Who Is My Family?

Who Is My Family?

Mark 3:20-21, 31-35

June 21, 2020 • Mount Pleasant UMC

Downloadable Sermon Study Guide

Today is Father’s Day, and on this day and on Mother’s Day, we tend to focus on and think about that word “family.” We know, in this time and place, “family” means different things to different people. The “norm” of Mom, Dad and 2.5 kids is not a norm anymore; families come in all shapes and sizes. But whatever yours looks like, there are still some images that permeate any sort of family. Songwriter Drew Holcomb tried to capture some of those in a song called, appropriately enough, “Family,” and I’m not going to show you the whole thing, but take a listen to just a little bit of this and see if some of these images don’t resonate with you.

This morning, we’re wrapping up this short series on “Questions Jesus Asks.” And it has been a short series; we’ve barely scratched the surface on questions Jesus asked those who followed him. But my hope is that the way we’ve examined and discussed these questions will cause you to dig deeper into the questions when you come across them in the Gospels—questions like, “Who are my mother and my brothers?” Or, as we’re going to sort of rephrase it today, “Who is my family?” Now, family brings up all sorts of feelings, some good and some bad. I was sitting with a group this week where we were talking about challenges in our own extended families, and we came to the conclusion that we’re all a little bit dysfunctional. That’s true and it’s been true for all of human history. No family is perfect, not even yours, not even Jesus’. As we're going to see in this morning's passage, Jesus loved his earthly family but he also expanded the definition of what a family is. It’s a good story for this Father’s Day, even though there’s not an earthly Father in the story, because it reminds us that family is a lot bigger than most of us think.

A couple of things to realize about Mark’s Gospel right off the bat. The early church agrees with one voice that Mark was a companion of Peter and that this Gospel is based on Peter’s preaching and teaching. In other words, Mark is really the Gospel according to Simon Peter, Jesus’ closest friend. Beyond that, Mark is writing to a community in Rome during a time when Christians are under some level of persecution. Both Peter and the Apostle Paul will be killed in the first wave of persecution in Rome, and Mark then writes his Gospel as an encouragement to Christians to hang on during the difficult days. One scholar calls the Gospel of Mark a “pamphlet for hard times” (cf. Card, Mark: The Gospel of Passion, pgs. 18-24).

So, imagine yourself then, a Christian in late first-century Rome. Imagine that you have not been born into a Christian family and when you came to trust in Jesus Christ, your family pretty much disowned you. Because you would no longer worship the Roman gods and goddesses, because you would not believe in the emperor as divine, because you were not a part of one of the approved religions of the empire, you would be considered an “atheist” and a threat to the safety and security of the empire. Ironic, huh, that someone who believed in one God rather than the multitude of Roman gods would be considered an atheist. But that’s the way it was, and having faith in Jesus divided families all across the empire, not just in Rome itself (cf daSilva, A Week in the Life of Ephesus, pg. 135). So I believe part of why Mark tells this story is to encourage those who were in such situations. That’s not saying it’s not a true story, but we know from what John says at the end of his Gospel that there were a lot of stories about Jesus the Gospel writers could have chosen to tell. So the stories they chose to tell have a purpose, and Mark’s purpose in telling about Jesus’ struggles with family is to encourage those who are also finding difficulty in dealing with family.

So Jesus is in Capernaum, his “own town.” His hometown is Nazareth, where he grew up, but when he began his ministry, he relocated to Capernaum and, it seems, lived with Peter and his family when he’s in town. Capernaum makes sense as a base of operations; it’s right on the shore of the Sea of Galilee and therefore it’s in the middle of the northern Israel culture. At the same time, it’s a ways from Tiberias, the Roman government center in the area, so he would sort of be able to operate without a lot of oversight. So he’s there in Capernaum, probably in Peter’s house, and the word gets out that Jesus is home. When Jesus is around, crowds gather, and pretty soon he’s preaching and teaching and probably healing people. And word gets back to his family that he’s not even taking a lunch break. He’s not even stopping to eat. And his family’s assessment of Jesus is this: “He is out of his mind” (3:21). I would say, I would have to agree with them. Not taking time out to eat lunch is a serious problem. Pastor Rick and I share a mutual love for lunch. We might miss many things, but we rarely if ever miss lunch. So if I were in this story, I would probably be in the family camp: “He’s out of his mind!”

