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Crushed Fruit
Constance Hastings April 22, 2024
The Trouble with Jesus: He kicked evil to the curb
only for its ugly head to go after him in another time and place.
Oh yeah! Today is going to be a fun one. Your man is taking on a bad guy. Jesus tells him where to go (who doesn’t do that anyway) drawing a line in the Palestinian sand. Best yet, he sits in the seat of the paranormal! (spooky music here, please) Woooooo.
Really? In this day and age, do you really think people swallow this? Evil, unclean spirits possessing people? That’s what psychiatric intervention and treatments are for. Your hocus pocus of religion is so ridiculous, it’s sickening.
Ok, granted, like some cable tv shows that are heavy on the entertainment factor but maybe not on reality, this story sounds like it’s way out there. Jesus is easier to take if you just leave him to blessing the children and telling stories about lost sheep. Call him The Nicest Man That Ever Lived and deposit him on a shelf with last month’s elf. What goes on here is way off from that story. But you knew that was coming, didn’t you?
Preach to Where They Live
So give this a chance. Jesus has become a regular in the local synagogue, speaking every Saturday. People like him. That is, they really like him. He’s got an incredibly interesting take on teaching the Torah, ancient writings of the Jewish law and the prophets. Most of the regular legal experts, the scribes, are pretty dry in how they rehash what’s been said over and over. But Jesus, well, he tells it like it is but puts a greater spin on it. He doesn’t disagree or say it’s not so. Yet, when you hear him tell it, you get the idea that he’s letting you in on how God sees it, like from God’s lips to Jesus’ ears to our heads and hearts. While Jesus is known as a sort of a self-made rabbi, not coming through the usual religious systems, when he speaks you know he’s got something in him worth listening to, an authority the rest of the religious leaders don’t quite have.
A Mirror of Mind and Soul
Take for instance what is famously known today as his Sermon on the Mount. Jesus goes over it time and again. “You have heard it said (fill in a commandment), but I say….” The scribes will tell you what the law is: Do not commit murder, adultery, break your vows, etc. Geez, we can read that for ourselves. Isn’t the whole point of preaching supposed to help us see deeper, think differently, live with more integrity? Jesus showed the amateurs how it was done.
Murder? Watch your emotional response towards another. If you are angry, if you demean a person, if you curse someone, you are in a dangerous place, the kind of place that very well could lead to taking another’s life. Adultery? Let lust, a fantasy of a sexual nature desiring another, dominate your musings, and you’ve just as well put yourself in bed with her or him. You’re certainly are closer to acting on it. Break your vow? Don’t even say it, and you won’t be putting yourself in jeopardy of violating it.
In other words, Jesus had this way of piercing motive and thought life, how we position ourselves with others. Cognitive behaviorists will tell you what you allow yourself to think leads to emotional responses which often dictates action. Jesus was way ahead of them on that. In short, the authority credited to him was in his ability to get into people’s psyche and soul.
So Jesus was a master because he knew where people were coming from and could make their religion relevant to them. He had charisma? I wouldn’t expect you to say anything less. That’s essential to anyone who wants to lead a movement. But I gotta ask. I know this is still early in his career, but given how he made the synagogue leaders look kinda bad, wouldn’t this be a problem for him pretty soon?
Partners in the Plot
More than pretty soon. Let’s move on to that guy who disrupted Jesus’ teaching that day. He’s variously described as having an unclean, evil spirit that possessed him. What’s a character like that doing in a synagogue, a place considered holy, where people came to meet their God? Who would have let him in the door? That depends. Was it the front door? Or the back door? And who would benefit by letting this wretch get by the Jewish gatekeepers who wouldn’t let anybody in with any kind of disease or illness and who even kept the women back behind screens because they had a monthly issue of blood?
Admittedly, this is only conjecture, not written explicitly in the record, but don’t put it past those who had a lot to lose if this upstart preacher got more notice than they. You know how it happens. When climbing a ladder, the worst thing you can do is be better than your boss.
As it was, Jesus’ confrontation with the possessed man turned out to be a fight for way more than the admiration of a crowd. Strangely, the man shouts, “What have you to do with us? Have you come to destroy us?” But then he shrinks back. “I know who you are…” His words reveal the struggle, all the crushing evils of the world speaking though an individual torn in a destructive battle for his being and soul. Need a contemporary example? Addicts will tell you when the need for a fix overtakes all motivation, you are talking with the drugs and not the person. It’s a possession more real than you’ll ever find in a paranormal portrayal.
Wicked Warfare
They fight. He calls Jesus, “the holy one sent from God.” Jesus commands the spirit to shut up and come out of him. Usually, you have to name a disease or disorder to cure it. We have no designation in this record. Call it what you will: a psychological or personality disorder, a neurological illness, a soul twisted from physical, sexual, religious abuse. Any way you frame it, it destroyed and sucked the life out of him. That’s the goal of evil in its most insidious form. Still, he knew clearly who Jesus was and his purpose. He fought it with a squawking screech, the kind that sounds like it originates and ends in the bowels of hell. The warring factions within convulsed his body. Then it was over. The guy was ok, healed of whatever had clenched him.
