Hi everyone. Welcome back to the Daily Gospel
Exegesis Podcast, produced by Logical Bible Study.
And as always, we're going to dive into the text from today's
gospel reading, and we're going to try to work out what's the
literal sense, What did the words mean in their original
context? What was the author trying to
convey to their audience? And this is where we have to
start as Catholics. We have to look at the literal
sense first. So we have a longer reading
today. It's Mark, Chapter 3, verses 20
to 35. And here we have what's called a
mark and sandwich. So Mark often does this in his
gospel where he talks about one event and then he sort of stops
talking about that, talks about something else, and then comes
back to continuing that first event.
So it's sort of divided into 3 thirds.
And the idea of the sandwich is that each part of the each of
the three parts of the sandwich kind of sheds light on the other
part. So Mark deliberately interrupts
the story to make a point that's going to help you understand the
story. And then he resumes the story,
and we'll see that as we go here.
So Mark, chapter 3, verses 20 to 35, Jesus went home, and once
more such a crowd collected that they could not even have a meal.
When his relatives heard of this, they set out to take
charge of him, convinced he was out of his mind.
The scribes who had come down from Jerusalem were saying,
Beelzebel is in him, and it is through the Prince of devils
that he casts out devils. So he called them to him and
spoke to them in parables. How can Satan cast out Satan?
If a Kingdom is divided against itself, that Kingdom cannot
stand, and if a household is divided against itself, that
household can never stand. Now if Satan has rebelled
against himself and is divided, he cannot stand either.
It is the end of him. But no one can make his way into
the strong man's house and burgle his property unless he
has tied up the strong man first.
Only then can he burgle his house.
I tell you solemnly, all men's sins will be forgiven, and all
their blasphemies, But let anyone blasphemy against the
Holy Spirit and he will never have forgiveness.
He is guilty of an eternal sin. This was because they were
saying an unclean spirit is in him.
The mother and brothers of Jesus arrived, and standing outside
they sent in a message asking for him.
A crowd was sitting around him at the time The message was
passed to him. Your mother and brothers and
sisters are outside asking for you, he replied.
Who are my mother and my brothers?
And looking around at those sitting in a circle around him,
he said, Here are my mother and my brothers, anyone who does the
will of God. That person is my brother and
sister and mother. So that's a long reading today.
And now let's get into it. So Jesus has just begun his
ministry in Galilee, in the northern part of Israel.
So it's very early on, but already he's developed quite a
big following. There's crowds everywhere
following him around. Just before this, he's gone up
into the hills around the Sea of Galilee to pick his 12 apostles.
Now we'll start at verse 19 B today.
This is the last phrase in verse 19.
It helps sets the scene. It just says then he went home.
So Jesus now goes back to Capernaum.
That's his home at the moment. And remember, he's living in the
House of Simon and Andrew. That's his house in Capernaum.
Verse 20. Once more such a crab collected.
So try to get the picture here. Jesus is at home in his small
house in Capernaum. In fact, you can go and see this
house today. If you go to Capernaum, they've
basically uncovered what the house looks like, and you can
look in from a bird's eye view to see a floor plan of this
actual house. It's quite amazing.
So Jesus is here at home in his small house, probably with his
disciples, probably with his family, and there's people from
all over the countryside who want to follow Jesus, and
they've followed him home, and they're probably inside the
house. They're all crowding into the
house and Mark here says there's such a crowd that they could not
even have a meal. So Jesus and his disciples and
his relatives, they just want to sit down in their house to have
a meal. They can't even do that.
There's such a big crowd there wanting to hear from Jesus,
verse 21, when his relatives heard of this.
Now some translations don't have the word relatives.
They have it as friends or even own people when his own people
heard of this. But I think the best translation
is relatives or family. So our lectionary gets it right
here. His relatives heard of this, so
this will be his relatives in Nazareth, which is not far from
Capernaum. And Nazareth is where Jesus grew
up and it's where most of his relatives still live.
