Jesus said, “If you have ears to hear, listen.” When I was serving a church in England I often found the truth in the old saying that Britain and the United States are two countries separated by a common language. There were just some words that didn’t translate. Like the time when I came in for an evening meeting and asked a church member if the restroom was locked (because it often was). He looked at me, totally befuddled, and finally said, “Well, you can use the sanctuary.” For him a restroom was a place to rest.
It was the same sort of cross-cultural misunderstanding that my friend, Laurence, ran into when he was living here as a British person. During our seminary days in Dallas, he gave one of the best Christmas sermons I ever heard. The only problem with it was when he mentioned that Jesus was born in an outhouse and it just had a different meaning for us Americans who were listening.
“If you have ears to hear, listen.” What was Jesus saying? That the people he was talking to didn’t have ears? Most of them had working apparatus to hear. That wasn’t it. No, it was something deeper that he was after. He knew they had ears. He just didn’t know if they could listen.
Since we began Lent we have been walking through the book of Mark and we have been noticing some interesting things about Jesus. As Mark tells the story, Jesus is a relentless character. He is constantly on the move. By now you surely know Mark’s favorite word…immediately…and it describes how Jesus moves – with urgency and direction and purpose.
He sweeps up people as he goes. He calls fishermen from their nets and they go. He heals some people and soon there are such crowds that he can’t go into a house or even into a town without being overwhelmed. He’s magnetic.
He also runs head on into controversy. He keeps coming up against demons who are the only ones who seem to know who he is. They are the ones who declare that he is “the Holy One – the Son of God.” But he silences them and casts them out.
Even with this witness, though, the people can’t understand what’s going on. And this is where the ears thing comes in. They have ears to hear and eyes to see but their world view is so cock-eyed…they’ve been living in a distorted world for so long that they can’t hear truth…they can’t see reality…they can’t understand what’s going on right in front of them.
So when Jesus casts out demons they think he’s the one that’s lost his mind. That’s what his family says. Presumably not Mary and Joseph, but other members of his family think that he’s gone stark, raving mad. Others…scribes… religious functionaries who had come down from Jerusalem to see what all the fuss was about…thought that Jesus himself was possessed by demons. “He has Beelzebul,” they said, (Beelzebul being another name for Satan), “and by the prince of the demons he casts out demons.”
You can see where they’re coming from. If the world is so messed up that it seems like the only thing with any power is evil, anybody who displays power must be evil. It’s why nobody trusts a powerful person or a political movement. It’s why people roll their eyes when anyone mentions Washington. We have seen so much corruption and so much damage done by our leaders that we carry with us a justified suspicion of any political leader. We assume that anyone sent off to Washington or Richmond or Eastville will be corrupted by “the system,” which we may call names like Beelzebul.
And then there are those who do awful things in the name of religion. Right now in central Africa there is a group that calls itself the “Lord’s Resistance Army” and it is trying to overthrow the Ugandan government. Its leader, Joseph Kony, believes he is doing the Lord’s work by forcibly recruiting children into his army and by committing all kinds of atrocities in the name of Christianity. The group celebrated Christmas this year by using machetes to hack to death 45 people who were huddled together in a Catholic Church.[i]
We are so jaded and hardened that we find it difficult to recognize it when truth and goodness come our way. So maybe it’s understandable that the scribes would get it exactly wrong. But Jesus doesn’t let it stand. “A house divided against itself can’t stand. I’m not a demon come to fight demons. I am like a thief breaking into a strong man’s house. Unless the thief first ties up the strong man, then he’s not going to be able to steal from the house.”
Do you get what Jesus is saying there? He’s saying that the world is under the sway and the power of evil. The strong man? That’s the same Satan that Jesus confronted in the wilderness. The world has fallen so far away from what God intended that now it is like an alien landscape.
Which brings me to The Lion King. In the movie The Lion King, Simba is the young lion who is the rightful king of a pride that occupies the plains around a giant rock. When his evil uncle Scar orchestrates the death of his father, Mufasa, Simba runs off thinking he was the one responsible. And what happens to the Pride Lands when Simba goes away? Scar allows the hyenas to take over. There is no water, no food, no vegetation left. The harmony of the land has been destroyed and the reign of death has begun.
So Simba’s young friend, Nala, goes to find Simba and to tell him what has happened. She finds him hiding out in the jungle, frittering his life away with two new friends – a meerkat and a warthog. (If you haven’t seen this movie just bear with me!) Nala tells Simba that it is his responsibility to go back and reclaim the land that is his – to face down Scar and to send the hyenas back to where they came from.
