Standing Outside, Asking for Him

Mark started this story earlier and then walked away from it. Back at verse 21 the family heard what was happening, decided he was out of his mind, and set out to take custody of him. Mark left them on the road, put the scribes from Jerusalem into the gap, and only now lets the family arrive. He does that more than once in this book. He opens a story, sets a second one inside it, finishes the first, and the two end up being read against each other.

So the family reaches the house, and they stand outside. They do not come in. Somebody carries their message in for them.

“Look,” He was told, “Your mother and brothers are outside, asking for You.”

The house meanwhile is full of people who did come in. Mark mentions twice that they are sitting around him, and the second time he says they are seated in a circle. Ordinary people, on the floor.

Then Jesus asks who his mother and his brothers are, which sounds like a slap if you go past it quickly. He is not throwing anybody out. He asks the question because he is about to answer it, and he answers it by looking around at the people on the floor and telling them that they are the ones.

For whoever does the will of God is My brother and sister and mother.

Saying that about a room of strangers would be a startling thing to do on any ordinary day. He says it with his own mother standing in the doorway, and that costs him something.

Two things the sentence does not do. It does not tell anybody to go home and stop caring about the people they were born to; nothing here says that, and we are not going to put it there. And the list he gives has a brother in it, and a sister, and a mother, and no father. Mark offers no explanation for that, so neither will we. It is what the sentence says.

The people with the strongest claim on him were outside, sending a message in. The people with no claim on him at all were sitting on his floor. Mark lays the two down beside each other and adds nothing of his own.