Here are My mother and My brothers! For whoever does the will of God is My brother and My sister and mother

 And they went into a house.  Then the multitude came together again, so that they could not so much as eat bread.  But when His own people heard about this, they went out to lay hold of Him, for they said, "He is 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."  So He called them to Himself and said 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 cannot stand.  And if Satan has risen up against himself, and is divided, he cannot stand, but has an end.  No one can enter a strong man's house and plunder his goods, unless he first binds the strong man.  And then he will plunder his house.

"Assuredly, I say to you, all sins will be forgiven the sons of men, and whatever blasphemies they may utter; but he who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but it subject to eternal condemnation" -- because they said, "He has an unclean spirit."

Then His brothers and His mother came, and standing outside they sent to Him, calling Him.  And a multitude was sitting around Him; and they said to Him, "Look, Your mother and Your brothers are outside seeking You."  But He answered them, saying, "Who is My mother, or My brothers?"  And He looked around in a circle at those who sat about Him, and said, "Here are My mother and My brothers!  For whoever does the will of God is My brother and My sister and mother." 

- Mark 3:19b-35

Yesterday we read that, after the Pharisees began to plot with the Herodians to destroy Him, Jesus withdrew with His disciples to the sea.  And a great multitude from Galilee followed Him, and from Judea and Jerusalem and Idumea and beyond the Jordan; and those from Tyre and Sidon, a great multitude, when they heard how many things He was doing, came to Him.  So he told His disciples that a small boat should be kept ready for Him because of the multitude, lest they should crush Him.  For He healed many, so that as many as had afflictions pressed about Him to touch Him.  And the unclean spirits, whenever they saw Him, fell down before Him and cried out, saying, "You are the Son of God."  But He sternly warned them that they should not make Him known.  And He went up on the mountain and called to Him those He Himself wanted.  And they came to Him.  Then He appointed twelve, that they might be with Him and that He might send them out to preach, and to have power to heal sicknesses and to cast out demons:  Simon, to whom He gave the name Peter; James the son of Zebedee and John the brother of James, to whom He gave the name Boanerges, that is, "Sons of Thunder"; Andrew, Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew, Thomas, James the son of Alphaeus, Thaddaeus, Simon the Cananite; and Judas Iscariot, who also betrayed Him.

 And they went into a house.  Then the multitude came together again, so that they could not so much as eat bread.  But when His own people heard about this, they went out to lay hold of Him, for they said, "He is 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."  So He called them to Himself and said 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 cannot stand.  And if Satan has risen up against himself, and is divided, he cannot stand, but has an end.  No one can enter a strong man's house and plunder his goods, unless he first binds the strong man.  And then he will plunder his house.  Jesus' fame grows exponentially. We're told in recent readings that people come to see Him from all over Israel, and even from Tyre and Sidon, not merely from Galilee.  There are such great crowds who come to see Him that no one can even have a meal in the house.  The scribes come down from Jerusalem.  All eyes are on Him, so to speak.   At this His own people begin to panic (that is, His relatives from Galilee); they themselves go to lay hold of Him.  His behavior is unseemly, it's completely public, He's upsetting the leadership.   The scribes claim that He has Beelzebub, and casts out demons by the ruler of the demons.  Beelzebub was a Jewish reference to the god Baal; it was a slur of the title given to Baal by the Philistines who worshiped Baal; it means prince of "the dung heap" or lord of "the flies" (2 Kings 1:2-16).  Here the scribes call him the ruler of the demons.  Jesus replies with a commonsense and rational answer, which also tells us something about Himself:  He is the stronger man who plunders the house of Satan with His own power and authority.  My study bible tells us that the impossibility of demons fighting against themselves illustrates the irrational pride and envy of the Pharisees in their opposition to Jesus.

