Mark 3:31-35
“Family”
April 29, 2012 - Fourth Sunday of Easter

         “Mom, I love God more than I love you.” That’s what the son of my mother’s friend Julie said to her. I mentioned them last week and how that young man was caught up in one of the rigid, fringe “Jesus people” cults that proliferated in the 1970s. That flat, direct assertion of a deeper love for God than for his own mother took her by surprise. Though as a Christian she had to acknowledge its rightness, she felt wounded anyway.

         Really paying attention to what Jesus says often takes us by surprise. And sometimes it is painful, perhaps no more so than when we actually listen to what He says about family. We Christians often give out the impression that Jesus is “pro-family” and that He wants nothing more than for people to be faithful husbands and wives, devoted fathers and mothers, respectful, obedient sons and daughters, and loving brothers and sisters. Yet in our text this morning Jesus takes a pretty harsh approach to His own family.

         As we come to Mark 3:31 we come to the conclusion of a narrative that began with our text last week. Remember? We started last time with Jesus and His disciples in the house in Capernaum surrounded by a crowd so thick they couldn’t even find a way to eat. Then in verse 21 we heard that Jesus’ family had come to “take charge” of Him because they thought He was out of His mind. But Mark moved on to tell us about what the scribes said about Jesus’ miracles. Now, with verse 31, Jesus’ family comes back into the story.

         Mark likes this literary technique. You could call it a “sandwich.” He starts telling you one story, interrupts it with another story, then brings you back to finish off the first story. It’s the same thing we will see ater in chapter 5 where he starts telling us about how Jesus raised a little girl from the dead, but before he gets to the actual raising of the girl tells how Jesus healed a woman who had been bleeding for twelve years. One story gets sandwiched between two pieces of another story.

         So this week we get the second and larger piece of how Jesus’ family tried to get Him to come home and come to His senses. Verse 21 has them setting out. Verse 31 gives us their arrival. Standing outside the crowded house, they sent a message in to Jesus. Maybe  someone squeezed through the crowd to let Jesus know His family was there. But verse 32 says that the crowd sitting closely around Jesus told Him, “Your mother and brothers are outside looking for you.” I think the message was actually relayed along, telephone chain style, until it got to those sitting most closely.

         Now the natural thing you would expect is for Jesus to stand and ask the crowd to pull back so either His family could get in the house or so He could go out to them. But He left them standing out there and turned to the crowd and asked the question in verse 33, “Who are my mother and my brothers?” He’s not even willing to acknowledge them.

         Is Jesus family friendly? Is He a friend of the family? We might wonder sometimes. It’s not just this text. In Luke 12:52-43 He says that His coming would divide families, father against son, daughter against mother, and so on. And in Luke 14:25, He teaches that the price of following Him is to hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters. If you don’t do that, you can’t be His disciple. My mom’s friend Julie got off easy. Her son just said he loved her less than Jesus.

         A number of years ago, as Veggie Tales were just ramping up, one song got some criticism from parents. One of their catchiest tunes was “The Bunny Song.” In a wild retelling of the three young men in the fiery furnace from Daniel, “Rack, Shack and Benny” are commanded to bow down to a giant chocolate bunny and sing Mr. Nezzer’s song which went, “The bunny, the bunny, whoa I love the bunny…” The problem was that it went on, “I don’t love my mom and I don’t love my dad, I just love the bunny.” I remember my wife Beth, who was laughing and singing along because she loves her chocolate Easter bunnies, suddenly going quiet and saying “I don’t like that part.”

         It wasn’t too long until the original video was replaced with a version containing a new “improved” bunny song that talked about not eating soup and bread instead of not loving Mom and Dad. Yet one wonders if you replaced the word “bunny” with “Jesus” in the original song if it would be all that different from the attitude reflected in our text or in those passages from Luke. Is Jesus really a friend to the family, even to His own family?

         Well it’s easy enough to go and find some texts on the other side of the fence that show Jesus speaking positively about family. One of them is a few verses from Matthew 19:4-6 where Jesus criticizes the practice of easy divorce and affirms that marriage was instituted by God in creation and that husband and wife are to be “one flesh.” And we can see Jesus’ attitude toward His mother was not always distant. Even as He was hanging on the Cross in John 19:26 and 27, He appointed a disciple to care for her.

         So what’s going on here? Why won’t Jesus even go out and say hello to His mother and brothers? Why isn’t He friendly to His family all the time? What’s all this business about followers of Jesus hating their families?

         The problem is we’ve put the question backward. It’s not a matter of whether Jesus is friendly to the family. It’s whether the family is friendly to Jesus. The Lord didn’t leave His family standing around outside when they were bringing Him sandwiches and encouragement to keep doing the work of God. No, He ignored them because they were ignoring God’s claim on Him. They wanted to drag Him away from doing what God wanted.

         Jesus was teaching that what we sometimes learn by painful experience in natural families is also true of God and our relationship to Him. You can’t presume that a simple, natural blood relationship will automatically create a bond of genuine trust and love.

         We’ve all heard stories of adopted children who go looking for the birth parents. But it’s not often the happy reunion you see on Oprah. A child may find a biological parent only to discover no real connection, no depth of love that just springs up because some genes are shared. The Holt International web site says that many adopted children who meet their birth family realize that their “real” parents were the ones who adopted them.

         That’s because family is as family does, to use an old phrase. “Real” family is the family that loves and cares for each other, that understands and accepts one another, regardless of what the genetic connection is. That’s why I can say that when I got married my father-in-law became more of a “dad” to me than my own biological father had ever been. And I can say the same thing about Ted and Chuck and Charles, Christian men who befriended and helped me as I was growing up.

