The mad card. [moar coffee]

I do not know if it is caffeine deprivation this morning, but when I read this text I read it as if I was at work.

“Thirty year old preacher says he is God and he’s not eating”.

And I understood why his mother and brothers tried to restrain him. They were told this. They were concerned: they loved him. I sit with the families of those who are currently mad most days and listen to them talk about what happened to their son, their daughter They blame themselves.

So the local Pharisees also arrive — for they have decided he is mad: he has a demon, and it must be cast out.

Another lovely #coffee from the boys @modcupcoffee pic.twitter.com/gl4A4X0nKk

— Dan Martland (@DanTVusa) March 17, 2014

So I better drink up and pray for the spirit, lest I call the Spirit of God madness, or worse, a Spirit of Evil.

Mark 3:19b-35

19bThen he went home; ²⁰and the crowd came together again, so that they could not even eat. ²¹When his family heard it, they went out to restrain him, for people were saying, “He has gone out of his mind.” ²²And the scribes who came down from Jerusalem said, “He has Beelzebul, and by the ruler of the demons he casts out demons.” ²³And he called them to him, and spoke to them in parables, “How can Satan cast out Satan? ²⁴If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. ²⁵And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand. ²⁶And if Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand, but his end has come. ²⁷But no one can enter a strong man’s house and plunder his property without first tying up the strong man; then indeed the house can be plundered.

²⁸“Truly I tell you, people will be forgiven for their sins and whatever blasphemies they utter; ²⁹but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit can never have forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin” – ³⁰for they had said, “He has an unclean spirit.”

³¹Then his mother and his brothers came; and standing outside, they sent to him and called him. ³²A crowd was sitting around him; and they said to him, “Your mother and your brothers and sisters are outside, asking for you.” ³³And he replied, “Who are my mother and my brothers?” ³⁴And looking at those who sat around him, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! ³⁵Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.”

But this passage helps us see what the issue is and why sins against the spirit are deadly. For if you account that which is of God as madness or worse, sin, you have shut yourself off from scripture, and from the work of the Spirit.

You have made your own rabbit hole: you are letting the world revolve around you, not God: you are claiming what is evil is good, and screaming at those who are good, calling them evil.

So this morning I praise God for Coffee, for it kept my son sane while he swotted for mid terms, and it allows me to think more clearly. Besides, it is probably good for you.

I will even praise God for Tim Horton, who makes foul coffee, but coffee it is.

For clues to treatments for Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s, scientists are looking at their morning cup of joe.

What they’ve found is that caffeine, the world’s most widely used drug, does more than wake people up. It’s been linked to improvements in memory and appears to protect against the destruction of brain cells. One study found that people who drank two or more cups of coffee a day had a 40 percent lower risk of developing Parkinson’s.

Emboldened by these findings, some companies have been designing drugs to replicate those benefits. The most advanced research has been in Parkinson’s. At least one drugmaker, Kyowa Hakko Kirin Co., won Japanese approval last year for such a product and then began U.S. tests. The challenge is to go beyond the buzz of a vanilla latte to achieve a more powerful effect on the brain — without side effects like headaches, irritability and jitters.

“Caffeine has a major benefit for cognition,” said Jiang-Fan Chen, a professor of neurology and pharmacology at the Boston University School of Medicine. “More and more people believe this is a real serious potential benefit that we should explore.”

Caffeine, found naturally in more than 60 plants, enters the brain quickly once consumed. There, it latches onto cells at the same sites that interact with adenosine, a chemical that acts as a braking system on the brain. By blocking those sites and thwarting adenosine, it creates the jolt of clarity that makes coffee one of the world’s most popular beverages.

Coming back to the text for a minute. We need to consider the teaching here. For there are two parts to this — the first is that “a house divided cannot stand” and the second is that “those who do the will of God are my brother and sister”. This implies that we need to work together. We cannot splinter.

And this requires a bucketload of charity. And, for me, coffee. Coffee stops me from saying exactly what I want to — perhaps because pausing allows one to think, but also because the hardest thing for this introvert is running team meetings, dealing with foolishness. I have a low tolerance for stupidity, and I work with the mad: the caregivers of whom all too frequently are silly to foolish.

Within the church, and within the Christian Tradosphere, we have to tolerate some prickly people, (of which I am one) who firmly hold to the gospel and to the traditions of the church — but those traditions vary. A lot. Our theological models are not Christ, nor are they the gospel. They are the best explanations that the wisest of us can produce — I am neither Aquinas nor Calvin nor Schaeffer — but they are a pale reflection of what Christ is and what he has done.

This allows me to tolerate a lot of Christian silliness. For I know that I have been guilty of my fair share of it. As this passage should tell us not to call mad Christ, we should hesitate in condemning among those who are obeying the commands of God. Calling error — that is different. That is a conversation. Those help, for the way iron sharpens iron is with argument, confrontation, force.

But damning? Leave that to the judge of the world. For he will hold us all to account.

“@_bobena: Not another #weatherbomb please #Auckland. #nofilter pic.twitter.com/BzOihv8VfM” Wow! #AucklandSunrises

— Local Auckland (@LocalAuckland) March 17, 2014

UPDATE

Cameron Slater linked to this: the service of Purim includes reading Esther, and whenever the name of the oppressor of Isreal (Haman) is uttered tradition demands it is drowned out. That plus Isreali squaddies gives you this.

God bless ‘em. Made me smile.