"Assuredly, I say to you, all sins will be forgiven the sons of men, and whatever blasphemies they may utter; but he who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but it subject to eternal condemnation" -- because they said, "He has an unclean spirit."   My study bible explains that blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is blasphemy against the divine action of the Spirit.  That is a blasphemy against pure goodness.  A sin against the Son of Man is more easily forgiven because the Jews did not know much about Christ.  But blasphemy against the Spirit, whose divine activity these Scriptural experts know from the Old Testament, will not be forgiven.  It comes from a willful hardness of heart, a refusal to accept the mercy of God.  The Church Fathers teach that blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is not an "unforgivable sin" and nor does Jesus ever call it "unforgivable."  According to St. John Chrysostom, blasphemy against the Holy Spirit would be forgivable if one were to repent of it.  Jesus makes this declaration knowing that those who blaspheme the Spirit are calling pure, divine goodness "evil."  They are beyond repentance by their hard-heartedness, their own choice to be so.

Then His brothers and His mother came, and standing outside they sent to Him, calling Him.  And a multitude was sitting around Him; and they said to Him, "Look, Your mother and Your brothers are outside seeking You."  But He answered them, saying, "Who is My mother, or My brothers?"  And He looked around in a circle at those who sat about Him, and said, "Here are My mother and My brothers!  For whoever does the will of God is My brother and My sister and mother." My study bible tells us that Christ's family hasn't yet understood His identity and mission and the nature of His unfolding ministry.  With all the publicity and the hostility of the leaders, it is most likely startling and unseemly.  We read above that His "own people" think He is out of His mind,  and we know how His own townspeople will react to Him (Mark 6:1-6).  Jesus points to a spiritual family, which is based on obedience to the will of God.   It also notes that in Jewish usage, brother can indicate any number of relations.  Abraham called his nephew Lot "brother" (Genesis 14:14); Boaz spoke of his cousin Elimelech as his "brother" (Ruth 4:3); and Joab called his cousin Amasa "brother" (2 Samuel 20:9).  Mary had one son, Jesus.  The brothers mentioned here are possibly step-brothers (sons of Joseph by a previous marriage), or cousins.  At the Cross, Jesus commits His mother to the care of John Zebedee (John 19:25-27), unthinkable if Mary had had other children to care for her.

We can imagine how startling and even strange Jesus' ministry must be at this stage.  He's being called one who works by the ruler of the demons by the religious leadership; His family thinks He is out of His mind.  His mother and brothers come inquiring after Him.  We might find it startling that His mother Mary is included here; she, after all, is the one who was given the divine word through Gabriel about the child she was to bear.   She was told that He would be called the Son of the Highest, and that He would receive the throne of His father David.  To all of it Mary replied, "Behold the maidservant of the Lord! Let it be to me according to your word" (see Luke 1:26-38).   But nothing is spoken here of revealing precisely how all this would come about, and what the nature of His ministry would be.  Perhaps the closest a prophesy comes to telling Mary just what to expect is Simeon's prophecy, made when Jesus is presented in the temple as an infant:  "Behold, this Child is destined for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign which will be spoken against (yes, a sword will pierce through your own soul also), that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed" (see Luke 2:25-35).  Nevertheless, this is not a rebuke of His mother (nor even His brothers).  Rather it is a statement, as my study bible says, of where true relationship comes from and what constitutes family for Him.  Neither does it exclude His mother.  St. Augustine writes of Mary, "She did the Father’s will. It was this in her that the Lord magnified, not merely that her flesh gave birth to flesh.… When He said, 'Blessed are they who hear the Word of God and keep it,' He was in effect saying: 'My mother whom you have called blessed is blessed for the reason that she keeps the Word of God, not that the Word was made flesh in her and dwelt among us, but that she keeps the very Word of God through which she was made and which was made flesh in her'" (Tractate on John 10.3.2).  In other words, the honor He gives even His mother isn't merely of the flesh, but there's a higher and greater honor in those who love the will of God, and in that Mary is most blessed, as is affirmed here by Christ Himself.  How would our lives look if we gave this honor to one another -- if we honored in those around us the love of God?  It is a focus on the heart, an emphasis that elevates not a kind of coded snobbery of those whose faith is obvious or apparent.  Jesus' railing against religious hypocrisy sees us through that!  Instead, it is a kind of devotion to pure goodness, one that values true discernment, a love of the Good itself, that constitutes true relationship and relatedness to Christ, an internal honor that is in fact the substance of true family.  Let us consider what links us to Him in truth, what we elevate in our hearts, and to Whom we owe true obedience.  It is the most important question we answer, the way we need to find where we belong.