         Jesus felt the same way about His family. At that moment, with His mother and brothers thinking He was insane, thinking that they needed to physically restrain Him and drag Him home to recover His sanity, He looked around at the men and women sitting and listening and learning from Him and said what we read in verse 34, “Here are my mother and my brothers!” In other words, “Here’s my real family.”

         For us it means that we can’t presume on a natural relationship with Jesus, with God, anymore than we can on a natural, biological relationship with members of our own immediate family. What matters is whether those natural connections grow into genuine friendship and feeling and devotion to each other.

         It’s an old saying in Christian circles that “God has no grandchildren.” You are not a child of God just because your mother or father was a Christian and a child of God. There’s no genetic connection to Jesus. You are not born into His family. Jesus said in John 3, “You must be born again.” It’s that new birth, that new life of genuine love and devotion to Jesus Christ that makes you part of His family. You may grow into that new life in a Christian home, sometimes so well that you can’t even remember a time when you didn’t know and love Jesus. But it’s not automatic. Faith is not passed on like DNA.

         In verse 35, Jesus adds, “Whoever does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother.” There’s another caution for us about both family and spiritual connections. The Bible never teaches, Jesus never teaches, that all you need to do is believe a few things in order to be right with God. Genuine faith is always connected with authentic behavior, with what we do. Real family is not people who just say they love you. Real family are those who regularly and constantly demonstrate their love in the things they do.

         Husbands and wives, parents and kids, it’s important to say that you love each other. It definitely needs to be expressed. But it’s even more important to demonstrate that love in the way you treat and care for one another. Help with the dishes or a listening ear when work is tough or forgiveness for a mistake all mean a whole lot more than a six-dollar greeting card with mushy words on Valentine’s Day. The card’s not bad; it’s just useless without the other stuff to back it up.

         Likewise, real faith and love for Jesus is more than just singing a praise song or praying the “sinner’s prayer.” It’s just what He says here, doing the will of God, obeying the teachings of Jesus, learning to show genuine love to both God and others. Some of you have studied the letter of James and probably remember that he said in chapter 2 verse 18, “I will show you my faith by what I do.” That’s what Jesus means here in Mark 3:35.

         We heard it also today in our reading from I John 3:18, “Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth.” Speaking to us as family, as children, John taught us what it means to be genuine children of God, genuine members of Jesus’ family. Again, that’s what Jesus was saying there when He sounds so harsh to members of His biological family.

         Jesus’ own family finally came around. We know for sure at least that Mary His mother was there at the Cross and was honored by the first Christians for her faith. We know that one of His brothers, James, became the leader of the first church in Jerusalem. Something changed for them. They no longer thought their son and brother was a crazy man. They came to believe with the other disciples that He is the Son of God. And at that point then, the natural family of Jesus joined His supernatural family, His real family.

         To repeat, then, the question is not whether Jesus is friendly to family, it’s whether a family is friendly to Jesus. Sometimes we come to Jesus full of need. We come to Him because we hope He will love our family, help them, heal them. But that’s not the place to start. The place to start is by doing those things by which our family will come to know and love Jesus. It’s only then that He can help us and heal our relationships.

         Jesus was at the center of that crowded house and His mother and brothers stood outside because at that point in their lives they didn’t understand, they couldn’t listen to Him and do what He taught. They wanted to pull Him out, take Him from the center and bring Him where they were. But Jesus stayed where He was, where He belonged, in the very center of the real family, the real children of God.

         Any human family, any spiritual family like this church, only grows and does well when we let Jesus stay at the center of it all. If we try to pull Him out of the middle of things, push Him off to the side of what we are doing, then it all falls apart and we are no longer His real children, no longer the true family of God.

         That’s why, in all our good works, in reaching out to homeless people, to young people caught in sex slavery, to unborn babies, to people in other countries we go to help, we keep Jesus at the center of what we are doing. If it’s not about Him, if we leave Him standing outside the house, then there’s no real faith here, no real family of God.

         When Jesus’ mother and brother finally saw Jesus clearly they came into that circle where He was the center. They gave up their own need to be in control of Him and accepted His will for their lives. They quit trying to drag Him back to be a member of their family and instead joined His real family.

         That’s what I hope you will aim for with your own life. Don’t stand around on the outside trying to get Jesus to come out and be what you want Him to be. Go deeper into the circle, the family around Jesus, and become what He wants you to be.

         There’s a last little bit of good news in this text. Notice that when Jesus speaks those words in verse 35 about those who do God’s will being His family, He adds something. In verses 32 and 33 and 34 we’ve heard about His “mother and brothers.” Now He says that “Whoever does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother.” It’s a deliberate and intentional change to say that His family is open to every human being. Your gender doesn’t give you extra privileges in Jesus’ family. Both men and women are welcomed into that circle of relationship. Jesus has brothers and sisters in the family of God.

         Which all means that there is a place for you in Jesus’ family. His family is like one of those incredibly welcoming and hospitable homes some of you experienced growing up. You know, it was the house on the street where the kids’ friends were always welcome to come and play; where when supper time rolled around those same friends were invited to stay and eat; where you almost felt like you had a second set of parents. That’s the kind of family Jesus means His people, His Church to be.

         You have a home here. Anyone does. You have a place in Jesus’ family. It doesn’t matter what you’ve done or what you’ve been. You may have a loving family of your own. Well then, here you have a bigger one. You may feel totally alone in this world. Well then, here you have the family you don’t have otherwise. It’s very simple. Will you love and trust Jesus and give your life to doing His will? Then you’re in. You’re not standing around outside anymore. You are part of the family. Welcome!

         Amen.

         Valley Covenant Church
         Eugene/Springfield, Oregon
         Copyright © 2012 by Stephen S. Bilynskyj