The scribes who had come from Jerusalem said of Jesus,
“He is possessed by Beelzebub,” and
“By the prince of demons he drives out demons.”
The scribes might have preferred for Jesus to have been someone who could be easily dismissed or ignored. Yet the things Jesus was doing were widely recognized. Even the scribes themselves seemed unable to deny that they were in fact occurring.
The scribes demonstrated that strict neutrality in the question of the identity of Jesus was almost impossible. He was simply too polarizing of a figure, and intended to be so. He said he came to cast fire on the earth, by which even households would be divided (see Luke 12:49-51) precisely on the question of their response to Jesus himself.
Summoning them, he began to speak to them in parables,
“How can Satan drive out Satan?
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.
Jesus came to bring division but not a divided Kingdom. He came in order to be the foundation of a Kingdom which could not be shaken, but which would at the same time expose all of the fault lines running through worldly power structures and even relationships built on merely human conventions or pretense. He came to reveal himself as the one source of unity, the one around whom the tribes good finally and forever be gathered. He came to pour out the Spirit so that people could know the unity that could only come from the unity of the Spirit by the bond of peace (see Ephesians 4:3).
The Kingdom Jesus came to inaugurate necessarily excluded the demons which he drove from those he came to him. It was a Kingdom which was utterly opposed to the kingdom of darkness. The very blows he struck to that kingdom revealed the goodness and Godliness which was the basis of his own. Jesus was in a sense dividing the light from the darkness, just as happened during the creation. When he set people free it was evident that the dark powers were delt a loss, that they there was now one fewer person over whom they held sway.
He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son (see Colossians 1:13).
The division which Jesus accomplished was not within himself or within his body. It was rather between light and darkness, truth and falsehood.
And if Satan has risen up against himself and is divided,
he cannot stand;
that is the end of him.
It was a blessing even to those who still remained in falsehood in darkness that they be able to clearly recognize where they stood, that they might seek repentance. They could hopefully even come to recognize that they first needed help to be free, that they needed someone stronger than the devil who could tie him up and plunder his spoils. That is, they could if they would only recognize that the stronger man was Jesus himself. They had already made themselves almost unable to do so, coming precariously close to the sin against the Holy Spirit. They not only denied Jesus on human terms but they proved ready to call good evil and evil good if it meant they could win people over against him.
Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter! (see Isaiah 5:20).
The scribes doubled down on darkness. Rather than allowing themselves to be drawn and united around the Son of David, to be pastured by the Good Shepherd, they insisted on not only wandering alone themselves but in attempting to lead others astray as well. They saw the finger of God at work in Jesus Christ and called it evil. It would be hard to imagine greater blindness. Yet perhaps even they were not beyond forgiveness, had not yet completely committed themselves to the blasphemy they had begun. The evidence of this is that Jesus himself summoned them, began to speak to them and to teach them. He desired that they become aware of the way in which they themselves had become divisive agents of darkness, who had in turn strengthened the division between themselves and the true Kingdom of light. Jesus attempted to show how flimsy were the arguments to which they had recourse, how logically incoherent it was to dismiss the evident work of the power of God out of hand.
Summoning them, he began to speak to them in parables
We too may be tempted to question the Spirit at work when Jesus brings freedom so new and radical as to be unfamiliar. It may seem threatening to us, to our comfort, to the structures of power in our world. But we ought not give in to the temptation to call something evil which is merely dissonant with our experience or incompatible with our pride. We should look to it and judge it by the fruit it bears.
Then the king and his men set out for Jerusalem
against the Jebusites who inhabited the region.
David was told, “You cannot enter here:
the blind and the lame will drive you away!”
David was a shepherd around whom Israel was meant to be gathered. Hence he was given the strength to take the stronghold of Zion which was meant to be the center of the Kingdom over which he would rule, the center of both the political authority of the king and the spiritual authority of the temple. Jesus himself was a new and greater David who overcame, not Jebusites, but all of the powers of darkness themselves in order to gain access for all of us to the heavenly Jerusalem, our true eternal home. Our business now is one of gathering, of inviting people to experience a taste of that Kingdom as it is manifest in the Church on earth. This means that we continue to welcome those willing to embrace the light, to assist by grace those who desire to be free from demons and darkness. To do this we must seek continued conversion ourselves, to live lives ever more completely within the light, with nothing to hide, fully able to embrace the work of God within in among us.
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