Now, I want you to think about this for a moment. This is not just that someone called Mary to turn Jesus in, to tattle on him. There were no cell phones, no easy way of communication. And Capernaum is at least a full day’s walk from Nazareth. So someone goes to tattle on Jesus; that’s a day’s trip. Then, assuming the family heads out right away, they walk from Nazareth to Capernaum. That’s another day. So by the time they arrive at Peter’s house, Jesus has been teaching, preaching or healing—entertaining people—for at least two days, probably more because in that time, the religious leaders from Jerusalem (3:22) have discovered he’s there and they’ve made a three-day trip north to accuse him of being possessed by the devil. That had to be fun conversation! So while Jesus is teaching and responding to the religious leaders, his mother and brothers arrive. Apparently the crowd is so dense that they cannot get in to see Jesus, so they send word in to Jesus to tell him they are there. Now, what would you expect to happen? When your mother arrives, you’re supposed to stop everything and attend to her, right? Respect and care for your parents, especially a widowed mother, was and is a high value in Judaism (Card 60-61). Mary no doubt expected Jesus would say a benediction, bring the church service to an end, come out to see her, and then she would talk some sense into him. Besides, if he willingly came out and went with them, it would save him from the embarrassment of being taken into custody by his mother (Card 60). So Mary likely starts the message moving forward from the back of the crowd: “Tell him his mother and brothers are here and they would like to see him.”

When word reaches the front of the crowd, and someone tells Jesus of this arrival, I wonder if Jesus paused in his teaching. I picture him thinking for a moment, then smiling, then turning to the crowd and saying this: “Who are my mother and brothers?” And I picture the crowd getting quiet and wondering what’s coming next. Has Jesus forgotten his family? Is he losing his mind after all? Have the hunger pangs gotten to him? After a moment he gestures to the crowd and says, “Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother” (3:33-34). And we don’t really get how shocking and how deeply offensive this was because we didn’t grow up in a first-century Jewish home where family was everything. The family bond was the most important thing in the world; most children lived near their parents into their adulthood, sometimes even staying in the same household as they married and began their own families. You didn’t move across the country to start your own career and your own life. Loyalty to the family was seen as evidence of your loyalty to God (cf. Wright, Mark for Everyone, pg. 39). It was bad enough Jesus had moved away from his hometown. Now, from the sounds of things, he has disowned his family. This is about as shocking and as heart-wrenching as it gets.

We can also look at it from Jesus’ point of view, because in this moment he must feel very alone. Sure, there are crowds around him, but we all know you can sometimes feel the most alone in the midst of a lot of people, especially when those people just want to be around you for what you can do for them. These crowds, we know, will dissipate when Jesus can no longer heal them, when he starts talking about the hard demands of following him. So the crowds are no comfort. And the religious leaders are no help. As I’ve said often, Jesus agrees with most of what the religious leaders believe, what they teach. What he argues with them about is the way they don’t live out what they teach. And now they are accusing him of being possessed by a demon. In that sort of situation, where even your professional colleagues are against you, many of us would retreat into the comfort and support of our families, but now Jesus finds that even his family thinks he is out of his mind. They’ve come to take him away, to rehabilitate him, to talk some sense into him…and make him eat lunch! So the two main groups Jesus should expect to be in his corner, the people of the faith and his family, call him demon possessed and insane (cf. Card 59-60). And in that setting, Jesus redefines the word “family.”

Jesus says, “Whoever does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother” (3:35). The scandal here, which we usually miss, is that Jesus is broadening the idea of family and placing a priority on spiritual family. “God is doing the unthinkable: he is starting a new family, a new holy people, and is doing so without regard for ordinary human bonds” (Wright 40). And the only requirement, if we can use that word, the only obligation for being part of this new family is to do the will of God. Notice that Jesus doesn’t say to the crowd, “You are my new family.” He seems to indicate that some there might be and some might not be. It’s not about showing up to hear a sermon from Jesus. It’s not about showing up at church or listening to a religious podcast. It’s not even about reading your Bible and praying every single day, though I think you should do that. No, Jesus’ answer to his own question here (one of the very few he answers) is this. Who is my family? The ones who do the will of God. That’s who belongs around Jesus’ Thanksgiving dinner table.

