Mark 3:31-35
Then Jesus’ mother and brothers arrived. Standing outside, they sent someone in to call him. A crowd was sitting around him, and they told him, “Your mother and brothers are outside looking for you.”
“Who are my mother and my brothers?” he asked.
Then he looked at those seated in a circle around him and said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother.”
Deuteronomy 33:8-9
About Levi he said: “Your Thummim and Urim belong to the man you favoured. You tested him at Massah; you contended with him at the waters of Meribah. 9He said of his father and mother, ‘I have no regard for them.’ He did not recognise his brothers or acknowledge his own children, but he watched over your word and guarded your covenant.
Now, you probably know that I'm a big fan of words. I'm a philologist, if you know that word, somebody who loves words. Tolkien always called himself a philologist, so I'd like to follow in his footsteps. And there's one word we think about particularly today, and that's the word ‘proper’. And I mean it in the sense of what's decent, what's fitting, what's appropriate. You know, that's a proper thing to do or an improper thing to do.
Here's one definition of it. Proper means following the established standards of behaviour or manners, correct or decorous. And as British people, we have a strong sense of propriety, don't we? What's proper and what's improper. And we especially notice this when we go abroad, perhaps to somewhere like America, because in the UK, it's not generally considered proper to start talking to a stranger you've never met before next to you on the bus in a loud voice. But in America, that's obviously fine.
We probably also raise our eyebrows if somebody were to come into church wearing shorts and a T-shirt, that's not considered terribly proper either, and it’s definitely not at all proper to slander one's own family in public.
And in Jesus' day, there were similar standards of what counted as ‘proper’ behaviour. We just heard the Gospel reading from Mark chapter 3. And earlier on in that chapter, we are told that Jesus had appointed twelve apostles, or to use the Aramaic word, shlikhe. And we hear that when Jesus' family heard this, that Jesus had appointed apostles or shlikhe, they went out to seize him, for they were saying he's out of his mind.
And we think, so what? I mean, of course, Jesus appointed twelve apostles. We all know that from Sunday school. But here's the thing. This Aramaic word shlikha was, in that culture, an official emissary. And only kings or God could appoint such emissaries. So, imagine if you heard that I was appointing various people in the benefice as my cabinet ministers and sending them off to London to speak to various ambassadors from places across the world. Your reaction would probably be this, it's improper for a vicar to appoint cabinet ministers.
The only explanation would be that Oliver's gone insane. And this is exactly what Mary and Jesus's brothers were thinking. More than that, this arrogant assumption of the position of a king or even God himself was not only insane but deeply humiliating for them as a family. In a culture where what one member of the family did affected the whole family much more than it does today, this was disastrous.
So that's why they intended to seize him. In other words, to forcibly physically grab him, remove him, take him home and strap him down till he snaps out of it. The problem for Jesus' family is that they can't find him, and in our reading they finally catch up with him.
But Jesus is once more causing family embarrassment by doing something improper. He's sat there debating with the religious leaders, the Pharisees. And so, Jesus's family do what would be considered the proper thing twice. They do it in two ways; first, they refuse to show the kind of impropriety that Jesus showed by barging in and arguing with the Pharisees, they do the proper thing and wait outside. I don't know if you noticed that. They didn't come in. They waited outside and sent a message in. And they also did the proper thing by saying, “Jesus, please calmly come outside so he can take you home and talk you out of this insanity.” Because the proper thing to do in those days would have been to put your family first.
And then in Jesus's response to them, we see profound genius. Rather than just saying, n”o, I won't come”. He reframes the whole situation. He quietly acknowledges the right thing to do is to put your family first. But Jesus asks, “but who is my family? Who are my mother and my brothers and my sisters?” And he gives them this answer. Looking at his followers, he says, “here are my brothers and my mother and my sisters. For whoever does the will of God, he is my brother and sister and mother.”
Jesus is teaching us that following him means not disobeying your family but reprioritizing one's life so that belonging to God's family is more important even than human family ties and when they conflict one must always do the will of God rather than what family or society expects of you and says is proper. There are a number of important takeaways from this incident, and the first one is an interesting one, that is the nature of Jesus' attitude towards his earthly human biological family. Jesus is at pains to say, he does it several times in the gospels ,that there's nothing special about them just because they're related to him.
Now one of the main arguments for the elevation of the importance of the Virgin Mary is not that the Bible teaches it, but that it's only proper, it's appropriate, it's fitting that Jesus would want his own mother to be honoured and adored. But hopefully you see the problem here. The whole purpose of the passage we're looking at is to cut through what seems humanly proper. What makes Mary special is not that she's Jesus's mother, as if he thinks of her in kind of Southern Italian terms, you know, what a mama says, that's the go. No, Jesus says several times that what counts is obedience to God.
And so the subtext here is that Mary is the prime example of that. She is to be honoured, not just because she's Jesus's biological mother, but because of her amazing obedience. Further proof of this fact is that two of Jesus's brothers, James and Jude, wrote books of the New Testament. But in neither case do they say, “you need to listen to me because don't you know who I am? I'm Jesus's brother.” In fact, quite the opposite. They seem slightly embarrassed about the fact. James never mentions it and Jude says it only once. So that's the first takeaway, Jesus' interesting view of his own family.
The second important takeaway here is that God is no respecter of persons. Jesus' family thought they had power over him by virtue of their family credentials, that the propriety of family obedience was a kind of leverage that they had so they could get him to do what they wanted. But Jesus refused to be leveraged in such a way. And we fall into the same trap if we think certain people somehow are more likely to have leverage with God by virtue of their position.
I often have people say to me, oh, Vicar, can you say a special prayer for me? As if God's more likely to listen to me because I wear a dog collar. And of course, I love to pray for people. I'll gladly pray for them. but with the qualification that a prayer from that person would do just as well. So, the second thing to take away is that we mustn't think that certain people have leverage over God or can put in a good word for him by nature of their position.
And the third important takeaway here is that the rules and expectations of Jesus's kingdom often conflict with the rules and expectations of the world. What our society says is proper and improper is not always what Jesus says on the matter. Is it proper, for example, to be extremely convinced of your own religious views and to want other people to agree with you, to talk about it a lot in public?
Our culture would say that such an attitude is improper, it's arrogant, it's imposing. It says we have no problem with you believing those things, but don't try and voice them on us. Keep them to yourself. And the problem is that Jesus, as well as his apostles, and as well as all the great Christians over the years, have done exactly this. They've been extremely convinced of their own religious views. And they've wanted others to agree with them. Not in a rude, overbearing way, but with a conviction which says doing what God requires is more important than doing what society says is proper.
And so one final thought. It must have been amazing for the disciples sat at Jesus' feet to hear him look at them and say, you are my brothers and my sisters. Is Jesus a brother to you? When someone is adopted into God's family as a Christian, Jesus becomes to them a beloved older brother. Do you see Jesus in that way? Or is he more like a kind of distant lawgiver? Let this be an opportunity to approach him this morning as a kind, loving, supportive brother who looks you in the eyes and says, you are my brother or my sister. So let's pray that his Holy Spirit will help us to do exactly that.