In Mark 3:20-35, Jesus is seeking to make room for a new community, not contained by the established hierarchical systems and structures of his society, but rooted in love (agape), bursting forth in response to the leading of the Holy Spirit that blessed Jesus at his baptism, by the prophet John, in the Jordan River.

Agape is the kind of love that seeks the fullest possible well-being and freedom and creativity of our neighbors, and also of strangers, and even of our opponents. Practicing agape love does not depend on our feelings; it is an ethical commitment we can continue to embody in situations of disagreement and misunderstanding. Jesus argues with the established religious authorities of his day, as in this passage from Mark's gospel, yet he never stops loving them.

It is love that leads Jesus to respond to the teachers of the law by stepping into the world of their spiritual imagery, yet turning the images in a new direction: “How can Satan exorcize Satan? Should a kingdom be divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand; should a house be divided against itself, that house cannot stand; thus if Satan has revolted against himself and is divided, he cannot stand, and is coming to an end."

To show the religious authorities the possibilities of liberating love, Jesus needed to connect with the presuppositions on which they were living their lives. To reach his accusers at the deepest level, Jesus would need to find a way of "awakening a counter-vision with sufficient imaginative force to crack the hard shell of this structure. This is what these words attempt, through their surprising adoption of the perspective of the accusation. . . . [Jesus seeks] to drive a wedge deeply into the foundations on which the opponents have built their world." (1)

In such depths, a new world can stir, and breathe, and come fully into being.

1. Robert C. Tannehill, 1975: 179, 184; qtd. in Binding the Strong Man: A Political Reading of Mark's Story of Jesus by Ched Myers, 1988, page 166.