Mark 3:20-35

Pentecost +2 - Year B

Mark 3:20-35

When both friend and foe accuse you of being crazy, of having reached the point of “having made your point and now you are just hurting your cause”, you know you are on to something. A point has been reached where you are being unreasonable or that you have your finger on a very important transformational issue.

It is not easy to tell the difference between delusion and prophecy. Both fall prey to a need for internal consistency and defining oneself against others. Both are vulnerable to temptations to choose peer pressure over personal gift.

I hope you have had to make a choice as to whether you are crazy or if society or institution or family is the crazy one. This will mean that you have experience with the joy and frustration of living out being in the image of G*D. Every time there is shift in religious authority, decisions are being made that it is just crazy to continue to believe in some “god” and not crazy to believe in a different “god”. Now we can get down to something more important — what makes a “god” a “god”.

In Wisconsin tomorrow we have a state-wide vote on “god”. Whichever way it goes there has come a realization that we are in the midst of another opportunity to choose more of the same or to make a quantum, evolutionary leap, to a different “god”. Are the rich (“gods” in our culture) a motivating force for everyone to try to get rich, everyone being for themselves? Are the rich responsible for all that has allowed them to reach that state (the un-rich) and called to reintroduce potlatch? Is the financial economy the most important economy we have?

A divided state or nation or person won’t last (though they can cause plenty of pain). The pain they cause can be forgiven; the decision to break community goes beyond pain to an unbalancing of creation that will not be undone in their time.

And so a time of choice for Wisconsin voters and for you and for me. Who is birthing me and shaping me most? Who is my family? Which “god” or social construct will I commit to? Am I a creature of my past or my future and which is riskier?

Blessings on finding your family, your issue, your “wild-and-crazy-guy”ness.