But here’s the problem we have this whole story (well, at least the problem I have): is Jesus here teaching salvation by works? In other words, are the only ones who “get into” the family the ones who do certain things, live out certain practices? You could tie this to Jesus’ famous parable of the last judgment, where the ones who are saved are the ones who served the “least of these” (cf. Matthew 25:40). But we know the whole of the New Testament affirms that we are saved not by what we do but by who we know. We are saved, made part of God’s family, by grace and not by works. You can’t do enough to earn your way into God’s kingdom; we have to rely on his work. So which is it? Is Jesus here teaching some form of earning your way into the family?

Or is it, possibly, more like this: if you’re part of the family, you’ll live like it. You’ll reflect the family image, you’ll live out the family name. You don’t do these things to get in, but when you’re part of Jesus’ family, you live in a certain way because that’s who you now are. In other words, it’s not that we do God’s will to become a child of God. We do God’s will because we are a child of God and we want to please him.

Of course, the challenge is that we so often get “doing God’s will” mixed up with a whole long list of do’s and don’ts. That path leads toward legalism and becoming Pharisees who spend all their time monitoring what others are doing. The sins we tend to become most concerned about are usually the ones we ourselves aren’t involved in! But Jesus defined “doing God’s will” in a way that is both simpler and incredibly more complex. When he was asked to summarize what God had taught their people, to wrap it into just a single commandment, this is what he said: “Love the Lord your God with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength…Love your neighbor as yourself. There is no commandment greater than these” (Mark 12:30-31). No commandment greater…than love. And why is that? Because if we just did that, if we just loved God and loved others, we wouldn’t have to keep track of everything else, all the do’s and the don’ts, all of the laws and the guidelines. It’s really that simple: love God and love others. It’s the question I’ve been asking off and on for months. Knowing God’s will and living into God’s will is a matter of approaching every situation with this question: what does love require? The will of God is that simple and that complicated. It’s just this: if what you are planning to do allows you to honor and love God as well as honor and love your neighbor, then it is within God’s will.

Let’s take a couple of examples. In Jesus’ day, family bonds were often also business bonds. In other words, family worked together, so as a son or daughter, your source of income might depend on the larger family. Families thus shared everything in common (cf. Wright 39). We know this to be true of at least some of Jesus’ disciples; earlier in Mark’s Gospel, we’re told Peter and Andrew were brothers in the fishing business together. James and John were also fishermen and in business with their father Zebedee (cf. Mark 1:16-20). (It’s possible both families were in business together.) This still happens today, of course, so imagine that your boss who is also your father asks you to do something illegal, something unethical, something that will help the business but could get you in a lot of legal trouble if it’s discovered. Maybe it’s doctoring the books or not paying taxes or not providing the customer everything they ordered or expected. Whatever the situation, it’s wrong and it’s illegal. And you’re told, “In this family, we support each other. We do what is expected of us.”

So what does love require? An emotional definition of love would say, “Well, of course, you love your earthly family by just doing what you’ve been asked to do.” But that’s not the kind of love Jesus is talking about. Jesus’ preferred word for “love” is agape. You likely know that word; it’s the kind of selfless love God has for us. It is lived out not by affirming what is wrong but by doing what is right, doing what brings life. Contrary to what our culture says, it’s not love to just let anyone do what they want. When my kids were little, there were a lot of times they wanted to do something that would have hurt them, and love required me to stop them, even though it made them mad. I don’t know of a single situation where doing the wrong thing brings life, where doing the wrong thing toward a neighbor is loving. If you choose to cheat a customer, for instance, that’s treating that customer as a commodity, as something and someone less than a person made in the image of God. You can’t love a commodity. You can only love a child of God. You might “help the family” in the short term, but in the long term you’ve done damage to both the family and the customer. So what does love require? It may require, as Jesus seems to do here, understanding that your calling to do the will of God is different from just doing what your biological family tells you to do.

