Perspectives - Mark 3:31-35

Mark 3:31-35 - "Then his mother and his brothers came; and standing outside, they sent to him and called him. A crowd was sitting around him; and they said to him, “Your mother and your brothers and sisters are outside, asking for you.” And he replied, “Who are my mother and my brothers?” And looking at those who sat around him, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.”

If a relationship with God the Father is the most important relationship someone can have, it makes sense that those who are also sons of God the Father are those that you will align yourself with, share your life with, be accountable to, and love with concrete loyalty and sacrifice.

For whom would this redrawing of the boundary of family be comforting news? For whom would it be unwelcome?

This would be comforting for those who have known a broken family, in which instead of love and security, there was strife and anger and hurt; who know that even family, who are supposed to be the ones to love and protect you, can let you down. For those even with a good family background, who know their sinfulness, their tendencies to want to indulge in the coziness and comfort of just a nuclear family, who know that even these good things and relationships can become a curse and idol when not submitted under the lordship of Christ, and who know that they need the church, people to be accountable to with their struggles, so that they could even build up their family to honor and glorify God in the way that it was meant to by being truly a place of love and peace and forgiveness, through which an open home and family could also draw others to experience the love of God – they would also welcome this.

The Mark passage would be unwelcome news for those who want to make their own circle of their nuclear family the center of their lives, even at the expense of doing God’s will and opening up their lives to be in open community with those outside just their own nuclear family.

Truly Jesus is talking about a worldly perspective verses a Christ-centered perspective. Jesus is not against his family because we see Jesus take care of his mother at the cross. Yet, in this passage his family is trying to help him by giving him advice to be more politically correct. The reality is that in the passage as a whole, Jesus is the new "Heavenly" correct. Having that perspective changes actions, loyalties, responses, and eternal destinations...

More on this to come. You know I love ya, Don

The Holy Bible : New Revised Standard Version. 1989 (Mk 3:31–4:1). Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers.