging it?  Or is it possible that he’s talking about all of these powers—the cosmic, political, and religious powers that conspire in oppressing the majority to benefit the few? 

Last week, we celebrated the birthday of the man who, perhaps more than anyone in recent history, literally followed in the ways of Jesus.  Imagine if you heard the words of Martin Luther King, Jr. bereft of their context…words like “I have a dream that one day children will be judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character,” words like, “a right delayed is a right denied,” words like “at the center of nonviolence stands the principle of love.”  If our children heard those words but never learned about segregation; if they heard those words without knowing that black folks were beaten and jailed; without knowing how children were jeered and spat at as they desegregated schools; without knowing how Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated, those might just sound like some awfully nice words–lofty ideals.  It’s not until we give King’s words flesh and blood that we come to understand their full significance.  It’s not until we see images of men being beaten, and refusing to strike back, that we really understand the love that stands at the center of nonviolence.  And yet so often we strip Jesus’ words of their political and religious context.  We spiritualize his message, until it seems to have no bearing on our flesh and blood world of today.  

I want to suggest that if we attend closely to the context of the gospel of Mark, we will see a whole new meaning behind Jesus’ symbolic language.  Let’s start with our text for this morning.  We are fourteen verses into the first chapter of Mark, and the first person to appear on the stage, you might recall, was actually John the Baptist.  John, the crazy prophet dressed in camel’s hair, crying out in the wilderness, foraging for locusts and wild honey.  He’d fit right in here in Asheville, wouldn’t he?   John was proclaiming a message of repentance, calling people back to God, but he wasn’t doing it from the temple or even the city streets of Jerusalem.  His ministry was out in the wilderness, where he had the odd habit of dunking people in the Jordan River to symbolize their spiritual rebirth.  John was not part of the religious establishment; in fact he appealed to the masses precisely because he offered an alternative to an authoritarian form of faith.  John proclaimed that someone more powerful than he was coming.  As he baptized Jesus, the heavens ripped open and a voice proclaimed, “This is my beloved child.  With you I am well pleased.” 

I know, it all sounds very apocalyptic.  But as we read our first verse for this morning, John the Baptist reappears—the scene opens with the words, “Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God.”  There are no clues here as to why John was arrested, but we learn later that John had challenged the legality of Herod’s marriage, and so Herod’s wife wanted John dead.  But Herod was absolutely transfixed by John.  Whenever John preached, Herod was both perplexed and mesmerized.  And so Herod’s wife had to trick him into agreeing to kill John. 

Just as John, the one who prepared the way, was imprisoned, Jesus began to preach the good news, taking over where John left off.  Scholars note that the shadow of the cross stretches from the end of Mark all the way back to its beginning.  John’s arrest functions as a red flag suggesting that God’s good news stands in direct opposition to the religious and political powers.  It’s really only a matter of time until they conspire to do away with Jesus to halt his message of radical love and social justice. 

As Jesus walked the shores of Galilee, proclaiming God’s good news, he called some unlikely characters.  First he called out to Simon and Andrew who were casting nets.  The fact that they were standing in the water, rather than out on a boat, suggests they were poor fishermen who didn’t have the means for a larger operation.  Then Jesus called out to James and John, who were out on their family boat, instructing hired hands.  Clearly they were men with more means, but they were all working class.  As Ched Myers points out, “It is important to recognize that in antiquity, much more so than today, the social fabric of the rural extended family was bound to the workplace.”[3]  Jesus’ call demanded that these brothers drop everything—their economic and social security as well as their family safety nets.  “Jesus requires not just assent of the heart, but a fundamental re-ordering of socio-economic relationships.”[4]  Jesus called these fishermen into a new life. 

Jesus said, “Follow me and I will make you fishers of men.”  The traditional interpretation asserts that Jesus was calling the fishermen to hook other people into believing in him.  This, however, is a misunderstanding of the invitation.  Rather than referring to the saving of souls, this metaphor hearkens back to the prophets who used the hooking of fish as a euphemism for judgment upon the rich and powerful.  Jesus invited these common laborers “to join him in the struggle to overturn the existing order of power and privilege.”[5]

Now when we hear this story, most of us ask ourselves if we could do just what the early disciples did.  Could we drop everything to follow Jesus?  Could we leave behind even family to take up a new life as disciples of a radical message that eventually leads to the cross?  Theologian Barbara Brown Taylor suggests that perhaps we give ourselves too much significance in the equation of God’s call.[6]  For God’s call, at its very core, is irresistible.  When we ponder our own power to give it all up to follow Jesus, we lose a full sense of the power of God “to recruit people who have made terrible choices; to invade the most hapless lives and fill them with light; to sneak up on people who are thinking about lunch, not God,”[7] and douse them with extravagant love.  

Our story this morning is not fundamentally about the power of human beings to change their own lives.  We’re not really all that good at change.  It’s a story about the power of the divine spirit to provoke a small group of ordinary people to profound discipleship.  And I must tell you that the still-speaking God is every bit as provocative today.  I’m not asking you this morning if you are able to follow; I’m suggesting that we all are able to follow precisely because we cannot take our eyes off this God who loves the disinherited.  We cannot deny the one whose presence we hunger for more deeply than food.  It’s not a choice, really.  It wasn’t a choice for Martin Luther King, Jr. or Mother Teresa.  They simply fell in love—the hunger of their hearts met, in Jesus, ultimate fulfillment.  And once they fell in love, they couldn’t stop marching, they couldn’t stop preaching and teaching, they couldn’t stop loving the poor, they couldn’t help but resist the very laws that denied the humanity of others. 

If we love God, we open ourselves to a new world—a world where we know deep in our bones that we are beloved children created in the divine image; a world where we strive not for things or accolades, but simply to do what is right and just; a world where we abandon the fear of scarcity as we extend the extravagant grace of God to those who don’t deserve it.  If we love God, we live not by the old order of things, which says that we must obey every law, bow to every authority, affirm every creed handed down.  If we love God, we follow in the ways of the one who broke the law by healing on the Sabbath; who refused to bow to authority even on the eve of his death; who had the boldness to question even God. 

So this morning, I’m not going to ask what nets are entrapping you and urge you to put them down.  I’m not going to instruct you to muster the faith to leave it all behind in order to take on radical discipleship.  I’m just going to invite you to fall in love.  I just want to point toward the God who has the power to transform this world completely, from the dusty corners of our aching hearts to the lonely streets of the poorest neighborhood.  I want to invoke to the God who binds up the broken-hearted and heals the wounded, and pray that you too will find the light that overcomes the shadows, the love more powerful than hate.  Amen.    

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