When Family Gets In the Way
Mark 3:31-35
On January 8, 1956, four Christian missionaries and one missionary pilot made contact with the unreached Waodani Indians of the Ecuadorian rain forest. On that day, Pete Fleming, Ed McCully, Roger Youderian, Jim Eliot, and Nate Saint were speared by a group of these Indians. The Waodani had previously encountered hunters equipped with guns in the area, and that encounter had destroyed their views on outsiders.
The missionaries had guns when they were speared to death. One of them shot the gun into the air, it appears, as he was killed, rather than shooting the natives. They had agreed to do this. The reason was simple and staggeringly Christlike: The natives are not ready for heaven. We are.
A young Steve Saint, son to missionary Nate Saint, fearing for his father’s safety, asked a question of his dad before they took off in their small plane that fateful day. “Dad, If the Waodani attack, will you defend yourself? Will you use your guns?” Nate’s reply is stunning. “Son, we can’t shoot the Waodani. They’re not ready for heaven… we are.”
Imagine hearing those words come out of the mouth of your father. Or your mother. Or your grown child. Or your grandchild, or niece or nephew. “We cannot defend ourselves if they attack us. They aren’t ready for heaven. We are.” What would you say to a parent, a spouse, or an adult child who said those words?
When I held each of my children in my arms for the first time when they were born, I couldn’t help but dream. Dream of what they would be like, what they would be good at, what they would be interested in, what goals and dreams they would pursue. We all have dreams for our family, for our marriage, for our children. Faithfulness to God. Success. Influence. Wealth. Children who carry on the family legacy of law or medicine or education or status. Or who take on the family business and make it even more successful. How do we handle it when their faithfulness to God leads them into areas we didn’t dream of, couldn’t dream of, for them?
“Mom, Dad. I’m going to be a teacher, but not in the suburbs. I’m moving to Philadelphia to teach in the city schools there. That’s where God is calling me.” Or “Yes, I’m going to be a doctor, but I’m going to start my career serving in an understaffed, underequipped hospital in Africa.” Or “I’m leaving my position as vice president at the bank to start a non-profit that works with the children of drug-addicted parents.” Or, “We aren’t going to have biological children of our own. We’re going to adopt a group of at-risk teens in need of a home.” None of those things are easy, and they certainly aren’t lucrative. There are no guarantees of success as the world defines it, and things often don’t work out well. Does that mean it wasn’t God’s will for them? No, it does not.
Turn with me to Mark 3:20-21. We looked at these two verses briefly a few weeks ago. We’re going to look at them a little more fully today.
Jesus has a home base in Capernaum, possibly the home of Peter and his wife. We don’t really know for sure, but Peter and Andrew and James and John were from there. So Jesus goes home, wherever that was in Capernaum, presumably to rest. Mark has emphasized over and over again the size of the crowds seeking attention from Jesus for healing and deliverance, and to hear him teach. Whenever he tried to get away to rest and refresh, they found him. They found him at home too, and the needs were so great that Jesus and his disciples didn’t even have time to eat.
And his family – at this point his mother, Mary, and his brothers, hear about this, and they are obviously nearby too, maybe even traveling with him, and they go out to get him. The words Mark uses to describe the actions of Jesus’ family aren’t gentle. “They went out to seize him.” Mark uses the same language elsewhere, and in every other instance, it depicts an act of seizing someone forcibly. It’s the language he uses to describe the arrest of Jesus after he is betrayed. Here, Jesus’ family decides that he doesn’t know what is best for himself, so they go out to force him back inside.
Mark only gives us a hint as to why. He tells us “They were saying, ‘He is out of his mind.’” Was it because he wasn’t taking care of himself and they were concerned? Or was it because in their eyes, things were getting out of hand, maybe coming under too much scrutiny from the religious leaders, so they wanted to get him to lay low for a while? We don’t know. We do know that the opposition from the scribes and pharisees was increasing at a dramatic rate. And we do know that the phrase “He is out of his mind” indicates someone who is psychologically deranged. Pretty much the same way we mean the words today.
