What’s going on at your house? Words like family, house, brother, sister, mother, nation, church ring special in our ears. They are bonding words, words that signify relationship, words that serve as labels for our deepest loyalties personal, familial, national, religious. What did Jesus really say? He said:

A family divided into groups that fight will fall apart.

A house divided into groups that fight will fall apart.

A nation divided into groups that fight will fall apart. Let’s take an overview of these rather candid remarks. By St. Mark’s diary, Jesus’ ministry has just begun. Jesus has healed several paralyzed and sick persons. He has preached to numerous crowds. He has broken the Sabbath as they interpreted it. He has called the Twelve to be with him as interns for on-the-job-training. His innovative techniques draw large crowds around him. He is so popular that, when he and the disciples go to the house to eat, their time together is interrupted by the litanies of the crowds. You and I know that any explosion in the church hits the front page of the newspaper and prime time on television. If you want to start gossip in the community, get in front of a group of reporters with a microphone. Tell them your pastor is doing strange things. You will get reactions. I knew of a parish that experienced explosive emotions upon learning that their priest of ten years had resigned due to AIDS. The Gospel is showing us an explosive situation. Mark tells us there were two reactions, one from his family, and one from the religious hierarchy in Jerusalem. His family sent a note requesting to see him. On their way over they told everybody along the way, “He’s out of his mind! He’s mad!” The other group, the religious authorities, charged, “He’s filled with Beelzebub!” thus equating him with Satan, and hoping to turn the people against him. Jesus’ response to all this is twofold. One, if Satan is at war with himself, he’s already a loser! Again what does he mean? He means: suspicion breeds suspicion, fingerpointing encourages fingerpointing, cruelty encourages cruelty, violence encourages violence, and war encourages war. He’s illustrating human nature. Distrust breeds more distrust. Even in the church, we tend to define our Christian loyalties by doctrines and practices which, by nature, create barriers and walls of separation. Why, if truth could be established by one ecclesiastical viewpoint, we would already be in heaven! The second move Jesus makes is to declare his own personal loyalty. Where does Jesus stand, anyway? And how do we know? Jesus determined that his loyalty would not be limited to his genealogical family in Nazareth it goes much wider, much further. His loyalty is to the universal family of God. And so he said, “Who is my family, anyway? I’ll tell you. Any one who does what God wants him or her to do, that one is a member of my family my brother, my sister and my mother.” What’s going on at your house? I have two thoughts. One, there comes a time when shakeup is a necessity. Shakeup is not likely to be a conscious choice, but it becomes the unavoidable end result of a series of choices and events. Shakeup may happen in the normal course of events, like a change from one political party leadership to another. Divorce can shatter a family. Illness or other trauma often shatters people’s lives. And if the minister of a local church is indicted on sex-related charges, it shatters the church. What do you do when you experience a shakeup in your life, your marriage, your church, your nation? It’s a call for change. It is clean-up time. It is time to look at the problem area of your company, your life identify the problem, the obstacle, the defect; then capitalize upon your greatest opportunity for change and growth. I hear Jesus saying, “My family can”t afford to make judgments based on shallow, external matters such as family lineage, language, or sexist or racist boundaries, not even liturgical rubrics. My family is not supposed to be limited like that. Everyone who does what my Father wants is a member of my family. Our decisions are guided by faith, hope, love, justice, peace. We want community. We want to be able to bounce off the conflicts and handle our differences without being judgmental.” Take a quick look at some shakeups. First, in our national history. The Revolutionary War was one of the first ones. General George Washington made a good effort to determine that this nation would exist. The Civil War was our next most traumatic shakeup. We were on the verge of losing our nationhood. President Lincoln used this text in his famous Lincoln-Douglas debates Lincoln determined to convince the people in 1856 that the United States could not endure half slave and half free. He made powerful use of a sentence from the lips of Jesus. Many of us lived through the trauma of the Civil Rights Movement, spearheaded by the late Martin Luther King, Jr. Racism still shows its ugly head at the workplace, in the church, and on the street. But we have an awareness of it like never before. And there is such a thing as shakeup in the family. The famous comedy series, All in the Family, gave it a good workout. Jean Stapleton was fantastic in the role of Edith Bunker. In one scene Edith talks to her friend, Amelia, like this:

Amelia: “Of all the people I know, you’re practically the only one who has a happy marriage.”

Edith: Really? Me and Archie ... Oh, thank you!”

Amelia: “What is your secret, Edith?”

