MISUNDERSTOOD!
Genesis 3:9-15; 2 Corinthians 4:13—5:1; Mark 3:20-35
A teen wrote: “I feel misunderstood. When I have difficult things going on in my life, I can’t talk to anyone in my family about it; they usually tell me that they get what I’m feeling. They don’t. Has anyone else had the same experience or am I crazy for having these emotions?”
An adult said: “I feel trapped in a world that judges me at every turn and yet never bothers to try to help or understand.”
Sounds familiar? Have you ever been misunderstood? Has anyone taken your words/motives and twisted them around? The writer Pandora Poikilos puts it succinctly: “They have the unique ability to listen to one story and understand another.”
Jesus experienced something similar! Nearly everyone he met misunderstood him/his mission, misrepresented his words/ works. They used the things he did and said in love to attack him in hate!
Today’s gospel is one of the “sandwiches"—passages in which one event is inserted into another—in Mark’s gospel. Mark inserts the Beelzebul controversy with the scribes between the coming of Jesus’ family to take him home and his pronouncement about his true family.
Mark makes a connection between Jesus’ family and the scribes. Both misunderstand Jesus and his mission; they cannot grasp his single-minded dedication to God’s will. His family thinks he is “out of his mind”; the scribes say he is in league with “the prince of demons”.
How did Jesus deal with misunderstanding?
On this occasion, he refused to return home with his relatives. Though his mission was proving to be frustrating, he refused to quit; he would accomplish his mission. He made his family those who accepted him and this mission of doing his father’s will. He confronted the scribes; he called them out for their refusal to see the power of God at work in him and his works. At other moments, he chose to remain silent.
How do I respond when people misunderstand me and my motives/ mission?
I need to learn from Jesus to be steadfast; to find “family” that accepts me and my mission; to discern when to confront and when to remain silent (I have a right to respond but not an obligation to!).
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