Is Jesus Delusional or Devilish?

Third Sunday after Pentecost

Genesis 3:8-15

II Corinthians 4:13-5:1

Mark 3:20-35

C.S. Lewis, the author of the Chronicles of Narnia series, was a convert to Christianity later in life. He was an atheist until he eventually became an agnostic, believing God could exist, but not fully convinced of any specifics. Finally, he became a Christian. Funnily enough, a major contributing factor in his conversion were long conversations with J.R.R. Tolkien who of course wrote the Lord of the Rings books. 

In addition to his fantasy fiction series, C.S. Lewis wrote a number of Christian theology books. In Mere Christianity, Lewis expounds on what he considers to be the basic foundations of faith in Jesus. He describes Jesus as being more than  a wise teacher. Jesus was also provocative and made claims that go way beyond what any sensible, mere mortal, would claim. Jesus claimed to be God among us, he claimed to forgive sins, he claimed to have always existed, and he claimed that he would come again at the end of time to judge the world.

C.S. Lewis, speaking as a convert to Christianity, concludes that no one who takes seriously the witness of Scripture and who believes that Jesus said the things he proclaimed in the Gospels can ever accept Jesus merely as a great moral teacher. C.S. Lewis writes, “A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic- on a level with the [person] who says [they are] a poached egg- or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon; or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God.”

At this point in the Gospel story we read that many people were certainly not ready to call Jesus “Lord.” Right from the start, Jesus leaves very little room for his witnesses to call him merely a wise teacher. From the get go, Jesus casted out an unclean spirit from a man in a synagogue. He miraculously healed Peter’s mother-in-law of her fever. He touched a leper and healed him. He healed a paralyzed man so he could walk again. He broke the black-and-white no working on the sabbath law as he healed on the day of rest declaring that he, the Son of Man, is Lord of the Sabbath. 

Jesus is clearly a powerful speaker and a charismatic teacher, but more than that, he seems to be upending powerful forces of evil, brokenness, and chaos. Jesus doesn’t give us much room to believe in mediocrity about him. He must be, as C.S. Lewis puts it, a liar, a lunatic, or Lord. He must be delusional, demonic, or Son of God. 

Jesus’ own family accused him of being out of his mind. Jesus, the kid whom they remembered in diapers and playing in the mud, this flesh-and-blood guy from the same tiny town in the sticks, was saying that he has God’s authority to forgive sin and is the Son of Man who will judge the earth as foretold by the prophet Daniel! He wasn’t making any kind of sense. He might as well claim to be a poached egg.

The professional clergy from the main office in Jerusalem, the scribes, claim that something much more nefarious is going on. Jesus clearly has power, but it cannot be from God. If Jesus healed by God’s blessing, he would be obeying God’s rules and resting on the sabbath, refraining from touching unclean lepers, and certainly playing nice with the religious leaders among the scribes and the Pharisees. The power is legitimate, but Jesus must be using that power for evil.

Considering the actions of Jesus, we have to side with either his family and dismiss him as being “out of his mind,” or we have to side with the scribes and declare Jesus as a dangerous force of evil that threatens all our good, God-ordained order, or we have to side with Jesus’ chosen disciple family and claim him as Lord. Us sitting here in a church 2,000 years later may think that we’ve already clearly made our choice and confessed him as Lord and Savior. But honestly, it’s a daily struggle that we oscillate between the three options.

When we are called to pray for true peace in which all war ceases and all peoples are united, we have a choice to either believe Jesus is out of his mind and accept that violence and war will always be a present reality, or we can believe that Jesus is Lord and strive for peace knowing that a day of swords beaten into plowshares and war learned no more is a guaranteed promise from God.

When we are faced with the decision on just how open our welcome and embrace of love truly is we have a choice regarding who we believe Jesus to be. Do we really believe that MAGA Republicans and Bernie Bros can strive for God’s common good together? Do we truly welcome in people who battle drug addiction or who have a prison record? Do we risk making ourselves a target of hate by sharing Jesus’ love boldly? If we act on the belief that such risks are not worth it and that God would rather us preserve our buildings, our temporary peace, or our comfortable way of doing things at home or at church- then we are calling Jesus a devil. We have a choice to act as if Jesus’ commands to forgive, love enemies, embrace radical hospitality, and to take up our cross and follow him are the words of a devil or our Lord.

We are all, as Martin Luther put it, at the same time sinner and saint. We believe and trust in Jesus as our Lord and Savior, while at the same time believing and behaving as if he were delusional or a devil. Sometimes we are standing with Jesus’ family members trying to shut him up and dismiss him as an irrational, delusional fool who doesn’t have his feet on planet earth. Sometimes we are standing with the scribes convincing ourselves that Jesus’ Good News is actually bad and evil news that should be snuffed out lest it upend our ordered, godly way of life.

But sometimes, by the grace of God, we dare to believe in Jesus as Lord. We pray daily for the faith to call on him and trust in him as Lord to forgive us of sin, to grant us peace and justice, and to deliver us from death. There is no option to believe that Jesus is anything less. We’re either all-in believing Jesus is Lord or we’re all-out believing Jesus is delusional or demonic. There is no halfway option.

Jesus being Lord, however, does not depend on our faith in him being Lord. He will still be Lord regardless of what we think, say, or do. He still binds the strongman of evil and death to steal us away from his house into freedom. Jesus our Lord still forgives and grants us courage to bear our burdens and strive for justice. Jesus our Lord still accepted his death on the cross and delivered us from its power. May God continue to grant us the courage to believe and trust in Jesus as the Lord who overcomes all evil, sin, and death so that we may live boldly and faithfully as the unafraid family of Jesus.