How did the house become divided?
Luke 11:14 – 20
Rabbi Rev. Dr. Michael H. Koplitz
14 And He was casting out a mute demon; when the demon had gone out, the man
who was previously unable to speak talked, and the crowds were amazed. 15 But some
of them said, “He casts out the demons by Beelzebul, the ruler of the demons.” 16
Others, to test Him, were demanding of Him a sign from heaven. 17 But He knew
their thoughts and said to them, “Every kingdom divided against itself is laid waste;
and a house divided against 1itself falls. 18 “And if Satan also has been divided against
himself, how will his kingdom stand? For you claim that I cast out the demons by
Beelzebul. 19 “Yet if by Beelzebul I cast out the demons, by whom do your sons
cast them out? Therefore, they will be your judges. 20 “But if I cast out the demons
by the finger of God, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.
In Luke chapter 11, verse 14, running to verse 20, we have a story where Jesus cast out
a demon from a mute person who then was able to speak. Since people in Jesus’ time
believed that any disease or infirmity was caused by demons from Satan, it makes sense
that the author would’ve written this narrative this way. Jesus helped the mute speak
again. Then we have the reaction from the crowd. There must’ve been some religious
leaders in the crowd and what they wanted to know was what Jesus thought about
demons because they were evaluating whether he was a Pharisee, Sadducees, or even
an Essene. Perhaps he might’ve even been a Zealot according to the religious
leadership. Every time the gospel says that Jesus is tested, it is really opening a debate
between the religious leaders and him so that they could have determined what his point
of view was about many different doctrines and theologies.
One of the points of this narrative is unity. Jesus is accused of being allied with Satan.
Jesus responded to this by saying how can he be allied Satan because he was tearing
down Satan’s kingdom by healing people? Let me repeat that healing people meant that
he was able to cast out demons because people in those days did not understand what
infirmities or diseases came from. Therefore, they placed the blame on Satan and his
angels. Now, if you want to know the story about how Satan is an angel that fell from
heaven and his followers you need to go and read something called the Book of the
Watchers which is from 1 Enoch. It is a fascinating read because it expands Genesis
6:1-6 and tells us about the angels that came to earth and what happened to them. Satan
is a fallen angel that gets placed in the pit, which becomes Hell. Be that as it may let us
go back to what was happening in this narrative.
The author of Luke’s gospel took this opportunity to show us what it means to be
unified. In the time that Luke’s gospel was being written, the persecution by the Roman
government against the new faith called Christianity was starting to get intense.
Christians needed to live in communities almost as communes to protect themselves.
If you happen to have a government job and you became a Christian, you are
immediately fired and chastised. The only way for the fledgling religion to survive was
for the people to live together and work together. Oh, by the way, that also meant that
every person had to like each other and work out their differences.
Jesus speaks about unity in many places in the gospel, and it’s so sad that the house that
he was setting up, the kingdom of God, never became unified. I should say that when
Jesus was alive the 12 disciples may have argued with each other and with him but
overall, they were unified in bringing the message to the people that God love them
and wanted to save them from their sins. But once Jesus was gone, things started to
fragment. The biggest fragmentation is when Paul decided that he was going to define
what it meant to live in faith to Christ. We call this the laws of Christ, and you can find
them in the letters of Paul, which are in the New Testament.
In 48 CE there was the first church council held in Jerusalem. Paul and Peter debated
with each other about what it meant to be a follower of Jesus and what people had to
do to get into the faith. The book of Acts tells us about this meeting and what the two
men finally agreed to. What is sad to me is that history says that as soon as Paul left that
council, he totally ignored what he agreed to and did what he wanted too instead. To
me that’s a sorrowful thing because that causes disunity right off the bat.
The different communes of Christians worked together and were unified within
themselves, but the different communities did not work together all the time. They were
undoubtedly different communes that worked with each other, but overall there was
never a sense of pure unity. The history of Christianity tells us this. We learn about
different theologians and bishops that came up with their own rules and definitions that
some parts of the faith accepted, but other parts of the faith did not. During the first
300 years of Christianity, definitions and doctrines were being developed. The first
schism we started to see was between what we call the Latin-speaking churches and the
Greek-speaking churches.
If you look up something called the Nicene Creed, you can see how elements of the
Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church are merged, and the marriage is not as clean
as you think it might be. In 1096 CE the Catholic Church, which was the Latin-speaking
church, and the Orthodox Church, which was the Greek-speaking church, had
separated. We now had the Catholic and the Orthodox Church. Do bear in mind there
were some Latin-speaking churches that became Orthodox churches, and there were
some Greek-speaking churches that became Catholic. The point of the historical lesson
is that the church formally split apart.
Today you can see that there are many denominations inside the Orthodox Church.
Even within the Catholic Church, there are different orders that think differently about
what Jesus wants us to be doing. Then in 1519 CE the Reformation came and split
Christianity into all kinds of denominations and the number of denominations keeps
growing. Even in the 21st century, we have seen major denominations divide.
I don’t think Jesus is happy that we have so many splits and denominations and disunity
within his church. Jesus said that a house divided will not stand, and unfortunately if
you look at the statistics since 1958 CE, the church as a whole has been losing
membership and has been slowly dying. I have seen in my area of the world growth in
independent churches and death to the mainline churches. But when you weigh the
losses and gains together you still have a general loss of discipleship which is members
of the faith.
The internal struggles of the churches will always exist. Unfortunately, the struggles
between the denominations are also going to exist. It almost becomes a territorial issue
because the churches that have the most giving members are the ones that are going to
survive. Small family-size churches have been shutting down over the decades because
they just don’t have the financial resources anymore to keep the doors open. Instead of
the big churches helping the little churches there’s a tendency of the big churches just
waiting to suck up the little churches to increase their property and their membership.
That is really a sad issue.
Now I went through all of this disunity we need to get back to this narrative where
Jesus says we need to stand together and support one another. The reason I brought
up all that background is because if we don’t learn from history, our future is just going
to be a repetition of that history. I’ve heard on the news lately certain political figures
say we have to look through the windshield and not through the rearview mirror. What
they are saying is they want us to forget what they did in the past which they know was
wrong. But if we simply forget about the past, we don’t learn the lessons of the past.
Therefore, history will repeat itself and the same corruptions that occurred in the past
will occur again in the future.
We need to learn from history so that we don’t make the same mistakes. We need to
move forward, and the churches need to create unity internally as much as externally.
For each of us we can individually create the beginnings of unity. If every member of
your church or worship community worked together perhaps that unity would seep out
into other fellowships of Christians. You know we all have one thing in common, and
that is that we believe that Jesus Christ is God’s Messiah and saves us from our sin by
giving us a way to live our lives in unity with God and each other. Each of us has to
work at living by the words that we find in the Gospels from our Lord and Savior Jesus
Christ. Living by the laws of Christ as Jesus is laid out for us will give us such beauty in
life that we will seek even more. Start with yourself and your worship community urging
unity in everything. Differences of opinion are fine, but when the body decides on a
direction, everyone must come together in unity, whether they agree with the decision
or not. Jesus wanted unity among his followers. That is so clear not only in this narrative
but throughout the Gospels.
