Sermon for June 10, 2018 
Read 2 Corinthians 4:13 -
5:1 and Mark 3:20-35...This is one of those strange passages we find every so often that leave us with a vague sense of unease. There’s all that talk about demons for one. And it comes off sounding like Jesus is blowing off his family. But this actually is an important passage for the gospel of Mark, and for the church as a whole.
Mark is the shortest of the four gospels and only includes what he thought was absolutely essential for the story of Christ. You see, in Mark, the whole gospel leads up to holy week. So the first half of the book is Jesus' life and teachings and the second half is that one week. Just as the passage last week ended with the scribes beginning to plot against him, this passage so early in the gospel helps to show us how Jesus ended up there.
When we begin this passage, Jesus has been traveling the countryside and has come home again. He is so popular at this point that he is surrounded by crowds who are looking for healing, to be fed, or just to hear him speak. It’s so packed that no one can move and still he keeps healing and teaching.
But his family has heard rumors. They've heard that Jesus has gone crazy and are worried about him. So they go to try to get him back. Forcefully. the Greek word used here is an aggressive Greek verb that can mean 'seize,' 'grab,' or 'arrest.' We'll hear Mark use it again when the authorities come to arrest Jesus in the garden. They were planning on dragging him home by any way necessary.
And on top of that, the religious scribes, that have always been his adversaries show up and accuse Jesus of being possessed by the devil. The argument being that this stuff that Jesus was doing did not make sense. It did not fit in with the world they way people had imagined it. He was going against the rules that society and the religious authorities for generations before had so carefully laid out. He must be possessed by a demon!
Just has he has done before, Jesus shuts down the arguments of the scribes, but his family is still there. Still waiting. Still trying to bring him home away from all of this nonsense. And so word comes forward to Jesus through this tightly packed crowd that his family wants to see him.
Now what Jesus says here is groundbreaking. "Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother." This is so shocking, because at that time, family was thought to be the center of your life. Period. Your family comes before all other concerns and it is your duty to care for and support the family as the whole.
And Jesus says, in essence, that the crowds around him, that these people who he had been healing and teaching, were just as important to him as his family. There is a complete redrawing of loyalties in this culture where family is everything.
Clearly, Jesus redefines family. He doesn't reject the institution of family, and he doesn't reject his own family. He just opens up the meaning of family, expands it, re-frames it. In this new and improved way of experiencing family, it doesn't matter if you're a religious expert or a perfect person. It doesn't matter who your mother or father is, or what you've done in the past. It doesn't matter if you're male or female, old or young, rich or poor, completely able-bodied or not, one race or ethnic group or another. You can be family.
As Wendy Farley tells the story, "Looking around him at the crowd of misfits, crazies, and his relentlessly undiscerning disciples he says, 'This is my family!'… It is just the diverse mess of humanity, with all of its moral, physical, spiritual beauty and imperfection."
Jesus knows what it means to be family. He is not disrespecting his family of birth here; it is from them, after all, that he first learned to treasure the bonds of kinship, bonds that he now draws upon as an image and model for the relationship he seeks to have with us. Jesus simply has a notion of kinship that goes deeper and broader than ours often does. Jesus traces his circle wide, calling us all to be kinfolk to him by doing what God desires us to do. And if kinfolk to him, then kinfolk to one another, with all the delights and aches that come in learning to be a family.
It's not about rejecting his current family, though they are trying to hide him away. It’s about opening the boundaries of family for everyone. His family and experts are not rejected or excluded, but they do fail to open their eyes and hearts to what Jesus is saying and doing, and they are gravely mistaken when they choose not to see goodness right before their eyes. They draw a line in the wrong place, and choose to stay on the outside of the circle of grace. His family could be welcomed, but they choose to see what he is doing as a conflict, listening to the scribes rather than him.
This passage is especially important to those who have difficult relationships with their own families. It gives validation to the families we make ourselves from the people in our lives who care and support us, calling them just as important as blood relations, while at the same time, not rejecting the blood relations who are family.
Jesus puts it very directly. It is not status but action in response to the call of God in the person of this Jesus that marks what it means to belong to his "family." That would seem to sum it all up simple and to the point. Relationships in this family are dynamic; they flow from the encounter and response to this Jesus.
In this one line, Jesus redefines his family as open-ended and dynamic, and radically different from our typical understanding of family. The brothers and sisters of Jesus are defined by action and intention, not birth or long relationships. They are defined by doing of the will of God, and the family includes anyone who wants to bend, or be bent, toward the will of God. And the phrase "And looking at those who sat around him," brings in those of us listening to his words today, his followers who sit around him.
We are part of Jesus’ family. That’s why we call it the church family. Family is messy and complicated, but filled with love and support for one another. Sisters and brothers together in Christ may argue with each other and try to get their own way, but they are still family.
And having the church as a family means that we are never alone. We have people to turn to when we need support, when we need comfort, or when we need a helping hand. Like any good family we listen to and care for one another. That’s why we encourage people to join a church where they feel welcomed, to officially become a part of that church family and have those people become sisters and brothers in times of need.
So this week, remember your family, by blood and by the ties of Christ. For we too are now the sisters and brothers of Christ. Amen.
