June 10, Ordinary 10B (Mark 3:20-35)
When Jesus names the need for deep social change, people think he's possessed.
This scene in Mark is set with two separate groups of characters standing on opposite sides of a door: insiders and outsiders. Outside, along with the scribes from Jerusalem, stands Jesus’ family. The inside is where Jesus has just retired for a meal with his newly appointed disciples. The disciples we would expect but not, perhaps, the riffraff who are also there, crowding around Jesus so much that he cannot eat.
Jesus’ family has heard that he is behaving as if he were possessed, and they have come to intervene. Indeed, the scribes are claiming that Jesus casts out demons by the power of that greatest demon of all, Satan. Either uninvited or unwilling to enter, his family summons their son and brother to come out to them.
Jesus responds with a sweeping gesture that takes in all those inside seated around him: “Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.” Shouldn’t it be the other way around? Shouldn’t those who represent the two major protectors of social order—the family and the synagogue—be the insiders? With his simple gesture and words, Jesus turns this upside down.