His family watches him, and says, “He’s nuts,” and goes out to get him. In his Gospel, St. John tells us that “his brothers (the word here means brothers and sisters, in other words, siblings) said to him, “Leave here and go to Judea, that your disciples also may see the works you are doing. For no one works in secret if he seeks to be known openly. If you do these things, show yourself to the world.” For not even his brothers believed in him” (John 7:3-5). They’re teasing him, shaming him, not encouraging him to do great things. They aren’t upset because he isn’t doing things openly in John’s gospel. They’re upset because they don’t believe he has anything to show anyone to begin with.
And Matthew 13:55-56 describes his siblings.”Is not this the carpenter’s son? Is not his mother called Mary? And are not his brothers James and Joseph and Simon and Judas? And are not all his sisters with us?”
Now, flip down to Mark 3:31-35. After a brief interlude where Mark brings up the opposition from the scribes, he picks the story of Jesus’ interaction with his family back up.
Mary is with her other kids, trying to get Jesus. Maybe her faith in Jesus was stronger. She did, after all, have the memories of the extraordinary events surrounding the birth of her firstborn son. Including the fact that she got pregnant without ever being with a man. But she is with her other children, with the crowds outside the house Jesus calls home. And she cannot control them. They are upset with their brother, so they are calling to Jesus to come with them. Their intent is to force him to come with them, but because of the crowds, they can’t get to him, so they yell for him.
The scribes misunderstand Jesus, and accuse him of being possessed by and in league with Satan. His family misunderstands him, at least his siblings do, and they accuse him of being crazy. The one thing neither group can do is admit that he is who he says he is.
In his classic book “Mere Christianity,” C.S. Lewis says, “I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic – on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg – or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”
What we want is a Jesus who lets us think what we want to think, and do what we want to do, and be comfortable and safe and warm and cozy, full of self-love and yes, compassion for others. What we don’t want is a Jesus who sends us into the jungles of Ecuador to share his love with a dangerous people group who haven’t yet heard about him. We don’t want a Jesus who asks us to risk everything for him, even lose everything, for him. We don’t want a Jesus who asks us to tolerate being shunned or pushed away or be persecuted for his sake. We don’t want a Jesus who asks us to do something dangerous, with no guarantees of safety or success as we define it.
If his life is worth anything, if he is neither lunatic nor evil man, but Lord of all, then his life is worth everything. MY life, MY cause may not be worth dying for but HIS is. In Matthew 16:24, Jesus tells his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” A cross is a place of and means of death! His plan for your life may not include quiet summer afternoons sitting on the front porch with a glass of lemonade watching the grandkids play in the yard or in the lake, (which is what I want for my life). But it WILL include a fulfilling and productive life FOR HIM, and eternity in his presence, surrounded by those your life touched and drew to Jesus. Even through your failures. Do you want that? Do you want that for your life? Do you want that for your kids lives? Regardless of the cost?
The story of the missionaries speared to death on a riverbank in Ecuador hit print media outlets like Time Magazine worldwide, and several people tried to influence the widows of these missionaries to take action against the Waodani Indians. Instead, the widows forgave the Waodani, told them about God’s love for them regardless of their actions, and even came to live with the Indians. Eventually, several members of the tribe came to know Christ, and Nate Saint’s children were baptized by one of the men who helped to kill their father in the spot in the river where their father and his missionary friends were killed.
David Howard, former director of the World Evangelical Alliance and Elisabeth Elliot’s brother, said he’s been told that missionary recruits in the United States and dozens of other nations inspired by the martyrdom. “Only eternity is going to show how many,” he said, but it’s “easily in the thousands” and vocations still occur. “This story goes on and on,” he said.
