6/10/18 “Jesus and the Meaning of Family” by Nancy Petty
Text: Mark 3:20-35
Finally, I have figured out the one thing I have in common with Jesus. I get called crazy at least once a day by someone. Okay, maybe that’s an overstatement but it does happen often. Karla will often say to one of my outrageous ideas or comments, “You are out of your mind. But I love you.” My colleagues, too, will often label my ideas a bit crazy thus imply that I am a bit out of my mind. My Imam colleague over at Duke begins every text he sends me with: to my crazy Baptist preacher friend. My family definitely thinks I’m crazy most of the time. And Anne Dahle never misses an opportunity to tell me such. So I’m kind of used to being called crazy or labeled out of my mind. Most of the time, though, my craziness is not for virtuous reasons, rather just outlandish ideas about what I think the church or someone else or I should be doing. In most all of the contexts in which I am seen as being crazy or out of my mind people are reacting in jest to some wild or peculiar or unconventional idea I have about something—some idea that falls outside a predetermined socially or religious norm. They don’t think I’m literally out of my mind. Or I don’t think so. Now this is where you join your voices in a beautiful chorus saying, “No, Nancy we don’t think you are crazy or out of your mind.”
In our gospel reading this week a similar dynamic is happening but for more worthy and righteous reasons than my craziness. Our narrative today follows last week’s reading where Jesus challenges the Pharisees’ thinking on what it means to follow the law on the Sabbath. As the Herodians plotted against Jesus and how to destroy him at the end of our text last week, this week we pick up the story as Jesus sets out again on his mission of healing people and taking the good news of liberation and freedom to all the people. Mark tells us that after healing many, Jesus goes up the mountain and calls to him his disciples where he blesses them with authority, sending them forth to proclaim the message and heal those who need healing. Next, he heads home and Mark tells us that when he gets home there was such a crowd gathered that he could hardly move, not even to get something to eat. And this is where the story gets very interesting but without giving us much detail.
The next thing we are told in Mark’s narrative is that when his family heard that he was back home they, in Mark’s words, “went out to restrain him, for people were saying, ‘He has gone out of his mind.’” Mark records that even the scribes—the learned, smart, those that could interpret the law people—came down from the big city, Jerusalem, and said, “He has Beelzebul.” Beelzebul! Sounds like a horrible disease or disorder to me. But Beelzebul is a name derived from a Philistine god, and later adopted by some Abrahamic religions as a major demon. The name is associated with the Canaanite god Baal. In theological sources, predominately Christian, Beelzebul is sometimes another name for the Devil. The Dictionnaire Infernal describes Beelzebul as a being capable of flying, known as the “Lord of the Flyers,” or “Lord of the Flies.”
Anyway, the story reads that the people thought Jesus had gone crazy, out of his mind, some even believed him to be demon possessed—including his mother and brothers. They were so worried about him that they came to get him, presumably to take him home and get him some help. Mark doesn’t give us the transition from being on the mountain with his disciples and arriving in his hometown. But whatever transpired in that transition, it appears that something happened to Jesus that gave the people great concern for his well- being. At the very least, things had gotten out of control, chaotic, and messy.
In response, Jesus began to speak to them in a parable. The parable itself is quite strange, I will admit. And the best I can make out of it without getting into all the Satan and divided kingdom and blasphemy parts is that Jesus was trying to communicate to the people that when you are doing the work of God and the work of the Spirit there will always be those who think you are crazy and a little bit out of your mind. Because the work of God and the work of the Spirit is wild and freeing and messy; it is inclusive and outside the bounds of predetermined socially and religiously accepted norms. It is of a radical hospitality and radical love and inclusive relationships and when we follow God’s leading and God’s Spirit the chances of being seen as crazy or out of our minds is very high. I know we don’t like to think that way. We like to be seen as put together, intellectually astute, proper in our behavior, at most coloring slightly outside the lines. But that is not God nor God’s Spirit. It is not how God’s radical love and hospitality and inclusion works. There is no other way to say it. You can’t box God in with prescribed norms or expectations. You can’t define God’s love or God’s family by boundaries and litmus tests and rules. God, by God’s own nature, is freeing, mysterious, surprising, and unbounded. The power of God’s inclusive and radical love breaks through our walls of division and steps over our lines drawn in the sand. Bishop Curry said it to the world recently when he spoke so passionately and eloquently of the power of love—of God’s love—to change us and transform us into people who might seem a little crazy and out of our minds. He said:
Now someone once said that Jesus began the most revolutionary movement in all of human history, a movement grounded in the unconditional love of God for the world. A movement mandating people to live that love. And in so doing, to change not only their lives but the very life of the world itself.
I’m talking about some power, real power. Power to change the world. If you don’t believe me, well, there were some old slaves in America’s antebellum south who explained the dynamic power of love and why it has the power to transform. They explained it this way. They sang a spiritual, even in the midst of their captivity, it’s one that says there’s a balm in Gilead. A healing balm, something that can make things right.
