Today's Gospel

The Division Check

Welcome back to Radical and Relevant. Today's reading is from the Gospel of Luke, chapter 11, verses 14 through 23. Now, he was casting out a demon that was dumb. When the demon had gone out, the dumb man spoke and the people marveled. But some of them said, "He casts out demons by Beelzebub, the prince of demons, while others, to test him, sought from him a sign from heaven." But Jesus, knowing their thoughts, said to them, "Every kingdom divided against itself is laid waste, and house falls upon house. And if Satan also is divided against himself, how will his kingdom stand? For you say that I cast out demons by Beelzebub, and if I cast out demons by Beelzebub, by whom do your sons cast them out? Therefore, they shall be your judges. But if it is by the finger of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you. When a strong man, fully armed, guards his own palace, his goods are in peace. But when one stronger than he assails him and overcomes him, he takes away his armor in which he trusted and divides the spoils. He who is not with me is against me, and he who does not gather with me scatters." There's a lot there today. Is there a word or phrase or an idea that jumped out at you? The concept that struck me today was this idea of a house divided amongst itself or a kingdom divided amongst itself. And in our case, it could be a person divided amongst ourselves. We have this saying, "Oh, he's his own worst enemy," or, "She's her own worst enemy," or I heard someone say the other day, "We're all our own worst enemies." What does that mean? Well, we're divided against ourselves when we act in that way. And what Jesus said is, "Every kingdom divided against itself is laid waste." Okay? And what does that mean? Laid waste? Well, it's a mess, right? It's chaos. It's confusion. It's eroding. It's destructing. It's a mess. And so sometimes I think about these things and the concept of reverse engineering. And reverse engineering, so we'll start with the end, which is a person or a household, or a kingdom that is laid waste, okay? And then we can reverse engineer from that. So when we get into a place and our lives are a mess, our lives are chaos and confusion, and our lives are sort of laid waste, then we can reverse engineer from that through this scripture to get back to the idea that, okay, that's because we're divided against ourselves. Because a household divided against itself will become laid waste, or a kingdom, or a person. And so sometimes we get into our lives and something's going on, and things are a mess, or we're confused, or there's chaos, and we think, okay, well, what's going on here? Or what do I do? We think about what do we do going forward, but sometimes we have to look back and see, okay, what did we do to get here? And the reality is, Jesus is saying today, you divide it against yourself. And what does that look like in practical terms? Well, it looks like stepping away from your values. It looks like stepping out of alignment with your values. It looks like ignoring your values. So if one of your values is to be honest, and you lie to someone, what's happening? You're dividing yourself against yourself. If one of your values is to be kind and generous, and you're mean and stingy, what's happening? Well, you're going away from your values. You're stepping out of alignment with your values. And so you're dividing against yourself, and that's when our lives become laid waste, as Jesus mentions in the gospel today. Have a great day. And remember, don't just be yourself. Be the-very-best-version-of-yourself, all that God created you to be.