Hear God’s word to the Church.
Glory to you, O Lord. . . .
From the Gospel of Mark chapter 3 verses 20-35
and the crowd came together again, so that they could not even eat. When his family heard it, they went out to restrain him, for people were saying, “He has gone out of his mind.” And the scribes who came down from Jerusalem said, “He has Beelzebub, and by the ruler of the demons he casts out demons.” And he called them to him, and spoke to them in parables, “How can Satan cast out Satan? If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand. And if Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand, but his end has come. But 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.
“Truly I tell you, people will be forgiven for their sins and whatever blasphemies they utter; but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit can never have forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin”— for they had said, “He has an unclean spirit.”
Then his mother and his brothers came; and standing outside, they sent to him and called him. A crowd was sitting around him; and they said to him, “Your mother and your brothers and sisters are outside, asking for you.” And he replied, “Who are my mother and my brothers?” And looking at those who sat around him, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.”
This is the word of the Lord.
Thanks be to God
So let’s explore the scene a bit.
Put yourself in Jesus’s family’s shoes; picture yourself as his mother, his brother, or his sister.
Jesus left a good business as a carpenter to go out and “teach” but he’s not teaching what the scribes teach – he’s healing people – he’s pushing back against the temple and even the Roman Empire. And now the crowd is just starting to get out of hand.
It’s late.
It’s hot.
The wind is that kind of wind that just blows hot air at you that doesn’t cool you off; it just makes you thirsty and sticky with sweat.
The sun has been beating down all day.
You have been walking from place to place all day trying to get to Jesus and now it is time to go home. It’s time to cook and eat dinner and rest for tomorrow.
And Jesus is sitting in a house in a village somewhere along the Sea of Galilee talking to yet another group of people. He is talking and the crowds have come.
People are starting to talk
Have you heard about this Jesus? He heals people.
He can’t do that.
No one can do that.
He’s crazy – he’s gotta be. The temple priests said he must be possessed by Satan. They say that he drives out demons just to lead people away from god.
As his family, he’s scaring you because he keeps healing people and teaching that the kingdom of God is for everyone and even when you ask – he won’t stop. The romans have made it pretty clear that they won’t tolerate anything that even looks, like talk against the empire or the emperor.
To top it off, People are saying that Jesus is crazy or possessed.
And now there are so many people that are crowding into the house and filling up the road and cramming themselves closer along the paths just to hear what Jesus is teaching.
These people – these weird, sick, filthy, crazy people – you know they are just making Jesus worse. They are outside the family and they are making him worse. The priests and scribes have come all the way are here from Jerusalem. He must be making them nervous or the romans said something to them. One of the priests looks at him and says “ you are possessed by Beelzebub and by Beelzebub you drive out demons” and the crowd gets real quiet when Jesus responds
“How can Satan cast out Satan? If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand.
And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand.
And if Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand, but his end has come.
But 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.
Truly I tell you, people will be forgiven for their sins and whatever blasphemies they utter; but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit can never have forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin”— for they had said, “He has an unclean spirit.”
And you can hear the murmurs running through the crowd.
It’s time to go before this gets out of hand.
You tell people that it’s time for Jesus to come home to his family and word gets to him that you are asking for him – that his mother, brothers, and sister are asking for him to come home with them.
Take as moment and understand that even though we talk about and rely on our family now, in Jesus’s time the family was the basic building block of society. In Roman families of the time the father was the head of household and what he said went. This structure was replicated all the way up to the emperor who was understood to be the father of all the Roman Empire.
So when your family came calling and said – hey it’s time to go – you got up and went.
Jesus hears their request and instead of packing up and going home like a dutiful son he says to the gathered crowd “Who are my mother and my brothers?” And looking around at those who sat around him, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.”
This feels like pretty harsh language. But it’s not out of character for Jesus – he says similar things in Luke when he asks his parents why they were worried – didn’t they know he was in his father’s house? Jesus keeps pushing at the boundaries of who is in and who is out and how we define family – because he was in his father’s house.
This Jesus is a bit at odds with the popular conception of Jesus that is meek as a lamb – led to the slaughter. Instead he’s teaching and healing and making claims about family and God that run contrary to the accepted religious wisdom of his day. The scribes and priests from Jerusalem are the theological heavyweights. If we were catholic I’d compare it to the cardinals or maybe even the pope showing up and calling Jesus on the carpet to straighten out his theology.
I know it’s an imperfect analogy and you can say they came because they recognized a power in Jesus that threatened their hegemony – and they may also be true – but even if we give them the benefit of a doubt for a minute – they have come because this Jesus is teaching and healing and he isn’t inline with the orthodox beliefs of the day and they don’t want to put the people – their flock – at risk by letting them follow a crazy person or worse a possessed person.
In some respects, I think it is easy to sympathize with Jesus family and even with the priests and scribes. All of these are good people – doing what they believe to be right. The family hears people calling Jesus possessed or crazy and is worried that he’s going to get hurt or killed. The priests and scribes are worried that a new teacher is leading their flock astray and upset the romans and bring their wrath on all the faithful. All of these people are trying to keep some sort of domestic peace and Jesus is having none of it.
When we look at Jesus’s ministry – one of its most defining features is that it is open to everybody. There is no qualifier on that. In this story Jesus is surrounded by gentiles, Jews, the rich, the poor, the sick, women, tax collectors and the sexual outcasts. The only people that Jesus gets mad at here are the ones that you might think are like him – his family and the scribes that are trying to keep the law and keep the people safe.
If we take this story and reset it today – we find Jesus surrounded by vets with PTSD, people with mental illnesses, the sick, the poor, an AA group smelling of coffee and cigarettes, or children from war torn areas like Palestine or Syria; a lesbian mother with her child. Or an old group of miners getting ready for work singing those old time hymns.
In the upside down kingdom of god, it’s not the morally perfect people that Jesus surrounds himself with. He dives deep into this beautiful mess of humanity – he dives deep into its moral, spiritual, and physical beauty with all of its imperfections and all of its need for grace.
And those people that are not filling up the streets, or blocking the paths or pressing up against the windows – the people that are not desperate to be near Jesus – to hear what he has to say – those are the people that think they have it all figured out. The ones that think they know what religion and family life is supposed to look like.
These are the people that Jesus calls on the carpet.
He says that any sin is forgivable – except a sin against the Holy Spirit. In Jesus’s teaching – the unforgivable sin is one that results in denying that the work of healing and releasing from captivity that Jesus does is work that comes from and is of – God.
Going back to the scribes and priests – I think Jesus tore into them because they recognized that there was power in him – certainly, he was more than a charlatan or some imposter. In their unwillingness to see the work of deliverance that the Holy Spirit was doing with Jesus, to see the fruits of the work that Jesus was doing that was bringing wholeness and restoration, they dismissed the possibilities of real – lived – blessing and named that power that healed and restored People – they named that power perverse. I think that this is what set Jesus after them. The calcified hearts of the scribes and priests that could not see the multiple blessings of God and that transformation in the lives of the people around Jesus.
“Anyone who does the will of my father is my sister, brother, or mother.”
In one simple sentence Jesus upends tradition, and what it means to be in the family of God. He sets the definition of who is and who is out. Just before he does this, he made a statement of radical grace any sin is forgivable and now he has made one of radical inclusion – Anyone who does the will of my father is my sister, brother, or mother.”
With this Jesus tells us how we understand who is in the family of God. There are no exclusions from the family – there are just those of us that are filling the roads, and pressing up against the windows desperate to hear the words of love and forgiveness and feel the work of transformation of the Holy Spirit in our lives.
Amen.
Matthew Messenger 