Now verse 31 tells us more about who specifically these relatives
are. So Mark tells us in verse 31
that his mother hears about this and a group that Mark calls his
brethren. And we'll look at this phrase a
bit more when we get to that reading, because obviously
there's been a lot of controversy about who the
Brethren of Jesus are in Nazareth.
The short version is it appears that these brethren are Jesus
cousins. Roughly, they're from Mary's
side of the family and they also live in Nazareth, just like Mary
does. So his relatives, his mother and
his brethren set out to take charge of him.
Or more literally what it actually says here is they went
out to seize him. The same word there is used for
when Jesus is arrested. They went out to seize him.
So Jesus relatives here, they travel from Nazareth to
Capernaum to come and get Jesus. That's a 20 mile journey, so it
probably would have taken a whole day for them to get from
Nazareth to Capernaum. So word is spreading from
Capernaum to the nearby towns that this amazing miracle worker
Jesus is attracting Huge crowds. And Jesus relatives hear about
this and they want to come and seize him.
Why? Well, Mark says they are
convinced he was out of his mind.
There's different ways of translating this particular
phrase. So instead of out of his mind,
you can translate it. He is beside himself and there's
even some ambiguity about who says it.
So some translations have the relatives saying he is beside
himself, but other translations because the Greek here is
ambiguous. Other translations put it As for
some people were saying he is beside himself.
So either Jesus family is saying this or at least people in
Nazareth in general are saying that Jesus is beside himself.
So word is getting around that Jesus is out of his mind.
We need to keep in mind the cultural context at this
particular time. So in this culture family
obligations and family ties are very strong, they are very
important and they over shadow a lot of individual rights that we
would have today. In western society, family
obligations came first and an individual was always in a sense
representing his family. So any action by an individual
in that culture was seen as a reflection on the whole family
and any breach of family honour would result in severe
discipline. So from the perspective of Jesus
family here, Jesus should be back in Nazareth being a
Carpenter rather than doing weird things like attracting
crowds and making the religious authorities angry.
So from what Jesus family understands Jesus wonder working
activity? It's probably evidence that he's
mentally imbalanced. He's not thinking straight.
There's something wrong with him.
And we later see this in chapter 6 when Jesus actually goes to
Nazareth. Pretty much the whole town has a
similar attitude. They think he should be a
Carpenter. He shouldn't be a miracle
worker. Also keep in mind that Joseph is
probably no longer alive by this point.
So Jesus, older relatives probably felt that Jesus was
under their charge. They have to take responsibility
for him. So they hear that he's doing
these weird things, that he's out of his mind.
So they set out to find him and seize him.
Probably this is partially to protect him as well, because
they might sense that he's making the religious authorities
angry and he might be in danger. So they come to get him in
Capernaum. That's the end of today's text,
and we then have what's scholars call a mark and sandwich.
So Mark often does this where he starts a story, then leaves it
incomplete, turns to something else, and then later finishes
the story. And it seems that he does this,
does this very carefully. He puts a particular story in
the middle of the sandwich that's going to, in a sense,
amplify both ends of the sandwich.
And that's what Mark does here. He leaves this story incomplete,
and he turns his attention to another event, and then he goes
back to describing what happens with Jesus relatives.
So this story of Jesus relatives will pick up again in verse 31.
The next thing we're going to hear this kind of middle of the
sandwich. This interrupting story involves
Jesus being accused of being possessed by the devil, and that
is actually linked to what Mark has just said here about his
family, because in that culture, mental imbalance was associated
with demonic activities. So that leads pretty well into
this next story where people come right out and accuse Jesus
of being possessed by the devil because they're sort of
perceiving that he's not mentally right in their view.
So now the scribes come down from Jerusalem in verse 22.
So up to now, he's just been doing stuff in Galilee, and the
Galilean Pharisees don't really like him.
But now we have some scribes from Jerusalem, which is
actually South in the southern region.
They're coming all the way up to Galilee.
So they've travelled quite a few days to hear, to hear Jesus.
They want to investigate this strange preacher that everyone's
talking about. South Jerusalem is sort of the
capital of Israel and that's down the southern area and Jesus
has been working in the northern area, but he's become so famous
that word has spread to Jerusalem.
