Kingdoms Divided

Read Mark 3:20–30.

It was either during his first presidential campaign or his famous debates with Stephen Douglas for the Senatorial seat in Illinois two years earlier that Abraham Lincoln uttered the timeless line, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” He was referring to the smoldering sectional divisions in the United States that would soon burst into a flame that would rage for four bloody years of civil war. He was applying the words of Jesus to the political and social context in which he lived, as any preacher worth his salt should always strive to do, and he was so successful at it that a great many people who know the quotation have no idea that it originally came from the Bible.

In Mark, the line goes like this: “If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand” (vv. 24–25). It comes in the context of his opponents’ accusation that Jesus only possesses his celebrated ability to cast out demons because he is in league with the devil. They sneer, “He has Beelzebul, and by the ruler of the demons he casts out demons” (v. 22). Jesus must feel this criticism is serious enough to warrant a response, because he takes them on, offering his observation about divided kingdoms and then adding, “If Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand, but his end has come” (v. 26).

It seems like a no-brainer—why would Satan cooperate in the exorcism of his own minions (if you accept for the moment that ancient understanding of Jesus’s activity)? Jesus goes on to tell a parable about a strong man who is safe in his well-guarded castle only until a stronger adversary comes along and overpowers him (see v. 27). Jesus is clearly depicting himself as the stronger man who has the capacity to plunder the kingdom of Satan. In Luke’s version of the same story, Jesus then issues one of those all-or-nothing challenges that make us so uncomfortable. He says, “Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters” (Luke 11:23).

When Lincoln alluded to Jesus’s divided-kingdom saying. he was issuing a warning that the American people were skating on very thin ice. Unless they found a way to remain united, a terrible conflagration would be unleashed. As history was to prove, he was not wrong.

It seems appropriate to revisit this notion that division within a kingdom or nation is a harbinger of disaster, because we seem to be teetering on the edge of a cliff in this election year. We have no way of knowing if the divisions within our country in 2024 are as virulent as those that plagued Lincoln’s America, but they’ll do. The ideological chasm between the reds and the blues is wide and growing wider. And there are people, from politicians seeking ever more power to talk show hosts reveling in their influence, who have a vested interest in keeping the divisions stark, the wounds raw. Worse, social media platforms give ordinary people an extraordinary platform to spew their bile and venom and to compare their opponents to Hitler. Millions of two-bit pundits wallow in their fifteen minutes of tawdry Internet fame.

As with many other controversial issues facing our nation and world, I reserve my profoundest criticism for those who claim to speak for Jesus. Those who parade their supposed Christian faith but in the same breath spew intolerance or hate or toxic misinformation have joined the camp of those who misrepresented Jesus’s work as the work of the devil.

Those who depict Jesus as someone as small-minded and bigoted as they are, those who describe Jesus’s work in a way that fails to emphasize grace and radical welcome, those who suggest that Jesus approves of their most hateful and violent tendencies face a clear warning, and it comes directly from the man himself: “Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters.”

Let us take our stand against the bullies and hatemongers. Let us proclaim love and acceptance. Let us gather with Jesus.

Grace and peace,
bob