His Family

 

DEVOTION

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO MARK

HIS FAMILY

Mark 3:31-35

31 Then Jesus' mother and brothers arrived. Standing outside, they sent someone in to call him. 32 A crowd was sitting around him, and they told him, "Your mother and brothers are outside looking for you." 33 "Who are my mother and my brothers?" he asked. 34 Then he looked at those seated in a circle around him and said, "Here are my mother and my brothers! 35 Whoever does God's will is my brother and sister and mother." 

NIV

A strange situation is described for us here as well as what would appear a strange response from Jesus having been told his mother and brothers are looking for him. What we first need to investigate is why they came having thought that Jesus was out of his mind. That is what we have already read earlier is the reason they came to take charge of him. Thinking as to what they may have had in mind is that from all they knew about Jesus was from the time he was a little boy growing up in the family, learning the trade of Joseph, becoming a carpenter and working to help support the family business and thus the family income. It sure seems he never said anything about his true identity, although certainly, his mother had to know who he was, or at least that he was connected to God in a very special way, having had that visit from an angel and being told and becoming with child without ever being with a man. She had the visit from the three magi and all the shepherds who told her of their experience with the angels. However, we also might know that after thirty years some of those extraordinary experiences can fade simply with the concerns of living life. Nevertheless, having this in mind, here the person who had been working as a carpenter, just one of the brothers in a family has left his career, walked away from the normal course of life, and now is speaking as if he is the Messiah, and having this strange ability to actually heal the sick. Who is he, what does he think he is doing? Why on earth has he left everything, picked up, and started talking about this strange new way of thinking about God? They had to be thinking as Jews they had the teachers of the law to inform them of how God deals with them and what their responsibilities were. Now their son and brother is making all sort of waves, people are crowding around to follow him and all this is just nonsense as we know he is just our son and brother. It is interesting that we too may be considered a little weird as we are not pursuing after the worldly gains the glory that all the non-believers spend their efforts for. We might be thought of as out of our mind actually believing in someone or something we have never seen. We might be considered even weirder that we invest our time in the service of our Lord, leaving the mainstream of life, to follow Jesus. When they hear us talk of Jesus meeting our need, of God clearing the way for us, or our illness being healed through prayer instead of through medicine, they may well think we are just a little nuts, out of our mind. When some of them think that we live our lives in respect of the written word, the Bible, and they simply see it as another book written by men in an effort to control the masses, they may well think we are simple-minded fools, or weak-minded people in need of a crutch to get through life, because we cannot make it in the real world. But, alas, we have the Spirit who dwells within to lead us into all truth and we know without a shadow of a doubt that Jesus is the Christ, he is not out of his mind, he is God, who came in the form of man to heal our sickness of sin, to take that sin and put it to death on the cross so that we may truly have a real life. Why would we chase after that which is destined to perish when we can follow earnestly the one who gives us eternal life? So then we are his mother and brothers, which in essence Jesus was saying that we are His family, with all the benefits of being in his family, the family of God. We have been adopted into His family.