But let’s broaden that thought a bit and talk for a moment about the tension that is all around us right now, the tension brought out again by the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Let’s ask the question again: what does love require when it comes to racism? I’ll just tell you what it requires of me at this point in my life. It requires me to open my eyes and my heart to see my family as bigger than the three people that live in my house, or the four hundred people that call Mount Pleasant home. My family, as Jesus would define it, includes all races, creeds and colors, all of those who claim the name of Christian and who seek to do the will of God—even if they’re doing it in a way I don’t like or don’t understand. It’s been hard for me these last few weeks, as I’ve listened to people talk about their hurt and their frustration and the ways they have been mistreated not to say, “Yeah, but…” I’ve had to bite my tongue more than a little bit and remember it’s not about me. I can tell you, though, that out of the five years I’ve been here, in the last three weeks I’ve seen more movement among the body of Christ than ever before in trying to actually talk to one another across what we call racial lines. That’s a good thing, because if we don’t know each other and if we don’t listen to each other, how are we ever going to be able to love one another? As one of my friends put it on social media, we’re going to spend eternity together, we might as well get started learning to love each other right now.

In the summer of 1988, when Cathy and I worked in inner-city Chicago as part of a multi-racial ministry project, we served most of our time at a church called Rock of Our Salvation Evangelical Free Church. Because that’s a mouthful, most of the time it was called Rock Church. Rock Church was pastored by Raleigh Washington, who went on later to work with PromiseKeepers. His partner in ministry was Glenn Kehrein. Raleigh was black; Glenn was white. And in those two men, we got a chance as a team to learn how easy it is to misunderstand each other and how hard it is to work through those misunderstandings—but that it is possible. Raleigh and Glenn didn’t always agree; they worked at communication. The inter-racial church did, too. Their Sunday evenings were usually given over to what they called “meetings.” One week would be the “Chocolate Meeting” (this was their terminology) and another week was given to the “Vanilla Meeting.” Then, the third week, they would have a “Fudge Ripple Meeting,” and they would work at cross-racial understanding because they knew, regardless of what they disagreed on, they were all set on doing the will of God, loving one another and loving their neighborhood. They were family. I wonder what might happen if the church—big C church—stepped into the controversies of our day, demonstrating and modeling what love requires. How might the family—the family of God—make a real difference by loving God and loving others?

What does love require? I believe that single question may be the key to knowing and doing the will of God, and to, as Jesus puts it, becoming part of his family. I’m trying to picture some of the original readers of this Gospel, maybe having been turned out on the street by their biological family but taken in by the church, and they come to this story of Jesus being, at least for a time, misunderstood and even rejected by his family (cf. Perkins, “The Gospel of Mark,” New Interpreter’s Bible, Vol. VIII, pg. 567). That had to be a great encouragement to them as they wrestled with this question—who is my family? My family is whoever does God’s will, whoever is united with me in bringing the kingdom of God to earth as it is in heaven (cf. Matthew 6:10). Just going to church together doesn’t make us family. Even claiming in the name of Christian doesn’t make us family. Our family, our great big beautiful family, is made up of all those who respond in gratitude to God by loving him and loving others. That’s who my family is. That’s who your family is.

So, here’s a thought and something you can do to bless another person even in these days of social distancing. Grab your cell phone, right now, whether you’re in the worship center here or watching online, and think of someone who is part of this great big beautiful family for you, someone maybe whom you would never have expected to encourage you so much in pointing you toward Jesus and helping you live the will of God. When you have that person in mind, I want you to send them a quick text, right now. Just say something simple like, “Thanks for being my family.” You can explain it later, but that text just might be the word of encouragement they need today to keep doing the will of God, to keep living the faith, to keep loving God and loving others. So I’m going to give you a moment to send that text, and then we’re going to pray. And, by the way, to all of you, gathered here and there this morning: thanks for being my family.