So the Jerusalem leaders send these scribes in and these are
kind of like the big guns they are.
The Jerusalem scribes were the absolute experts in the law that
were considered to be more authoritative even than the the
ones in Galilee. So they accuse him or they say
firstly they use this word Beelzebel.
This is a name, Beelzebel, and it's a word that the Jews used
at that time for Satan. It's one of the words for Satan.
Satan had a few names and Beelzebel was one of them.
And it's probably derived from the Canaanite God Baal.
It's just another way of saying Baal or Satan is Beelzebel, so
they say Beelzebel is in him. So basically, they're accusing
Jesus of being possessed. By the devil.
And this is their thinking. So the scribes have come to see
him and they're like, how is this guy doing this?
How is he casting out the demons?
And their reasoning goes something like this.
He's casting out so many demons, and the only person who has that
much control over demons is the devil himself.
Therefore Jesus must be possessed by the devil.
That seems to be their thinking. Obviously they've missed a key
point here being that God has power over those demons as well.
So this this saying, oh, he's possessed by the devil.
So verse 23, he called them to him.
So Jesus actually calls over the Pharisees and he wants to teach
them. In particular, he speaks to them
in parables, so he's going to give them a couple of short
analogies, not like the longer parables we're used to.
It's still a parable though. It's a it's a short analogy.
He's going to teach them a couple of things about exorcism
and what it's all about. He says to them, first, how can
Satan cast out Satan? And that's a rhetorical
question. He doesn't expect them to answer
because the answer is obvious. The answer is he can't.
Verse 24, Jesus says to the scribes, if a Kingdom is divided
against itself, that Kingdom cannot last.
So if you've got this Kingdom and there's internal fighting
going on, the Kingdom is not going to last long.
And so Jesus point here is, if Satan was being forced to get
rid of his own demons, he's fighting against his own demons,
then it would not be a very strong Kingdom.
But the scribes knew very well that Satan's Kingdom is strong,
so that can't be right. It can't be that Satan is
fighting against his own demons. That doesn't make sense.
Verse 25, Jesus gives another similar analogy.
And if a household is divided against itself, that household
can never stand. So same basic idea.
If there's fighting within the family, it will be a weak
family. And now, verse 26, Jesus tells
us the point he was trying to make.
Now whenever you're looking at parables, you want to work out
what's what was Jesus point. He usually makes a couple of
little analogies. Sometimes he then tells his
readers, and this is the point that I'm trying to make.
And that's what he does here. Thankfully, sometimes he doesn't
tell the meaning of the parable though, and that's when the
disciples sort of scratch their heads.
But when he tells us the meaning of the parable, we should pay
attention because that can help us get some principles for
interpreting the other parables. And here he tells us what he
means, verse 26. So if Satan has rebelled against
himself and he's divided, he cannot stand either.
It is the end of him. So that's Jesus Point scribes.
You're wrong. Satan is not casting out these
demons. That doesn't make sense.
So he's firstly, he's ruled out their hypothesis.
He says you're wrong. Now in verse 27, having ruled
out that idea about the Kingdom divided, he's now going to tell
them what's really going on, what's really happening in these
exorcisms. No one can make his way into a
strong man's house and burgle his property unless he is tied
up the strong man first. Now some people have a problem
with this because it's implying that God is a burglar if you
take it too literally. But remember, parables are not
supposed to be identical to Jesus or identical to God in
every aspect. You can't map every aspect on
exactly. That will be over stretching the
parable. He's just trying to make one
central point that they will be familiar with and then applying
that to God. So the idea here is if someone's
planning to rob a house, but they're they're planning to do
it, they know who lives there, and they know the home owner is
a strong man, then the burglar is obviously going to make a
plan to tie up the strong man first before he tries to steal
his property. Otherwise, he's not going to get
very far. The strong man's just going to
kick him out. So Jesus here is saying that
Satan is like the strong man. Satan is like the strong man
guarding his possessions. What's Satan guarding?
