Sibling Jealousy: James' (Eventual) Turning To Jesus

Have any of you made it as far into the watching The Chosen as season 3…? Okay, a handful of you. That’s okay. I promise no spoilers from me today! Well… I mean… we do know how the Gospel stories conclude (with Christ’s death, resurrection, and ascension), so I guess the biggest spoiler is already out of the bag!

But anyway, in season 3 episode 2 of The Chosen (which is a multi season television show depicting the life of Jesus), we start off by seeing Jesus returning back to His hometown of Nazareth to spend Jewish New Year (Rosh Hashanah) with his mother, the Virgin Mary. When He arrives at the door, Mary sweeps Him into her arms (as a mother does to her child at any age), and ushers Him inside to sit down and eat after what has presumably been a very long journey. As they start to eat (both of them happily digging into the loaf of bread Mary just finished baking), Jesus looks up and then down at the rest of the big, empty table and asks: “So, no James and Jude?”… to which Mary (her mood now having noticeably shifted) responds: “Well, they felt it was best to celebrate in Sepphoris while You were here just to avoid conflict. I think it's just hard on them, especially with so many people here excited to see You.”

But who are James and Jude, and why might they deliberately want to spend Jewish New Year away from Jesus? Why wouldn’t they want to be around Him?! He’s Jesus! The messiah! God made flesh! Why would it possibly be hard for them to see and be around Him?

Well, at various points in the Gospel narratives, Jesus is described as having “brothers”, whose names are said to include that of James and Jude. Whilst it is unclear what the Gospel texts exactly mean by “brothers” (whether they’re half-siblings had by Mary and Joseph after Christ’s birth or step-siblings had by Joseph from a previous marriage), let’s try to imagine what it would have been like to grow up with Jesus as a sibling—as your primary playmate.

How many of you here are a sibling? Right okay, most of you! I’m an only child so this is not my personal lived life experience, however I’ve been told by plenty of people who are siblings, and I’ve witnessed my friends and loved ones deal with the fact that whilst you can love your siblings very very much, you can still also get to a point that you just want to ring their necks in! Sometimes, they just do or say things so that seem so crazy that all you end up feeling is pure unadulterated rage!

But, now imagine that your sibling (that you love but also kind of hate sometimes) was still your sibling but now, they also had the ability to say the most profound things or do things which seem like magic, thus garnering all the attention and amazement from the adults around you. How might you feel, then? Jealous perhaps? Even more infuriated?

Growing up having Jesus as a brother figure was (in a lot of ways) probably really difficult. Luke chapter 2 describes how at the age of 12, Jesus was so clever and so in touch with the Hebrew Scriptures that He could argue rings around even the most esteemed rabbis in the Jerusalem Temple! If your brother was able to do things like this and, as a result, attract a bunch of attention (and likely praise) from the adults around you, it would be very natural (and very human) if you started to get a little bit jealous.

Consequently, it’s really not all that surprising that James and Jude (the so called brothers of Jesus) found it difficult to be around Him… that they’d want to go spend Jewish New Year far away from wherever he (very likely) would be attracting a whole bunch of attention. Realistically, they probably just wanted to be their own people for once and not just be referred to as “that guy’s brother”, right?!

But, not all that unlike Saul’s transformation and redemption on the Road to Damascus (Acts 9), James the brother of Jesus (quite radically) went from wanting nothing to do with the movement his brother started to becoming a key leader in it, once the evidence for his brother’s divinity became way too convincing for him to no longer ignore. Indeed, just like Saul, James became so important to the early Christian church that he has an epistle in the New Testament attributed to him!

As such, as we move forward, I hope we can remember (and keep at the forefront of our minds) that seemingly impossible changes of heart can be possible when God is in the mix. Let us not stop praying for that person in our lives who’s always just been… the way that they’ve been. We never know what the Lord might do next. We never know who the Lord might choose.