Seeing the truth...

Being Odd

“When his family heard about this, they went to take charge of him, for they said, 'He is out of his mind'. And the teachers of the law who came down from Jerusalem said, 'He is possessed by Beelzebub!'”

                                 Mark 3:21-22

Our preacher, Sally Harris, used this text for her sermon yesterday. She began by quoting Flannery O'Connor, “I have seen the truth, and the truth has made me...odd.” Obviously, Jesus' family thought he had become more than a little odd, but being family, they were willing to take him home and care for him in his insanity. You can understand why they would have been perplexed—here was Mary's firstborn, who for all intents and purposes had grown up among his brothers and sisters like any regular kid. And now he had gathered this gang of rag-tag followers, fishermen and tax collectors and every sort of riff-raff, and was telling everyone he was the fulfillment of the law, that he brought a new message from God. He must have seemed crazy to them. And it no doubt scared them to death when he started hurling invectives at the powers that be, calling them snakes, and hypocrites. As Sally said, Jesus had a real problem with organized religion!

When you begin seeing the world as it really is, it does put you out of step; 'odd' is a good word for it. Right now, anywhere you can stick a pin on the map is completely nuts—including the good old USA. I hope our political campaigns are not being watched by space aliens. They might decide to contain the festering disease before it spreads to the rest of the galaxy. I couldn't blame them. And Europe, good old staid Europe, is falling off a cliff, and we won't even get into the Middle East—or get out of it, apparently. It's crazy.

Truth is, you're better off being considered 'odd' than buying into the total insanity that the world society puts forth as normal. Whether it's killing the members of other tribes and sects, or starving people to death to gain political control, or trashing one another with lies and half-truths, our quest for power has reached new depths. To join in the fracas is truly demented. Jesus taught another way—the way of love and acceptance, of compassion and forgiveness. We would do well to be as crazy as Jesus was.

                               In the spirit,

                              Jane