This coming Sunday is the 10th Sunday in Ordinary Time.  20 He came home. Again (the) crowd gathered, making it impossible for them even to eat.21 When his relatives heard of this they set out to seize him, for they said, “He is out of his mind.” …. 31 His mother and his brothers arrived. Standing outside they sent word to him and called him.32 A crowd seated around him told him, “Your mother and your brothers (and your sisters) are outside asking for you.”33 But he said to them in reply, “Who are my mother and (my) brothers?”34 And looking around at those seated in the circle he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers.35 (For) whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.”

You should notice that I have appended verses from the start of the gospel reading as though it was a continuous narrative. The setting of vv.20-21 is likely Nazareth where Mary resided. Upon hearing the accounts about what her son Jesus was experiencing, like any caring mother, she sets out to be with her son. The arrival in Capernaum is captured in v.31. Meanwhile, with his family “outside” (re: v.32), Mary and the others are unable to enter the house and so they call to Jesus from outside. We don’t know if Jesus was aware of why they were calling to him. It is likely that those around Jesus felt compelled to let him know his family was calling to him, after all the Law of God demanded the honoring of mother and father.

We do know that Jesus had already been calling people out of their natural family setting and relationships to be of service to the announced Kingdom of God and enter into “the family of God.” Witness the calling of Simon, Andrew, James and John in Mark 1, followed by the calling of Levi (Matthew) in Mark 2. And so Jesus seized upon the interruption as an occasion for teaching.

The rhetorical question, “Who are my mother and my brothers?” focuses attention on the deeper issue involved in an authentic relationship to him. Looking around the room and the disciples gathered there, Jesus simply announced “Here are my mother and my brothers.” Was it more than the 12 who were appointed apostles in Mark 3:;13-19? Perhaps. What is clear is that in these 12 is their openness to bind themselves to Jesus whom God has sent.  It was a relationship rooted not in the earthly physicality of family, but in the Spirit.

“(For) whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.” Obedience to Jesus and commitment to the mission of the Kingdom is the new determinate of “family” or in the biblical terminology: kinship. This is especially true because of the demands of the Kingdom of God which has drawn near in his person. Because the Kingdom is breaking in upon men there is a new urgency in the demand for obedience.

As Matt Skinner, Professor of New Testament at Luther Seminary notes: “In short, Jesus redraws the lines of family and belonging, saying that those who do God’s will are siblings and mother to him. In that culture, in which responsibility, identity, stability, and opportunity were so bound up with kinship structures, Jesus’ pronouncement of a new family might elicit gasps. But it also can bring great joy to some, especially those followers who find themselves estranged from their own families of origin.”

Skinner offers a wonderful summary of this gospel pericope:

In Mark 3, people have started to conspire against Jesus (3:6). For his part, Jesus has organized his associates and granted them authority to contribute to his efforts (3:13-19). Now, in this passage, he declares the imminent end of a satanic reign, mocks the big-league scribes and describes them as utterly resistant to God, and tells his nervous family that he does not belong to them but to his collaborators. Religious authorities and his own relatives lack imagination; based on how they view things, “demonic” and “insane” are categories that promise protection. Those labels represent last-gasp attempts to hold onto faulty worldviews. Yet the labels do not stick.

Scribes and relatives cannot figure him out, and so they attempt to quarantine him. He seems rather willing to write them off for the sake of achieving something great.

Only three chapters into the narrative, and a lot of people are understandably worried. In many ways, we still should be.

Image credit: “Mocking of Christ” by Ciambue | 1280 |Louvre, Paris | PD-US