Mark 3:20-34

(please take a few moments to read this passage now)

Our second mother-and-son passage for this week is in Mark 3.  Jesus’ mother and brothers have become concerned that Jesus has gone more than a bit overboard.  Mark is straightforward: His family says, “He is out of his mind.”  

It’s a tense scene: Jesus is being mobbed by eager listeners, and is at the same time being challenged and accused (“He drives out demons using devil-power!”).  In the midst of the conflict, his family members arrive and ask to see him.  Actually, they’ve come to take charge of him, to put a stop to what he’s doing.  When told that his mother and brothers have come for him, Jesus responds, “Who are my mother and my brothers?”  And 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.”

God loves family.  God creates family.  God places the solitary in families.  God has adopted us into his family, he has granted us new birth so that we would be children of God.

And all our human families, even “church families,” have experienced some sin-distortion.  One of those distortions happens when “family” becomes an idol, when we try to make the good gift of family take the place of God.  And we can, of course, take whatever deficiencies there are in our family as an excuse to make an idol of ourselves, to center my life on me and my will.

So it can’t be “Family first!” and it can’t be “Me first!”

Lives centered on following Jesus, on knowing and doing God’s will, necessarily requires some decentering of our natural families.  Our natural families remain important -- they are perhaps the primary arena in which we are to communicate God’s truth and demonstrate God’s love. But boundaries, sometimes pretty sharp and clear ones, may well be needed.  That’s what we see Jesus doing here.

Establishing the right kinds of boundaries in the right kinds of ways isn’t easy.  Just necessary.  There’s nothing wrong with needing, and asking for, help.

Where might you and your family need some better boundaries?  How might you start, or continue, to pray about these things?  Which of Jesus’ current “family members” might you ask for help?