He's guarding humans. In this particular period of
salvation history, he has possession over humans, and in
particular the ones that he has that he's possessed through the
demons. They are his property.
So Satan is the strong man. And Jesus is saying that by
performing these exorcisms, he is weakening the power of Satan,
the power of the strong man over the world.
So Jesus is weakening the strongman Satan.
By casting out these exorcisms, he's slowly weakening Satan's
influence in the world. So this probably implies,
because remember what Jesus says here is first you weaken the
strongman and then you plunder his goods.
So probably what Jesus is saying here is that these exorcisms
that he's doing currently a phase one of plundering Satan's
house. So he's currently binding Satan,
weakening his power over the world, and probably Jesus is
implying that soon there'll be a phase two where Jesus steals
Satan's goods and that would mean that's where he takes some
of the people from the Kingdom of Satan and brings them into
the Kingdom of God. So here I think is one of the
clearest teachings about what Jesus mission is.
We don't often like to talk about Satan and him having power
in the world, but that was the whole context of the Kingdom of
God. If you read the Gospels
carefully. Jesus clearly is teaching that
the world is largely under the power of Satan, and the point of
the Kingdom of God is to give people a different Kingdom to be
a part of if they want to. So that's all the stuff about
exorcisms there that he's he's done a couple of little
analogies. Verse 28, we get to the hard or
controversial part to interpret. Jesus says to them in verse 28.
I tell you solemnly, Now, whenever you say that you want
to pay attention. This is where Jesus says, well,
basically means I'm about to tell you something very
important. Other translations would have
this as truly, truly, or Amen, Amen.
Or he who has an ear, let him hear.
Verily, verily is the Old English way of saying it.
Whenever you see those flag words, you want to pay attention
because Jesus is about to teach something, and it's probably
going to be something that's binding forever.
It's probably some general theological principle that he
wants people to know about. So it's a signal that Jesus is
about to conclude he's make a conclusion, bring everything
he's said to a head and to make the point that he wants to make.
So he's dealt with the little things the Pharisees have said,
and now he wants to make his deeper, more profound point.
It's a textual indicator to us as the readers that he's about
to say he's about to teach something in his capacity as
Messiah. He's about to teach something
theological and it's going to wrap up the things he's just
said. Here's what he says.
All men's sins will be forgiven and their blasphemies.
So that's part one of the sentence.
So what's he said so far? He said that if a person turns
to God and enters the Kingdom, then all of their past sins will
be forgiven. Yeah, Jesus is saying there's no
limit to God's forgiveness. All sins will be forgiven.
Even blasphemies and blasphemies were some of the worst crimes
according to the Jews. The worst sins because that's
when you abuse God directly. It's a direct offence against
God. But Jesus here says even
blasphemies will be forgiven. But then the second-half.
Sorry, I won't say the second-half yet.
Let's just talk about the word Holy Spirit, because it's the
first time that Jesus uses it here in Mark.
The Holy Spirit we sometimes think of as like it's not in the
Old Testament at all. It's a New Testament idea.
It is in the Old Testament, but it's in the later books of the
Old Testament. And a lot of those books are not
in Protestant Bibles. So in the Book of Wisdom and the
book of Sirach, there's a couple of descriptions about the Spirit
of of God or the Holy Spirit. It's even called in one place.
So the Jews were familiar with, and they did believe in the Holy
Spirit. It's just that they didn't
connect it with the Trinity. They didn't believe in the
Trinity. And Jesus is not referring to it
in a Trinitarian way here either.
So what was their idea of the Holy Spirit?
It's basically the power of God on earth.
That's what they saw the Holy Spirit as, the power of God on
earth. And that's fine.
We as Christians, we believe that too, with that in mind.
And so the Jews know what the Holy Spirit is, or the basics of
it, Jesus now says. Whoever blasphemes the Holy
Spirit or another translation, whoever speaks a word against
the Holy Spirit, why does he say that here?
Well, the scribes were in fact just doing this.
They were blaspheming against the Holy Spirit.
