This ordinary boy from a small town, suddenly starts doing extraordinary things, saying never-before-heard things, calling an odd band of people as followers – fishermen and zealots and a tax collector for the occupying power!
Mark 3:20-35
August 11, 2024
Dr. Todd R. Wright
Family is important! Evidence abounds!
At the Olympics Simone Biles relished having her mother by her side – a support denied her three years ago by COVID. Bobby Finke was cheered to a gold medal (and a world record) in the 1500 M swim by his older sisters. And Sha’Carri Richardson ran with her grandmother whispering prayers from the stands.
If family is important to athletes; it’s also important for those in ministry.
Soon after I started seminary, I met Jeff and Becky. Like most of the rest of us, they were young and idealistic, excited about ministry and nervous about classes. But unlike most of us, Jeff and Becky didn’t have the support of their families – not for their marriage; not for their choice to move to Richmond; not for their call into ministry – and that lack was an extra burden on their hearts.
Mark says Jesus was more like Jeff and Becky than the Olympians I mentioned. He says, “When his family heard [what was going on with him], they went out to restrain him ...”
Other translations say “to seize him”.
The Greek word used is the same one used for his arrest later in the gospel.
Why do they want to grab him and take him home?
Maybe they are concerned for his safety.
Maybe they think all the fame has gone to his head!
Maybe they worry that outside the loving confines of Nazareth, people will think he is odd!
Mark puts it more bluntly. He says they think he has gone out of his mind!
Can you blame them?
This ordinary boy from a small town, suddenly starts doing extraordinary things, saying never-before-heard things, calling an odd band of people as followers – fishermen and zealots and a tax collector for the occupying power!
His ministry bubbles up out of nowhere! There is no precedent, no warning.
Unlike Matthew and Luke, the way Mark tells the story, there is no angel telling Joseph or Mary that their boy will be something special, that he is God’s son, that he will save his people from their sins, that he will inherit the throne of his ancestor David! None of that!
So when he leaves home, shirks his obligations, and starts wondering the countryside, his family is alarmed. They do not know what to make of the reports that he is healing people, casting out demons, preaching about repentance and the kingdom of God coming near.
They just want him to come home, to settle down, to get back to work.
Any of you who have a family member dealing with mental health issues can understand.
Still, their willingness to believe the worst about him must have broken his heart.
It is at odds with the normal picture we have of the holy family, a tight-knit trio of Joseph and Mary, and the baby Jesus. They are painted like three sides of a triangle – like the one on the cover. All of them glowing! Inseparable.
I wonder if that is the picture of family that Jesus carries in his head ... and his heart.
I wonder when that changed – when he started to feel misunderstood, suspect, alone.
Mark’s congregation would have understood that heartbreak.
They had suffered a breech with their family too.
One scholar puts it this way: “If our historical picture is correct, Mark’s audience had already left behind their families and local religious communities out of political and economic necessity. They were … cut off from the support of their families and home communities.”[2]
Jesus’ heartbreak doesn’t end there.
His family’s worry that he is out of his mind, a danger to himself and others, is echoed and amplified by the scribes who come down from Jerusalem to find out what all the ruckus is about!
They make an outrageous claim: that he is possessed by Beelzebul, the Lord of the Flies, and that is the source of his wonder-working power!
It is a deeply hurtful thing to say.
Jesus responds with a parable that questions the scribes’ logic. He begins by asking, “How can Satan cast out Satan? A kingdom divided against itself cannot stand.” Then he talks about how if you want to plunder a strong man’s house, he must be tied up first.
But then his emotions begin to poke through the calm, cold logic. Eugene Peterson translates it this way: “Listen to this carefully. I’m warning you. There’s nothing done or said that can’t be forgiven. But if you persist in your slanders against God’s Holy Spirit, you are repudiating the very One who forgives, sawing off the branch on which you’re sitting, severing by your own perversity all connection with the One who forgives.”[3] Wow!
They aren’t just calling him names and trying to undermine his authority; they are knowingly slandering God, purposely impeding the gospel, and willfully severing their relationship with the one who offers God’s love.
This is a hard way for Jesus to start his ministry – without the support of his family and with the opposition of an important part of the religious leadership.
But it is not the end of the story.
Jesus’ family eventually comes around.
The gospel writers place Mary, the mother of Jesus, at the cross and the empty tomb along with other faithful followers of the Messiah.
James, Jesus’ brother, went on to become the leader of the Jerusalem church during the apostolic age.
But even before then, Jesus finds another family.
At the end of today’s passage, he says his family is whoever does the will of God.
This is good news for all those who have felt rejected by their family.
One site online defined a found family like this: “A group of people without any blood relation that supports and cares for someone the same way family members would. Cousins who aren't your “cousins,” aunts who do not know your mom or even a whole family without any blood relation — these are all examples of [a] found family that anyone can have.”[4]
The church can be such a place.
It was for Jeff.
He graduated seminary in 1994 and was ordained. He served churches in Alabama and North Carolina before ending up in West Virginia. He served churches here for 5 years before becoming a chaplain at a college in New York.
I’m sure he still missed his blood family. Their lack of support took its toll on him and was a factor in the breakup of his marriage, but he found a family in congregations like this one.
We can be a found family for people who need shelter from the storm or allies in doing the will of God … just as Jesus did. Amen
[1] “Holy Family” by Mary Charles McGough, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN
[2] From “A New Family” by Jeanne Choy Tate for The Christian Century, 6/8/18
[3] From the Message, Mark 3:28-29
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