Binding the Strong Man

"Binding the Strong Man”—April 6, 2017

 [Jesus said:] “But no one can enter a strong man’s house and plunder his property with out first tying up the strong man; then indeed the house can be plundered.” [Mark 3:27]
Jesus, apparently, is all about breaking and entering.

It shouldn’t surprise us at all, really, since Jesus' whole message throughout the Gospel is that the Kingdom of God is breaking into our present-day reality and entering into our lives. They say there is no honor among thieves, but Jesus is very much up front and honest about his intentions: he has come to take back, to reclaim, the world of God’s creation back from the powers of evil, of sin, death, and the devil, who have taken God’s universe and pretend it is theirs. Call it stealing or plundering if you like, but it is plundering what is already really his.

Jesus has come, in other words, to be the divine thief.  That is how Jesus' wins.

The religious experts had come to Jesus, flustered that he was casting out demons and expelling the powers of evil, when all they could do was hem and haw and twiddle their thumbs about them. So their explanation of Jesus, their way of making sense of him and his power, was to say that he must have been in league with the devil. Jesus says it’s just the opposite: he’s come to plunder what all the forces of evil think are theirs. He’s come to take back what is rightfully God’s—the whole universe! And with it, Jesus is reclaiming every person on God’s green earth who is held under the power of evil.

But think about that--Jesus' way of describing his grand cosmic victory over all the powers of evil in the universe is to say he is a thief nabbing the world right out from under the nose of death!

You could say, I guess, that the whole story of Jesus—and then our stories, too!—are all one great heist caper. Sort of a grand, 2,000-plus year version of “Ocean’s Eleven” or “The Sting,” where Jesus has gathered us all and enlisted us in his grand, divine conspiracy to set people free. Jesus, of course, has gone ahead of us to tie up “the strong man”—the forces of sin and death and the devil—in the cross and resurrection, and now he’s got the rest of us on his crew, liberating and reclaiming everyone and everything in heaven and on earth. But like a certain real-life thief Jesus met once, we too have first been rescued by Jesus. We have been reclaimed by Jesus so that we can be used as Jesus reclaims others.

There’s our mission, day by day—to let God reclaim a world full of people (ourselves included) who have been told before that we don’t belong to God, or are not acceptable, are irredeemable, are cosmic accidents, or are unloved. Our mission is to tell friends, neighbors, co-workers, and strangers of how God is taking us back, rescuing and liberating us, reclaiming and restoring us to what we were always meant to be: children of the living God, citizens of God’s Reign. Jesus began that movement, freeing people from the oppressive power of evil spirits, liberating people from disease, loosing people from the merciless grasp of greed, unbinding people from our enslavements to a million other imaginary gods, and releasing people from their sins. He began that movement by doing all of that for us, stealing us back, so to speak, right out from under the noses of arrogant powers who think the world is theirs. And now we are a part of it, too, co-conspirators and accomplices with Jesus in plundering the strong man’s house to take back what is already God’s: everything and everyone.

 That means every act of hospitality in Jesus’ name, every prayer offered next to someone whose heart is heavy and in need of lifting, every time the cross of Christ is traced on a forehead in baptism, and every small act of resistance against evil, these are all moments of the holy breaking-and-entering of the Kingdom. They are all moments when God uses us to steal back what is rightfully God’s, and what rightfully is meant to be set free from bondage.

That also tells us why it is so important for us to keep gathering together, we partners-in-crime with Jesus. We are on a dangerous mission, and we need one another to keep on the lookout while others in the crew are ransacking the devil’s hideouts and cracking the house safe. We need one another’s presence—in worship, around the table in study of the Word, encouraging one another day by day, weeping and rejoicing with one another, holding one another in prayer. And we need that close-knit community because if you are going to be in on a caper as big as this one Jesus has cooked up, you need to be, well, as thick as thieves.

Have you ever thought of yourself as a Christian in terms of being an accomplice of Jesus in his divine conspiracy, robbing the powers of evil blind? Have you ever thought about daily life as that kind of adventure, reclaiming what is rightfully God’s, right under the nose of the powers of evil and death? That, I suspect, gives us a whole new energy to this day. And that is precisely what Jesus, the thief of God, is up to.

Lord Jesus, you master thief, you, you have captivated our hearts—let us be about your work today.