If you think about it, they were blaspheming against God's work
on earth. They were watching Jesus cast
out demons with the power of God and they were attributing it to
Satan. They're blaspheming against the
work of God on earth. They're blaspheming against the
Holy Spirit. Now they didn't know that
though. So if we're going to analyse
this in terms of, you know, mortal sin and things like that,
they didn't have full knowledge. They actually didn't realise
that God was working through Jesus.
So if we want to pass it out that way, they weren't fully
culpable of it. So Jesus is actually just giving
them a warning. He's not saying they're going to
hell, He's just saying, oh, we need to be careful here.
OK, so whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit, Jesus
says he will never have forgiveness or he is guilty of
an eternal sin. An eternal sin.
This is something that people find really hard to accept and
sometimes called the unforgivable sin.
How can there be a thing such as an unforgivable sin?
So let's think about it. Jesus is not saying that if you
personally offend God or you personally offend the Holy
Spirit by saying bad things about him, you'll be damned.
That's not the point he's making.
He's saying something more general.
He's using this idea of blasphemy, which they've just
done, but he's now making a more general point about general way
that we can blasphemy against God.
And it's this. What Jesus is saying is this.
If a person dies having seen the work of God in their life, but
they deny that it's the work of God, or they refuse to accept
his promptings, then they cut themselves off from God.
Now that's basically the Catholic teaching on salvation.
So it's not, it's not that there's one.
How can we put it? It's not that there's one
specific thing you do, one specific sin that you commit in
your life and you're done. That's it.
You can never be forgiven. That's not what Jesus is saying.
He's saying there's only one thing that would stop you from
from entering the mercy of God, from entering the Kingdom of
heaven, and that is refusing to accept the work of God.
If you refuse to accept the work of God, then there is no
forgiveness to you. There's no forgiveness
available, and you can't make it into the Kingdom of heaven.
So it's a teaching on salvation. So notice the language here
talks about all men an eternal life.
It doesn't say Pharisees. You need to know this.
It says all all manner of sins will be forgiven of men.
So we're talking about men in general.
And he mentions eternal life. So this is something that's
binding permanently. Jesus is teaching general
Christian theology here about salvation and the Church, The
Catholic Church has confirmed that the principle Jesus lays
out here is still binding today. This is a permanent principle,
so let me reiterate what that is.
Again, the unforgivable sin is not that if you do one specific
sin that you can never be forgiven and you're stuffed up
for the rest of your life regardless of the good you do.
That's not what Jesus is saying. He's saying that there's one
thing that will always be a barrier to you having
forgiveness and eternal life, and that one thing is rejecting
the work of God on earth. And so if we have it with that,
if we keep that perspective in mind, which is the perspective
of the Catholic Church, that fits nicely with everything else
we know about salvation and everything we know about
Catholic teaching in general. Verse 30.
The last verse here, Mark tells the readers this is because they
were saying an unclean spirit is in him, So we need to keep that
in mind. Jesus has given us this teaching
in response to the claim of the scribes that Jesus is possessed
by the devil. So Jesus here, remember, when
Jesus sort of responds to critics, what he generally does
is he sort of disabuses some of their false notions first.
But then he goes on to make a more serious point.
So he's disabused some of this false idea that he's possessed
by the devil. But now he's going to make a
more serious theological point, which is and it's this.
Imagine he's saying this to the to the scribes.
You need to be careful. If you don't change your mind
about this. If you continue to reject the
work of God that you've just seen, you will be damned.
That's what he's saying. It's a warning, OK?
It's a warning. Jesus is not saying.
Since you have said this, you are damned.
He's not saying that. He's saying that.
You need to be careful. You need to reevaluate this.
If you continue to see these things and reject them as the
work of God, and you say that they're the work of Satan, then
you're blocked from the Kingdom of God because you will not
accept the work of God. This general principle applies
to all of humanity today. This is what we as Catholics
would say who goes to heaven? It's the people who accept the
work of God in their life and they cooperate with it who goes
to hell. It's those who reject the work
of God on earth and in their life.
