The Holy Ghost Paul valued Jesus Christ, according to Mark, and
his mother and his brothers came and standing outside, they sent
to him and called him, and a crowd was sitting around him.
And they say to him, your mother and your brothers are outside
seeking you. And he answered them, Who are my
mother and my brother? And looking about at those who
sat around him, he said, here are my mother and my brothers,
for whoever does the will of God, he is my brother and sister
and mother, the gospel of the Lord.
Please pray with me, your loving God.
Thank you so much for every single person here whom you know
so deeply in love, so fiercely. I pray that you may speak today
to each of us. Your name and pray.
Amen. Please be seated.
Good morning. Please turn with me to the
passage today. Let's look at it one more time.
Mark 331 to 35. And his mother and his brothers
came and standing outside, they sent to him and called him.
And a crowd was sitting around him.
And they said to him, your mother and your brothers are
outside seeking you. And he answered, then who are my
mother and my brothers? And looking about at those who
sat around him, he said, here are my mother and my brothers.
For whoever does the will of God, he is my brother and sister
and mother. Today's passage reminds me of
that Martha and Mary's story in Luke 10.
In this story, Jesus enters a village and a woman named Martha
invites him over to the home that she shares with her sister
Mary. And Martha busies herself by
serving Jesus while her sister Mary sits at his feet listening
to his teaching. And I identify a lot with Martha
because I often catch myself doing the same thing when I
guess over right serving, tidying, busting around in the
kitchen, missing out on conversations, and being present
with the very people I just invited over.
I actually do the same with my own family at home, serving,
tithing, bustling, when our kids really just want me to sit down
and chat with them and be present with them.
And when Martha complaints to Jesus about it, he says this,
Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things,
but only one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion
which will not be taken away from her.
A good friend recently blew my mind earlier this year when she
we're talking about this passage and she told me that Mary
embodies A radical form of self-care and the best thing we
can do for ourselves is to just sit at Jesus's feet listening to
his teachings. So today, let's slow down
together with these 5 verses from Mark 3 and learn from what
Jesus has to say. The passage begins.
And Jesus's mother and his brothers came, and standing
outside, they sent to him and called him.
You can imagine them standing outside the door peering in,
nudging folks to let hey Jesus know they're calling for him.
So word ripples through the crowd.
Hey Jesus mother and his siblings are here.
They're asking for him. Nudge, nudge, whisper.
The message passes from person to person until finally the
whole room knows right? Jesus family's at the door.
Verse 32 and a crowd was sitting around him and they said to him,
Jesus, your mother and your brothers are outside seeking
you. This moment is charged.
Everyone is watching. And that's when Jesus
deliberately asks the rhetorical question, Who are my mother and
my brothers? You might be wondering if Jesus
is rejecting his earthly family in this moment.
I used to wonder this too. As in, like, those people
outside the door, not my family, those sitting around me actually
are. And that doesn't sit well with
us, right? Because that seems so
uncharacteristic of Jesus, who loves his family.
But when we examine the text, we can see that there's something
far more significant going on here.
For usual Jesus is not rejecting anyone.
He's using his family's arrival as a teachable moment.
Classic Jesus the teacher here. Even earlier in Mark, when Jesus
calls the disciples, he does not explicitly tell them to reject
or leave his family. He simply says follow me.
The emphasis is not on who they leave, but on who they choose to
give their attention to and follow.
And Mark shows us this brilliantly through one specific
detail about this crowd. Notice here that Mark specifies
in verse 32A crowd was sitting around him, around Jesus.
The verb he uses here for sitting is Kathemanoy.
And OK, stay with me for a moment.
This is really cool. In English we usually think in
two modes of action, right? Active voice, I do something, I
open the door. Passive voice, something is done
to me, the doors open for me. Greek though, has another way of
describing action. This is so cool, one that
English mostly lacks. It's often called the middle
voice. This describes action that
someone is personally engaged in, not just doing something and
not just having something done to them, but placing themselves
intentionally into it. There's an entire voice to
highlight this. So think of it as like the
difference between I was seated at the restaurant versus I
seated myself. I chose this table, this view,
this spot, and the verb that Mark uses here works like that.
It doesn't picture people who merely ended up sitting or were
told to sit right there. Instead, it emphasizes their
agency and intentionality. The listeners have put
themselves there around Jesus. They say they're by choice and
they're invested in remaining, so they've arranged their bodies
and thus their attention around Jesus.
So both the grammar and the choreography in these seemingly
simple verses echo the invitation of the story itself.
That's so cool. Faith is not only something that
we do or something that happens to us.
Faith is a posture that we choose to embody.
And here's where Jesus redefines what it means to be his family.
Verses 34 and 35 and looking about at those who sat around
him, Jesus said here are my mother and my brothers.
For whoever does the will of God, He is my mother and sister
and mother, brother, mother and sister and brother.
Jesus's point here is bigger than simply expanding who gets
included in his family. Jesus redefines family by how
people place themselves in relation to him.
And notice something crucial. The listeners in the story are
already deemed family before they even do anything in light
of his teachings, right? They're not.
They haven't even like left and done anything yet.
Just by choosing to sit down and listen to Jesus, to receive his
message, they're already participating in God's will,
being in his family in this way, sitting at his feet, arranging
their attention around him. This is doing the will of God
for any of you listening today who seeks some freedom, freedom
from A to do list expectations, pressure.
