daily java

Daily Java: Then Jesus’ mother and brothers arrived. Standing outside, they sent someone in to call him. A crowd was sitting around him, and they told him, “Your mother and brothers are outside looking for you.” “Who are my mother and my brothers?” he asked.  Then he looked at those seated in a circle around him and said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother.” (Mark 3:33-35)

I recently read an article in Biblical Archaeology Review about a man who was searching for the Jesus of History vs. Jesus of Tradition. I did not agree with many of his conclusions but one was really good.  He said:

“All the Gospels say that once John was arrested, Jesus moved into Galilee. Now that move is very important. He’s going back to Galilee, going back to his own roots, but he’s not going back to settle in Nazareth.
“There’s a famous story in Mark where Jesus is in a house with people gathered around him, and they say to him, “Your mother and brothers are outside waiting for you and calling for you [Mark 3:32].” Mark had made a very unexpected assertion that [his family] thought that Jesus was out of his mind [Mark 3:21–22]. But Jesus does not go out to meet them. Instead he makes this amazing statement, asking “Who are my mother and my brothers?” Those who do the will of my father, he says, are my brothers and sisters and mother [Mark 3:33–35]. In other words, he’s establishing a new kind of family that is based not on kinship, but on following his way of understanding what God’s will is. For me, those are some of the core moments in trying to reconstruct the way I see Jesus developing a new vision within the contemporary varieties of Judaism in Galilee.” (Sean Freyne in Biblical Archaeology Review, November 2010,)

I have seen this as portrayed as insensitive of Jesus in a movie lately. His mother wants to see him and he ignores her and even spurns her. But Jesus was doing something different here. He wasn’t being ugly. He was saying, “my family is greater than just physical”. He was saying that the family of God is not a physical family, but a spiritual family, transcending all earthly ties.

That is a powerful thing. If I am in the family of God, I am in an organism that is greater than any other in the world. It is greater than my own physical family, no matter how much I may love my wife and children. It is greater than any professional organization I belong to, no matter how far-reaching. It moves over the entire world, and for that matter, over time.

I am a member of a family that stretches back to the beginning of time and forwards to the end of time. I count as family members, people who have been dead for millennia and who have not yet been born, and may not be born for millennia. I am part of a family that crosses cultural, physical, national and socio-economic bounds more than any other.

I sit here in my den in Lincoln, NE, knowing that I am spiritually related to a woman in Africa who lives in a hut, with a child in Thailand who fishes with her family for a living, with a man in Europe who is in the government, a man in Australia who is a teacher. My spiritual family is astonishingly far-ranging.

I am a brother to my parents, who are children of God. I am a brother to my wife, who is a devoted follower of God. I am a brother to my grandparents, gone now for many years. I am a brother to my great grandchildren who decide to accept his grace.

The old song says, “I’m so glad I’m a part of the family of God.” And I am. It is great.