Now that will be me paraphrasing complex Catholic theology, but I
think it's a fair summary. Verse 31.
They arrive. The mother and the brothers of
Jesus arrive from Nazareth in Capernaum.
So they've just arrived in Capernaum.
So we have here the mother of Jesus.
That's Mary. Now, a lot of Catholics are a
little bit uncomfortable with this passage.
Now it's possible she was just dragged along by the other
family members, but I think it's reasonable to say that at this
point Mary does not fully comprehend what Jesus is doing.
The Angel Gabriel apparently didn't tell her the full extent
of what Jesus ministry was going to look like, just that he would
be the son of David that everyone had been waiting for.
She probably didn't. Anticipate this massive crowd
thing and the authorities persecuting him.
She didn't expect all that. So at this point in Jesus
ministry it's quite early on she doesn't understand.
And I do think it's worth discussing this verse a bit,
because as Catholics you can have different opinions about
it. As I said at the start there,
it's possible that she does fully understand everything that
Jesus ministry would entail and she's just been dragged along.
That is certainly possible and many Catholics hold to that
view. But we also want to think about
what are the possible ways of thinking about it in terms of
she genuinely doesn't understand.
Well, we know that according to Luke's Gospel, she knows quite
early on that he is God. So that Angel Gabriel says to
her he'll be the son of David, the son of God.
And then when she visits Elizabeth, Elizabeth explicitly
says you are the mother of God, so she does know all of that.
But it's not entirely clear how much Mary knows about the exact
details of what Jesus ministry would look like.
Theologians do discuss this because certainly in the early
chapters of Luke's Gospel it does say that he's going to
cause division. But remember that she's also in
that same gospel and the Gospel of Luke.
She's quite concerned about Jesus when they find him in the
temple. That wasn't obvious to her, that
they would find him in the temple, and she didn't expect
him to be doing what he's doing. So I do think we as Catholics,
we have room to say that Mary is concerned about some of the
things she's seeing Jesus doing. And there's a whole lot more you
could say about this. As you explore Marian theology,
you'll see that theologians have agreed that Mary had the
fullness of grace. But theologians are divided in
terms of what that means about her knowledge, and this is one
of these verses it's well worth getting into.
But probably by the time of the cross she does understand.
She gets it then. But at this stage it's OK for us
to say that. Mary doesn't fully get it.
And she's concerned about Jesus. She thinks is possibly a little
bit gone, a little bit too far. So there's the mother of Jesus.
We also have the brothers of Jesus.
Now we need to explore these brothers of Jesus.
So firstly, the word brother in Greek is a Delphos, and in that
culture is used quite loosely as it is in the Old Testament.
We have lots of examples of people being called brothers in
the Old Testament and we later discovered they're not actually
brothers, they're just close relatives.
So in that culture as it is in some countries even today,
people will be called uncle, auntie, brother, when they're
not literally that biologically, they're not biologically
brothers, but perhaps they are extended family members or
cousins. That's the way it was used in
Jewish culture. So just seeing the word Adolphus
doesn't guarantee that we have here a biological brother of
Jesus, just some sort of close relative.
We also know from later in the passage that some of his sisters
are there as well. So we have some brothers and
sisters. So we know that there's some
sort of senior close relative of Jesus.
Because remember, they feel responsible or they want to
take. They feel that they're
responsible for Jesus because Joseph has passed away, which
probably indicates that they're older than Jesus.
So they're senior relatives of Jesus.
Who are they? Let's see what we can work out
about them. These brothers and sisters of
Jesus are mentioned several times in the New Testament,
though we're never given a full explanation of who their mother
and father are. We just get little tidbits.
Another thing we know is the early Church unanimously held
that Mary remained a virgin her entire life, and that's Catholic
teaching as well. Catholics.
A Catholic belief is that Mary did not have any children after
Jesus or before Jesus actually. So we know firstly they cannot
be children of Mary. Whoever these brothers and
sisters of Jesus are, they're not Mary's kids.
