Mark 3:20-35
Dear Friends, Today we renew our journey with Jesus in the gospel of Mark. For the next twenty three weeks we will have the privilege of sharing the Jesus of Mark as a guide for the struggles, joys and uncertainty of our lives.In today’s Gospel the religious leaders and his family are in conflict with Jesus. They both experience a misunderstanding and a misrepresentation of Jesus’ message. Even though they are very different, they do, however, share a common goal. They see a need to transform Jesus to fit their image of who they think Jesus should be. They have been the predecessors of this frequent endeavor down through Christian history. There are few of us who do not continually try to make Jesus in our image. We are relentless in making Jesus a more comfortable fit. We consistently like to take the sting out of his message. We never are quite up to his challenge and his persistent effort to tear down our fences of false security and exclusion. This is how we end up with the Gospel of Prosperity or a Jesus locked into the almost tribal limits of a culture or ethnic group. There are seemingly endless falsehoods trying to amend the Jesus of the Gospels to a less demanding model.
Mark is making another important point in highlighting the family’s problem with Jesus. Often times, control by one’s closest family members is a major hindrance to an individual’s choice for the Kingdom. Frequently, this family pressure can be can be as powerful as the captivity of the demon over human freedom.
In the world of Jesus’ time, people felt the demons were in charge. The evil spirits’ control of the world was seen in sickness and sin, oppression and poverty, natural disasters and political domination. Jesus’ exorcisms were a clear sign that the dominion of Satan was being destroyed by the Strong Man who was Jesus. All of Jesus’ exorcisms were signs of his victory over the demons, a victory of liberation from all manner of evil. This liberation was an invitation to a new future filled with hope. All the signs pointed to the breakthrough of God’s new day. The Kingdom of God was, indeed, at hand.
The Scribes responded with a rigidity and childish argument easily refuted by Jesus. Their own opinion and mindset was their measure of reality. They had no room in their mentality for Jesus’ deeds of healing and casting out of the demonic forces. They were obstinate. They would not be changed by reality based facts
Their great sin was to identify the power of God’s Spirit in Jesus’ action against the demons as the actual power of the demons. This is the rejection of the Holy Spirit and the total distortion of Jesus.
The family had another problem. They felt Jesus was out of his mind. The local boy from Nazareth was shattering all kinds of traditions and religious practices. Jesus had become a controversial figure challenging all the authorities, big and small. He was tearing down barriers and opening up to all manner of strange religious activity.
The family hoped to bring him home and talk some sense into him. They wanted none of his new changes. The simple the traditional way of Nazareth was quite sufficient.
Jesus responded to his family as he did to all of Israel waiting for the Messiah. He declared that his beliefs were not rooted in family ties or unbending religious traditions. His true family were those who accepted his message of good news and the coming Kingdom. These were the people who transcended the natural bonds and now walked in the new light and truth of his Father’s Kingdom. The accepted normal would never be the same.
Today we face the same challenge as the religious leaders and his relatives from Nazareth. Our task is to receive Jesus on his terms. We need to live outside the bubble of an inflexible doctrine and rigid traditions. Our call is to embrace the ever-expanding boundaries of his message of inclusion. We need to recognize the uncertainty that comes with Jesus’ call. It is only a trusting faith that guides one in the darkness that opens the way in the footsteps of Jesus. This obscurity only fades into light when we are faithful in joining Jesus on the road to Jerusalem. Becoming part of Jesus new family means we face the daily task of finding our new brothers and sisters in those who Jesus calls “the least of my brothers.” (Mt. 25: 40) Our task is to be able to hear Jesus call us mother, brother and sister in the midst of life’s ever troubling challenges to our faith and search for God.