Edith: “Oh, I ain’t got no secret. Archie and me still have our fights. Of course, we don’t let them go on too long. Somebody always says, ‘I’m sorry.’ And Archie always says, ‘It’s okay, Edith.’ “

What’s going on at your house? How do you know a shakeup might be occurring? How do you know when it’s time to do a clean-up? A widowed lady advertised a nearly-new Cadillac, with only a few miles on it, for the sum of fifty dollars. Nobody took the ad seriously, thinking it was a gimmick to trick a buyer. Finally, somebody nibbled and found there was no gimmick. The lady thought she had a good reason for offering the car at that price. She had only recently become widowed, and her late husband specified in his will that the car or the proceeds from the sale were to go to his girlfriend. I don’t know if we can rightly call that a clean-up job. But doesn’t that illustrate the shallowness of much of our efforts at handling the traumas in our lives? The famous Screwtape, C. S. Lewis’ personification of the Devil, illustrates how shakeup happens in the church. Screwtape advised his nephew, Wormwood, how to recruit workers for hell here on earth. His advice went something like this: The church is your best target. Just keep the people in turmoil over money, theology and liturgy, details of administration, organization, personal hurts and misunderstandings. I am sure you have heard that. And we have all felt the pain when attitudes of suspicion and opinions that are uncompromising lower the morale and create barriers of distrust in a congregation. What’s going on at your house? Finally comes the clean-up time, time to work through a shakeup and turn it completely around into an opportunity for renewal and growth. How do you do the clean-up? I’ve given all kinds of advice over the years. It usually goes something like this: set new goals for yourself, reprioritize, evaluate your situation, hire a consultant, and on and on. When I get personally involved in a shakeup in my life, or in a congregation, I quickly discover I need something much more specific than those generalizations, beautiful as they are. If it’s a life-threatening illness, I need more than, “Keep your chin up, Pastor!” If it’s an economic blow, or death, or an involuntary move from the job, I need more than, “Well, hard times come, but they don’t last forever.” I need an achieveable goal. I need someone beside me whom I can touch and hear them say, “I’ll go through it with you!” I remember two scenes from the Western movie, Lonesome Dove. The movie shows cowboys and their “cowhands” driving herds of cattle and horses from Louisiana to the wide-open spaces of Montana. When crossing a big flooding river after a major storm, several lost their lives because they couldn’t keep their eyes fixed on a goal across the dangerous waters. Those who let their eyes get fixed on the storming waters swirling around the horses, cattle and floating trees, got dizzy, lost their balance, and were sucked into the drowning waters. The ones who fixed their eyes firmly on the trunk of a tree, or a mighty rock, or the peak of a hill or mountain made it safely through the dangerous waters. Another scene: one of the men requested that if he died on the way, or even after they arrived in Montana, he wanted to be buried back in Louisiana. The leader of the pilgrimage promised to take him back home for burial. Just as they got to the point where they could see the end of their journey, it happened. The man got sick and died. The cowboy who led them on the journey gave up experiencing his dream fulfilled to take his friend back home. When asked back home why he did it, he said, “I promised him. I had to keep my word.” My wife, who is a nurse, asked a ninety-three-year-old lady how she managed to keep going with all her afflictions. She replied, “I just keep my eye on the horizon of God’s promises and keep putting one foot in front of the other.” One way to work through your explosive happenings is to have well-defined, achieveable, goals. But the most important thing is to remain true to your fundamental loyalties. And that brings us back, full circle, to what Jesus declared to be his ultimate loyalty, the Father in heaven, the universal Family of God. Our basic loyalties in life begin in our family and extend to the church and community and nation. And then the Bible holds out for us the ultimate challenge to declare our loyalty to God by being followers of Jesus Christ. Mother Theresa has a way of summarizing golden nuggets of advice in very few words. One goes like this, “Be always and only for Jesus without him having to consult you first.” Think about it. Have you found any other more compelling challenge than that? Once you declare your loyalty to God by fixing your commitment on Jesus Christ, then you will want to treat your political and social and cultural conflicts, your churchlife, your national citizenship, your racial and ethnic and biological prejudices from one perspective, God’s perspective of love. What’s going on at your house? If you’re already a believer in Christ, test your commitment to make sure it stays genuine. If you’re not sure about your belief, give Jesus a good consideration. He’ll provide the compelling and unifying commitment you need to get through the shakeups, the explosions, and the traumatic effects of life. Thank you, Jesus, for lifting our eyes above the changing scenes of our daily lives. When we tend to be selfish and narrow in judgment, forgive us. When we begin to unite around faith, hope and love, encourage us.