So maybe Jesus came out on the winning side that day. His authority and power over what possessed this man impressed and gave him even more validation in the eyes of the people. But it’s not over. It takes a good long fight, battle, outright war to beat back evil. Yet, we only have to look at history to know it’s never gone for good.
Preach all you want, pass all the laws you can, write all the books you can ink, broadcast the experts, stream all kinds of authority. But hatred, racism, sexism, slavery, political and economic oppression, whatever pounds the spirit into oblivion, will rear its ugly head in another time and place.
Whereas Jesus may have dealt defeat over that day’s expression of evil, it did not disappear and would follow him, haunt him until his own demise upon an evil cross. His final battle would culminate in a clash with life’s fiercest foe, the true purpose of evil as death, and bring a healing three days later never possible before in life restored.
The Lord’s Prayer is understood as given by Jesus to pray for ourselves in God’s will. Yet, in a way, Jesus may have meant the final petition, read in the original Greek, for himself as much as for the world.
“Rescue us from the evil one.” Matthew 6:13
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The Trouble with Jesus: His words grow like a vine,
thin trails of thought getting thicker with meaning.
Jesus kept talking. He’d just said it was time to go. But he kept talking. The tension in the room was a weighty blend of grief, some denial, maybe even suppressed anger at what he was saying held in place by the exhaustion of the week. Tonight was not how it had started, an exhilarating parade with the crowd calling him the new king, a king who would save. (Mark 11:1-11)
Deviating Thoughts
But he kept saying things like being lifted on a cross even as he almost desperately called to the people to believe he was sent from God. Those gathered in the city for the Passover festival had heard about his miracle of bringing a friend back to life after four days dead. (John 11:1-44) But most were not buying much more of his message than that. Still, he just kept talking.
Earlier in the evening, he had done something weird, uncharacteristic for one who would be king. He’d dressed like a servant and washed their dirty feet, calling upon them to serve others likewise. (John 13:1-17)
Then he’d said the unthinkable, that one of them, these who had followed and learned of him for three years, would betray him. Maybe that’s why he’d said to Judas, “Hurry. Do it now.” Judas was the treasurer who paid for their meals and gave money to the poor. (John 13:27-30) Do you think he left to pay off any threat to their Rabbi and themselves? Jesus kept talking.
In all the confusion, Peter had declared he’d die for his Lord. Jesus silenced the room when he stated Peter would do go so far as to three times deny he even knew Jesus before that very night was over. (John 13:38) Next came some kind of talk about going away somewhere and how he would send a Counselor to teach and remind them of what he had said. (John 14:26)
Restless, Weaving Thoughts
It was too much, how he kept talking even when he said they should be going. It was as if Jesus knew when they left that room he never would have again the chance to tell them all he wanted. So he weaved in his thoughts, let them creep out and hold on where they would, seemingly just talk but growing into so much more.
“I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener.” Jesus kept talking but hold on to that thought. A vine. The image is one similar to what he is doing now. It grows, spreads out, weaves up into and among places to which it can grasp, wrap itself, become stable-tight, and then move out again. His words have been like that all night, thin trails of thought getting thicker with meaning.
Jesus fleshes it out. His Father, the one from whom he comes, is the gardener. The work of this Gardener-God is made clear from the beginning: to produce fruit. The gardener trains the branches on the vine, how to grow so light is available to all parts of it. The parts that impede ability to produce fruit are removed, pruned.
Such it has been with these friends of Jesus. The message he has given them has cut away at their ambitions, desires, misconceptions of God’s purpose in them. It’s pruning that can be severe but necessary for the fruit of the vine. Not all will accept being part of the vine. The separation leaves a wound on the vine like something nailed deep into flesh.
Severe, sometimes necessary pruning can also be a cleansing, yielding process, as if having feet or hands washed. The health of the vine and the expected fruit must be protected from disease. Yielding to the Gardener-God’s work maintains the well-being of the branches.
Roving, Winding Thoughts
From the True Vine come branches, and from the yielding of the branches is fruit. There is an interconnectedness in the image that belies the translations. Eight times Jesus states the importance of remaining, abiding, being joined to him. “Apart from me, you can do nothing.”
You won’t know growth. You can’t be effective. You won’t have life in the abundance the Gardener-God would have for you. You won’t last because you won’t produce fruit. Abide, remain in, and be joined to the message Jesus brings.
To abide is to be not just a branch, an extra appendage, but an integral part of the vine. By an intimate conjoining of Love the True Vine connects with its branches. In this Christ-likeness, the branch is identified with The True Vine. Yet, this metaphor is not limited to individualism.
“You may ask any request you like, and it will be granted.” Not a blanket give-a-way is this. Throughout Jesus’ words the plural form of “you” is stated. You entails the interconnected, gathered believers who remain in, are joined to, and abide in the True Vine. In the altogether growing, cleansing, pruning of the branches is God’s desire in producing fruit.
Meandering, Heavy Thoughts
Jesus kept talking. His message is understood as the tenuous wisps of leaves sprouted from the tips of the branch connected to the True Vine. His discourse is cloudy in its first vision, requiring multiple re-examinations as the vine sends out more branches.
Jesus kept talking. Fruit is the desire of his Gardener-God. Fruit will be taken from the vine of Love and crushed into a cup from which Jesus soon will pour out his life. The True Vine stared into his fate.
He kept talking.
