Has your family gotten in the way of something really important in your life? Perhaps their words discouraged you from trying that project or reaching for a goal. Maybe their lack of support made it nearly impossible to try. They weren’t willing to give you a ride. You could have walked, but it was six miles each way, meaning you couldn’t have arrived on time. Lots of people have parents that discourage achievement outside a narrowly defined idea of success. If it doesn’t fit with their expectations there is a lack of support.
Jesus’ family thinks He has gone crazy, or at least has gone over that edge. They can’t understand the crowds gathering around their “little Jesus.” Maybe they were stuck in their minds back in the manger, or when the wise men came, stuck in a way that didn’t allow them to see beyond those images to the fulfillment of the words spoken at those moments. Maybe Jesus knocked over a project that his dad was working on and that image became who He was in their mind. Since we know so little about the years before John the Baptist dunked Him, we can only imagine.
But this we know, when the crowds gather, and Jesus and His disciples can’t eat, His family feels they need to get involved. We don’t know exactly what they were thinking, but we know it was bad enough that they travel as a group to intervene.
The text says Jesus’ mother and brothers come. Joseph is not in the picture at this point. He shows up nowhere after the birth and infant narratives, except as a tagline for Jesus, the carpenter’s son. His siblings could be Joseph’s children by a first wife, or they could be younger siblings by Mary and Joseph, or a combination of both. From comments later in the Gospels and from early church history, it seems as though they were younger siblings.
Jesus’ family affords Him the courtesy of wanting the intervention to take place away from the crowd. They want Him to come outside where they are waiting. They send in a messenger. And the message: your family is looking for you.
I admire His family at this point. They have a limited amount of information and they act on it. Later in their lives they get more information and come to faith in Jesus. So many families are unwilling to intervene when one of their family gets off course. They were at least willing to step in and try to help, even if they were wrong in their assumptions about Jesus’ sanity. It takes a lot of courage to intervene. They had it.
The Arnold Journey 