Mark 3:35 “Whoever does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother.”
Family is supposed to be a place of safety and security. You should be able to come home to family and feel supported and important. Family should be the one group that understands you and wants what is best for you.
But so often this just isn’t the reality. Families can become toxic environments in which all seemed to catch the same sickness. They get trapped in systems of interactions and attitudes that break down human dignity. The individuals seem to loose their individuality and become a cog in the family structure, locked and unmovable.
Our families are supposed to mold and shape each other as the primary force moving us toward holiness, toward Christlikeness. Family is where we develop our personalities, our likes and dislikes, our ability to make our needs known, and meet the needs of others. It is a laboratory where we get to try out different behaviors and still be accepted.
We learn right and wrong in the family. Some families do a terrible job at this, don’t they! But some do a pretty good job of developing a moral compass leading to a life well spent.
Our text speaks about the moment when Jesus’ own family came to intervene in his life and ministry. We was about thirty years old at this point. He was teaching and healing as part of his way of life. This way of life was the qualifying round for His substitutionary death. He had to live right in order for righteousness to be satisfied.
Jesus’ family hears about the crowds and what He is doing, and they come to intervene. They think He is off His rocker. They think He has gone too far. Maybe they want Him back to work, making furniture or building houses.
But Jesus has a different family, a new family He is creating, one that follows the will of the Father. It isn’t of this world; it transcends it. It started in the Garden, was lost, and is now in the recovery phase following Jesus’ life, death and resurrection.
Our verse is pretty specific. It says that everyone who “does” the will of God, that is the one who becomes family. It doesn’t say “thinks about doing” or “really has the intention of doing.” It says the one who does the will of God, that is the one who joins this new family.
Intentions and wishes are not what count. What counts is the faithful obedience, obedience spurred on by a living and growing relationship with the Creator of the Universe. Nothing less than obedience grown in the bed of faith will do.
But for some people, things like skin color matter more than obedience. In fact, if you have the wrong outward appearance, whatever that might be, you are disqualified in some people’s eyes. But Jesus tells his followers, and his biological family, that there is something more important than these physical similarities and differences.
That difference is the obedience to the Spirit’s moving in us that brings us closer to being the kinds of humans we were meant to be in the first place. We do the will of God. We become, in the worlds of the book of James, “doers of the Word.”
We don’t need more Bible studies, or “Seven Steps to Freedom” self-help books. What we need is an encounter with the Living God that changes the fundamental nature of our existence in this world. We go from being creatures of the dirt to ambassadors of Heaven.
Now that is a change I can embrace!
The Arnold Journey 