Tell me all of us receive this. You can begin with Jesus by just
sitting at his feet, taking him in.
He invites active listening, of course, not mindless lounging.
But you can begin doing God's will by orienting your attention
towards him. And this is counterintuitive for
some of us, right? We expect that doing, doing
God's will means action all the time, right?
Works and accomplishment. We expect some kind of task
list. But here Jesus says that
listening itself is how we begin that posture.
It's where faithfulness starts. Not with striving, how
refreshing, but with sitting. Not with achieving, but with
attending. The people in that room didn't
have to earn their place in Jesus's family.
They simply had to choose to be there to arrange themselves
around him and listen. And that's the invitation for
us, too. Now, it's worth acknowledging
that doing the will of God is not always easy or comfortable.
Many of us know that it can disappoint people we love in our
lives, as Jesus likely did with his mother and siblings standing
outside that door. And it can have some real social
consequences for us too. I had a small but clarifying
reminder of this actually, just this past week.
God does just seem like that. Just putting it right there.
I was visiting a school where I used to teach, and I really love
teaching there. Helping connect the visiting
artists to a literature class Amazing.
It was a joyful reason to return, and the welcome was
really warm. It felt so good to be back.
People hadn't seen in a while. Hugged me, welcomed me back
home, told me that they missed me.
It felt really good to be received back like that.
But there was 1 moment that stood out.
Probably because of that warm reception while I was catching
up with a former colleague when someone else I used to work with
walked through the room, saw me clearly and just passed by
without acknowledging me at all. It was noticeable, super
awkward, and I knew why. Years ago, when we were first
teaching together, this colleague and I, we had
connected quickly. We're like hindered spirits
immediately right over a love of teaching.
But at one point, whenever conversation shifted to talking
about another colleague in a way that made me really
uncomfortable, I remember feeling a quiet but persistent
nudge from Jesus to stop the conversation.
Not dramatically, you know, not confrontationally, but honestly.
So I did. It said something like, I really
love talking to by teaching and we work so well together, but I
really don't want this kind of talk about colleagues to be part
of our relationship. I didn't say it perfectly, and
it was really awkward. It wasn't received very well at
all. But at the time, what I didn't
fully realize with how much gossip and trash talk, to be
frank, can function as social glue, especially among work
colleagues at a school. Ironically enough, saying no to
it meant that over time I would be edged out of some circles,
some social circles. And I was.
Not loudly or cruelly, but noticeably.
And that this is never really closed.
So watching her walk by like that last week stung because it
was so blatant and so obvious. But notably, the sting didn't
fester. And not because I handled
everything Florida State didn't, but because I I really do
believe that that moment of choosing to listen to Jesus
mattered, even when it came with the relational cost.
And I think that's where the passage today presses on us
most, honestly. Because Jesus here isn't just
offering us comfort, He's also offering a call to sit at his
feet. To Orient our lives around him.
May mean that we end up standing inside the room while people we
love are left waiting outside that door.
And it may mean disappointing family members or close friends.
Not because we stop loving them, but because we're no longer
ranging our lives around their expectations.
And that's frightening, right? Many of us would rather remain
respectable and light and easy to understand, then risk the
kind of faithfulness that unsettles people.
Following Jesus can cost us approval and strain
relationships. And if we're honest, part of
what keeps us from fully listening to Him, right, is the
fear that we might follow Him where he goes, actually, and end
up disappointing others in the way that maybe he disappointed
his own family in this moment. Notice, though, that Jesus
doesn't wallow in disappointing his family.
They'll come to understand what he's doing in time.
And we know that his mother, for instance, is thoughtful too.
In Luke 219, in response to the mysteries around Jesus's birth,
which she didn't fully understand at the time, right?
Mary is recorded as quote, treasuring up these things,
pondering them in her heart. Maybe she's doing so now too, at
the door. And since the very next chapter,
literally after this scene that we're looking at today is a
parable of the sower, where Jesus highlights the value of
maintaining fertile soil for understanding his teachings.
There's an invitation here for us to practice good listening
skills to receive what he wants us to understand over time.
Because like most skills, listening improves with
practice. And so the more we place
ourselves near Christ, the more attuned we become to his voice
and his will, and we can hear him when he does speak to us.
So let's choose a good portion now.
Let's not wait until later in the week, right?
When things settle down, when we're feeling it more, etcetera,
right, to sit at his feet. Let's just do it right now, like
today, maybe you go on a walk later without headphones, right?
And just like, pray go around the block.
Doesn't have to be that crazy, right?
Maybe just take 10 minutes. You close your eyes, maybe open
a journal, maybe just begin with a moment of silence, a verse,
maybe a worship song, or maybe invite someone to pray with and
for you to help you listen. Maybe start with one of the
prayer ministers today on either side during communion.
Or maybe just let's just do this.
You just close your eyes right down and you take your breath,
and you think, Lord, here I am at your feet.
Speak to me. Sitting at Jesus's feet doesn't
take that much to start. She just wants you to come
inside. He's inviting you to a place
near him, and He's already set for you to arrange your
attention around him. So let's invite his invitation
to sit down at his feet and listen, trusting that God will
speak to us. Amen.