Reflection

Gospel

Jesus Accused by His Family and by Teachers of the Law

Then Jesus entered a house, and again a crowd gathered, so that he and his disciples were not even able to eat. When his family heard about this, they went to take charge of him, for they said, “He is out of his mind.”

And the teachers of the law who came down from Jerusalem said, “He is possessed by Beelzebul! By the prince of demons he is driving out demons.”

So Jesus called them over to him and began to speak to them in parables: “How can Satan drive out Satan? If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. If a house is divided against itself, that house cannot stand. And if Satan opposes himself and is divided, he cannot stand; his end has come. In fact, no one can enter a strong man’s house without first tying him up. Then he can plunder the strong man’s house. Truly I tell you, people can be forgiven all their sins and every slander they utter,  but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven; they are guilty of an eternal sin.”

He said this because they were saying, “He has an impure spirit.” 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”.                                                              Mark 3: 20-35

Reflection

When Mary agreed to become the mother of Jesus, she probably didn’t know how hard her life would be. Today’s passage from Mark is just one example of what she endured and how she coped with her unique role in history.

In the passage, Jesus teaches an extremely important lesson – that all people who try to do the will of God are his family, not just his blood relatives. It speaks to Jesus’ embrace of a universal vision of humanity that was quite at odds with the village society he grew up in. But in doing so, he seems to disrespect his actual mother and relatives. I can’t help wondering how his words felt to Mary because she surely knew that she would suffer repercussions from them. I imagine the local gossips  blaming Mary for raising  a crazy man who wandered around telling people what to do, not having a job or raising a family.

Ironically of course, they would have been right. Mary most certainly played an important role in shaping Jesus’ worldview because that’s what mothers do. But too often Christians fail to give Mary the credit she deserves for shaping Jesus.

I developed a devotion to Mary when I started paying attention to the Mary of the gospels even though their writers often downplay her role. This Mary never wore silks or lived in a marble palace. She was a poor woman married to a man who worked with his hands. Her home and clothing must have been rudimentary. She knew how hard it was to raise a kid and the suffering kids put their parents through like when Jesus stayed in Jerusalem to preach at the temple, scaring her to death.

Perhaps Jesus developed his devotion to the poor the way most of us develop our values – from watching our mothers model what’s important to them. When Jesus tells us to feed the hungry and help the stranger, that didn’t come from thin air. He’d surely spent years seeing his mum sharing with those who had less, including hungry strangers who wandered through Nazareth. So I resonate with what Jesus says  in this passage about God’s universal family of people doing his will because much of it must have come from Mary’s example.

The Mary whom Jesus seems to thrust into the background in this passage also models the unconditional love that mothers have for their children, even when their “crazy” views and behaviour make life more difficult for themselves.

Julie Leonard Religious Education Leader/Wellbeing Leader