There is a balm in Gilead to make the wounded whole. There is a balm in Gilead to heal the sin-sick soul. One of the stanzas actually explains why: they said, If you cannot preach like Peter and you cannot pray like Paul, you just tell the love of Jesus how he died to save us all. Oh that’s the balm in Gilead. This way of love is the way of life. They got it, he died to save us all. He didn’t die for anything he could get out of it. Jesus did not get an honorary doctorate for dying. He wasn’t getting anything out of it. He gave up his life, he sacrificed his life for the good of the others, for the good of the other, for the well-being of the world. For us, that’s what love is.
Love is not selfish and self-centered. Love can be sacrificial. And in so doing, becomes redemptive, and that way of unselfish, sacrificial, redemptive love, changes lives. And it can change this world. If you don’t believe me, just stop and think or imagine. Think and imagine, well, think and imagine a world where love is the way. Imagine our homes and families when love is the way. Imagine neighborhoods and communities where love is the way. Imagine governments and nations where love is the way. Imagine business and commerce when love is the way. Imagine this tired old world when love is the way, unselfish, sacrificial redemptive. When love is the way, then no child will go to bed hungry in this world ever again. When love is the way, we will let justice roll down like a mighty stream and righteousness like an ever-flowing brook. When love is the way, poverty will become history. When love is the way, the earth will be a sanctuary. When love is the way, we will lay down our swords and shields down, down by the riverside to study war no more. When love is the way, there’s plenty of good room, plenty good room, for all of God’s children. Because when love is the way, we actually treat each other, well, like we are actually family.
And that brings me to the central message of Mark 3:20-35: the meaning of family, Jesus says, is when we see all people as family and we love all people as family. It is easy to read this passage and get the sense that Jesus was dismissing his family by not seeing them or going with them when he says, “‘Who are my mother and brothers?’ And looking around 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.’” Jesus is saying we are all family to one another when we yield to the power of love—God’s love. Mark 3:20-35 was a teaching moment for Jesus; not a moment of rejecting his mother or his brothers. For as Bishop Curry taught us:
When love is the way, there’s plenty of good room, plenty good room, for all of God’s children. Because when love is the way, we actually treat each other, well, like we are actually family. When love is the way, we know that God is the source of us all and we are brothers and sisters, children of God. My brothers and sisters, that’s a new heaven, a new earth, a new world, a new human family.
Jesus was teaching about a new human family—a family where all people are our sisters and brothers and mothers and fathers.
Some commentators want to paint a picture of this text as being about Jesus having conflict with his family. And maybe he was. There are certainly places in the biblical story other than this one that would indicate tension between Jesus and his family, especially his brothers. And it is also true, we don’t like to think of strife within the holy family. Even Christian tradition has had a difficult time reckoning with the idea of family discord between Jesus and his kin. Consider this as evidence.
• The King James Version totally removes Jesus’ family from this part of the scene, saying: “And when his friends heard of it, they went out to lay hold on him: for they said, ‘He is beside himself.’”
• The authors of the gospels according to Matthew and Luke, whose books were produced after the gospel of Mark and who included scenes similar to Mark 3:20-35, omitted from their narratives any suggestion that Jesus’ family thought he was crazy.
And so, in saying that I don’t believe this text is about tension or conflict between Jesus and his family I’m not saying that there wasn’t ever conflict within the holy family. Certainly, if they were anything like the rest of us, and I believe they were, then there was conflict and strife and disagreement and even crazy-making. But I will say again, I don’t think that is what is going on in this text.
Jesus was simply doing what he had been doing: he was teaching about a larger family, God’s family. He was teaching what he always taught: God’s love expands the family, it includes those that are often excluded. Jesus was teaching about a new kind of family that crossed the boundaries of social and religious norms. He was teaching that family isn’t about blood or tribes or clans or religious denominations or anything else that puts boundaries around who belongs or doesn’t belong to God and God’s love. And for this, simply this, he was seen as crazy, out of his mind.
So as one writer suggested, maybe the question isn’t, “Why is Jesus seen as being out of his mind?” But instead should be, “Why are more people not saying we are out of our minds?” “Why, that is, aren’t we pushing the boundaries of what’s socially and religiously acceptable in order to [bring more folks into God’s family—our Pullen family] with the always surprising, often upsetting, unimaginably gracious, and ridiculously inclusive love of Jesus? (David Lose, Working Preacher)
Jesus and the meaning of family point to one fundamental faith teaching: we are called, no we are mandated, to keep widening the circle of who is invited into God’s family. We are mandated to push the boundaries of inclusion until there are no boundaries when it comes to God’s family and God’s love. We are to bust down walls of division that keeps us safe in our little clicks and clusters and create and nurture a new human family where all are welcome. We need to be doing all we can to give people a reason to say we are out of our minds here at Pullen Church. I have often wondered if we should have as our practice each time we gather for worship to say together, not the words of scripture, but the words of the poet Edwin Markham:
He drew a circle that shut me out,
Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.
But love and I had the wit to win,
We drew a circle that took him,
[that took her, that took them] in.
That seems to sum up the teaching of Jesus and the meaning of family. May it be so here in this place!