Now, look carefully at Mark 3:32-35. There’s no record at all of what Jesus said to his family in this moment, if anything at all. Instead, in his usual fashion, he uses this as a teaching moment for his family and everyone else who can hear him. He doesn’t yell at his family. He continues to gently teach. Once again, Jesus meets opposition with gentleness. And it’s important to note that Jesus isn’t disowning his family here.
In fact, while he was on the cross, St. John tells us “When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved (that would be John himself) standing nearby, he said to his mother, “Woman, behold, your son!” Then he said to the disciple, “Behold, your mother!” And from that hour the disciple took her to his own home.” These aren’t the words of a son who has written his mother off. These are the words and actions of a loving and responsible oldest son, making sure that his mother is cared for after he is gone.
And James the Lesser, the brother of Jesus, was the first bishop of Jerusalem, appointed by Peter, James the greater (the disciple James), and John, the leaders of the church in Jerusalem. James, the brother of Jesus, was eventually martyred for his faith in his brother, Jesus. No, Jesus isn’t writing his biological family off. But he IS establishing his spiritual family, made up of all who do the will of God. And he is gently inviting his biological family to become a part of that family. Jesus is always gently inviting us to join him.
For many around the world, news of a new family made up of other followers of Christ is good news. Because in many places around the world, to follow Christ is to lose your biological family. Many of those who were reading or hearing the words of Jesus recorded by Mark had lost their families. Having converted to following Jesus, their mothers and fathers and siblings, possibly their former spouses, had written them off after begging them to reconsider. They no longer had a place where they belonged.
Jesus is clear, those who do the will of God belong with one another in his presence, whether your family here on earth has failed you or not. The body of Christ is a new family, defined not by genetic lines and last names, not by race or culture, but by Jesus himself. It is a place where isolation is not to exist. The social sciences tell us that isolation of individuals, or even the isolation of a specific family, is directly correlated with all kinds of problems – physical illness, suicide, psychiatric hospitalization, alcoholism, difficult pregnancies, depression, anxiety, child abuse, family violence, and proneness to accidents.
The body of Christ, the family of God, is intended to be a place where normal human boundaries of us and them do not exist. A place where the special needs child waiting for adoption, the homeless mentally ill young adult, the teenage mother on her own at age 16, the aging adult who has outlived his children, the businesswoman trying to survive emotionally in an ugly divorce, the struggling single mother who needs a temporary foster home for her child all find the family they need. No, it won’t be easy. It’s hard to stay united, to be one, with people who see many things differently than we do. That’s why this kind of community can only happen by the power of the Holy Spirit and our willingness to let the Holy Spirit challenge us, and shape us, and change us as we follow Christ.
The memoirs of Perpetua in The Martyrdom of St. Perpetua and Felicitas, which are said by the compiler to be written by her own hand, vividly present the divided loyalties that early Christians experienced. Perpetua lived during the early persecution of the Church in Africa by the Emperor Severus. She was imprisoned for refusing to sacrifice “to the welfare of the emperors” during the African persecution. Her father pleaded with her to recant, but she responded that she could be nothing more than what she was, a Christian. Her father “was so angered by the word “Christian” that he moved towards me as though he would pluck my eyes out. Later, he begged:
Daughter, have pity on my grey head – have pity on me your father, if I deserve to be called your father, if I have favored you above all your brothers, if I have raised you to reach this prime of your life. Do not abandon me to the reproach of men, think of your brothers, think of your mother and aunt, think of your child, who will not be able to live when you are gone. Give up your pride! None of us will be able to speak freely again if anything happens to you.
She rejected his plea, and her final response was that she had found a new family, in which she had become a sister to her former slave, Felicitas. They died for their faith in each other’s arms.[i]
May we not stand in the way of what God is doing in the hearts and minds and lives of those we love. And when our human families fail us, may we know with certainty that here in the body of Christ there is no isolation. So may we allow no isolation. May we love those who are hard to love. And may we know that here there is a people who will love us like family, welcoming others with the same love with which Jesus welcomes us. Let us pray.
[i] Mark, David E. Garland. The NIV Application Commentary.