Then do you remember what happens next? Simba has a vision of the ghost of his dead father, Mufasa. Rafiki, the baboon prophet, tells him to look into a pool of water and there he sees his father telling him who he is. “Remember who you are,” Mufasa tells the young lion. “You are my son, and the one true king.”[ii]
Now I don’t want to accuse Disney of stealing from Mark, but does this remind you of any scene we’ve talked about in the last few weeks? A pool of water? A voice from out of nowhere saying, “You are my son”? What does this sound like to you? The baptism of Jesus, right?
And immediately…after he has this vision, Simba goes back to the Pride Lands to confront Scar, the lion who has become the king of the hyenas. He claims his territory and exposes his uncle as a liar and a murderer. The movie ends with the clear implication that now the land can become what it was intended to be. Life can flourish. Every creature can play the role it is supposed to play in the circle of life.
This is what this coming of Jesus is like. Jesus is not some new corrupt power seeking to overthrow another corrupt power, which is what too many of our human power struggles are like. Jesus is the son of God – the one true king – come to bind the powers of death and to establish a new reign on the earth.
Of course he is going to seem insane to the people who have no frame of reference for what he is doing. Of course he is going to look like a dangerous renegade to the religious authorities. But to people who have not forgotten the promise that God made at creation…to people who have not given up hope that God’s reign will come…to people who are lost and hurting and downtrodden and lame Jesus is going to look like a man worth following. Because Jesus does not have his eyes fixed on wealth or fame or comfort or control. Jesus’ eyes are fixed on a hill outside the city walls of Jerusalem where a cross waits, ready to claim his life. But his life cannot be claimed. He is the one who determines the rules of the game. Darkness cannot win. Beelzebul and the demons have had their day.
So what does Jesus ask of the people who would follow him? As he travelled he began to teach them. And he told them riddles…parables that were not easy to understand. He talked about seeds and farmers. He told about one particular farmer who was not very careful about where he planted his seeds. He just went out to sow and threw the seeds all over the place.
Some seeds fell on the path and you know what happened to them. They just lay there on that hard ground and the birds came and ate them up. Some seeds fell on rocky ground where there was thin layer of soil, but the plants never really developed much root and, even though they sprang up quickly, the sun came out and scorched them and they withered away. Some seeds fell in the thorns and they sprang up, but they were competing with too many other things and they got choked out. But some seed…some seed fell on fertile ground and it grew and flourished and produced up to a hundredfold yield.
What does it mean? As Jesus explained it to the twelve later he said the seed was the word – the word which he had come to deliver and to be. And when the seed fell on hard ground it was like falling on deaf ears. Before it even penetrated the soil, darkness and evil snatched it away. The rocky ground was like the people who had heard the word and responded but who then fell away when hard times came. The thorny patch was like people who said that they wanted to respond to God but who were too preoccupied with wealth and the comforts of this world and they soon fell away. And the fertile ground….
Who is like fertile ground? When you do your garden this spring what are you going to do to the land? You’re going to break it and turn and open it so that it will be ready to receive the seeds and nourish the plant. It takes broken, turned around, opened up people to receive what God has to give. It takes people who know that Jesus is more than just a miracle worker and a charismatic teacher. It takes people who know that the way to follow Jesus is to first know that you need to follow Jesus. When Jesus is no longer one option among many, but the center of your life, then you are fertile soul for what God’s word can do.
Than image of the Pride Lands in The Lion King is a useful one for us. Because it’s not only the world that is overcome by darkness, but it is our lives, too. Our souls can be overcome by evil and death. We can give ourselves over to demons that tell us that we are not worthy, we’re not capable, we’re not lovable, we’re not redeemable. We can give ourselves over to demons that lead us to treat others with cruelty and indifference and disrespect and mistrust. And when we let these demons rule our lives we start to turn in on ourselves. Our souls shrink, like the Grinch’s heart. We become deformed creatures, distorted beyond recognition.
But God has not forgotten who we are. God has not forgotten what you can be. And God will go to the ends of the earth…to the wilderness…to the gates of hell itself to reclaim what rightfully belongs to God. And you are what rightfully belongs to God. This world is what rightfully belongs to God. The strong man has been bound. We are under new management now. King Jesus is on the move. And immediately the kingdom has come near.
Thanks be to God who did not leave us to dominion of demons, but who walks before us, inviting us to follow him in the way of life. Thanks be to God.
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