Main: If you’re looking for snapshots of well-adjusted and happy parent-child relationships from the ancient world, the Bible probably shouldn’t be on your short list of sources. Consider even Jesus’ family, for example. The New Testament preserves evidence suggesting that Jesus’ relationship with his mother was rather strained. Similar tensions appear to have existed between him and his siblings, as well.
An important source is Mark 3:21, which says: “When his family heard what was happening, they came to take control of him. They were saying, ‘He’s out of his mind!’” (translation: Common English Bible).
Move 1. When He Went Home!
Jesus went home. He named his inner circle of disciples, and he went home. He called it a day.
Well, he healed a man on the Sabbath, it turns out, and got into a mess of trouble; and then he called the inner circle and went home.
The last time he was home, someone tore a hole in his roof and lowered a paralyzed man into the living room.
Then he called a friend, had a party - got called out for that one too, went on a hike with his new disciples, and they plucked some grain from a field they were wandering through, and got in trouble for that (reaping on the Sabbath - not stealing grain, oddly enough); then he healed a man and called his inner circle and went home.
Before that, he got baptized and spent some time alone in the wilderness, cast out some demons, some of whom seemed to recognize him, but he told them to keep quiet about it; and he healed and walked and found need everywhere he went.
Yet, Christian tradition has had a difficult time reckoning with the perhaps troubling idea of family strife between Jesus and his kin. Consider what translators and even other Gospel authors have done with Mark 3:21:
• 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 New Revised Standard Version puts the disparagement of Jesus in the mouths of others, saying: “When his family heard it, they went out to restrain him, for people were saying, ‘He has gone out of his mind.’”
• The authors of the Gospels according to Matthew and Luke, whose books were produced after the Gospel according to Mark and who included scenes similar to Mark 3:20-35, omitted from their narratives any suggestion that Jesus’ family thought he was crazy.
Maybe Jesus’ relatives were dismayed that the first-born son wasn’t supporting his family but was gallivanting around Galilee as a self-appointed prophet. Or maybe they wanted him, as Messiah, to have bigger and better ambitions, such as promising a revolution instead of preaching and healing the sick. The Gospel of Mark does not explain; it merely sets up a showdown of sorts when the family arrives to seize Jesus.
When the crowd says that his family is summoning him from outside the crowded building, Jesus answers with a shocking statement: “Who is my mother? Who are my brothers? ... Look, here [these people seated around me] are my mother and my brothers. Whoever does God’s will is my brother, sister and mother.”
It’s good news for those inside the house, who seek to identify with Jesus and his message. It’s also good news for Mark’s earliest readers who found themselves estranged from their biological families (compare Mark 10:28-30). Bad news, however, for his relatives on the outside, and for others with high regard for customary notions of honor and social stability.
Move 2 New Family:
Jesus redefines the criteria for who constitutes his true family.
I also think that the encounter between Jesus and his family may have also pointed to a need for Jesus to minister to the people he was closest to. I reflect on that old poem "Bring Dat College Home", a favorite of Dr. Miller W. Boyd. Dr. Boyd who was the president of Morristown College. BRING DAT COLLEGE HOME
I’s been sending you to college for six or seven years
Since the mornin’ dat you let’ me I’s been sheddin bitter tears
But I thought of dat ole sayin’ “Sunshine come behin’ de storm”,
So my young man, when you finish, you yes bring dat college home.
I’s been scrubbin’ by the washtub, I’s been sewatin’ in de feil,
Many time I had to borry an’ I almost had to steal,
But I held on to my patience, beat def soap suds into foam,
All de time my heart was sayin’ he’s wine bring dat college home.
Folks here say you gwine be nothin’, you jus foolin’ time away,
But I shake my finger and tell dem “wait until some future day”.
Se next’ June when dogwoods blossom and de bees begin to swarm,
I’ll be waitin’ for to see you when you bring dat college home.
Don’t you min’ dose folks here talkin’, day ain’t half as good as you,
And dey’s bound to nag at good folks, dat’s all day know how to do.
I’s got wood enough for winter, plenty clothes to keep me warm
So you trot off to college, then next June, you bring dat college home.
I don’t mean bring home the buildings or to wreck dam good folks place,
Bring home Chirstian education, and dat high tone college grace,
You jes grab def fessor’s habits, hole em tight thoo win’ an’ storm,
Den when you git your diploma, take em all and light for home.
Show dese folks dat you got ‘em by the speeches dat you make,
By the specks dat you’ll be wearin’ an’ de way your coat tail shake
But don’t git above de people, settle down an’ cease to rome,
Be a light in your own village, be a college right here at home.
The Point of this Iconic Poem may be the same point that Jesus is making to his family, that real family includes the folks that God has called you to serve and connect with. Jesus was showing that his family was not limited but because of the work of God and the call of Humanity it had been extended to include more then sister brother mother father. Jesus was hardly the first thinker to use familial terms to describe the membership of a movement or an in-group. Still, his comment would strike many of his contemporaries as dangerous. What’s a “family” supposed to consist of now? For Jesus, family — at least, one type of family — is a community of people joined as an expression of their commitment to discover and manifest God’s will.
Move 3: Not a Divided House
It’s hard to look at the division and inner conflict within our lives. The beginning of wholeness, however, is acknowledging our brokenness. Where is our own house divided? How and to what extent have we created conflict and division within our relationships. In what ways do we live fragmented lives, parceling out pieces here and there? What is it that shatters your life? Anger and resentment, greed, insecurity, perfectionism, sorrow and loss. Fear. Envy. Guilt. Loneliness.
There are all sorts of forces, things, events, sometimes even people by which our lives are broken and through which we are separated from God, others, and our self.
Christ is stronger than anything that fragments our lives.
He binds the forces that divide, heals the wounds that separate, and refashions pieces into a new whole.
There is nothing about your life or my life that cannot be put back together by the love God in Christ. The family, those to whom we owe allegiance and honor and welcome and love, above all love, is not a small circle but an almost unimaginably large one. Any who loves God with all their heart and soul and mind and strength. That’s the family.
That’s home. I want to speak to the graduates for a moment, We don’t leave home to go away to college are work. We don’t leave home to come to church.
We leave home in one sense to go home in another sense.
And wherever we gather with those who love God, we are at home. So we should greet one another not with “I’m glad you came,” but with, “Welcome home.”
They called him out at home – his family, those afraid for him, perhaps even afraid of him. They called him out. But he knew, because he understands home and family better than we do; he knew he was safe. Safe at home.
Welcome home Family, Welcome home to the family of God!1!