But. Also, if Joseph has died at this
time, it seems like Mary is living with these other
relatives in Nazareth. Since she's still living in
Nazareth, and since these other relatives are also living with
her in Nazareth, it seems likely that these other relatives
probably grew up in Nazareth too.
If we put all that together, probably we're looking at some
blood relatives of Mary here, some people who all grew up in
the Nazareth area, some blood relatives of Mary, as we already
said that they are probably older than Jesus because of
their authoritative behavior. So they're born before Mary and
Joseph were married. Now here's the interesting bit.
Later in Mark, in chapter 6 verse three, we actually get the
names of some of these so-called brothers of Jesus.
So there's four brothers of Jesus that we're given names for
in Mark chapter 6, verse three, and you can look at this up as
well. We have James, Joseph, Judas and
Simon. Now it's problematic as all four
of these names are really common even amongst you can see there
that three of them, James, Judas and Simon, they have the same
names as Son of Jesus Apostles. And the 4th 1 Joseph is the same
as Jesus Father. So it gets really confusing
trying to track who these four boys are, but we know for sure
that they're not four siblings. And here's why.
The James and Joseph, the two of the boys mentioned here, James
and Joseph. We later get more information
about James and Joseph in Mark chapter 15, verse 40.
It says that James and Joseph have a mother called Mary, but
it's not the Mary that's Jesus mother.
So we Mark explicitly tells us that James and Joseph are not
full blood relatives of Jesus. They're not full siblings.
They are in fact from another mother.
So who's this other mother? Mary.
Many in the early church, we're not sure about this, but we know
Mark tells us for sure that they're not.
They don't come from the same mother as Jesus.
And then on top of that, many in the early church believe that
this other Mary possibly is Mary the wife of Cleopas mentioned in
the Gospel of John and the early Church.
A lot of. The church fathers talked about
this other Mary actually being a relative of Mary, the mother of
Jesus. So if that's the case, if this
other Mary is a relative of Mary, the mother of Jesus, then
roughly what we have here is that these boys, James, Judas,
Joseph, and Simon, basically they're Jesus cousins or second
cousins, something along those lines.
So it took us a while to get to that conclusion.
But if we put together all the data, particularly what the
Gospels tell us about the mother of these boys, we know for sure
that they're not Mary's kids. They're probably Jesus cousins.
There's some other theories as well, but I think this is the
most plausible theory that these are blood relatives of Mary, but
not blood relatives. Sorry, this that's not a good
way of putting it. They are blood relatives of
Mary, but they are not Mary's children.
OK, so having said that, they arrive in Capernaum.
So that's they've been on a 20 mile journey, probably only took
a day or two. They arrive in Nazareth and they
stand outside. There's waiting outside Jesus
home in Nazareth in Capernaum. Because the crowd is too dense,
they actually can't get into the house.
Jesus is in his house. He's healing people.
He's teaching massive crowds as usual, and it's too dense.
They can't get in. So keep this in mind.
Often in pictures you'll see it as though they could see Jesus
or something and Jesus could see them.
He actually can't. From what we can tell, the crowd
is too thick. They can't see each other.
So what they have to do is they send in a message.
So they get they send someone to squeeze through the crowd to
speak to Jesus. And this is the message they
send into Jesus. Verse 32.
Your mother and brothers and sisters are outside asking for
you. That's the message Jesus gets.
So remember, Jesus can't see any of his relatives.
This is probably news to him. He's probably going oh OK, these
people have arrived. I wasn't expecting them.
Who knows? He's the son of God.
Maybe he was expecting them. But then his reply in verse 33.
Because it says here, he replied, it's it seems likely
that he's not speaking loudly to the crowd here.
Probably only those nearby would have heard his reply.
Here That would include Peter. And remember, Peter is the main
source for this gospel of Mark. So here's his reply.
Who are my mother and brothers now?
Jesus here is not pretending to know his biological relatives.
He's not being like, oh, who are my mother and brothers?
I don't know. I've never met them before.
That's not what he's saying. He's just using this as a
teaching opportunity. He's about to springboard off
this, to say something more profound.
Verse 34, looking around at those in a circle about him.
So the crowd that are nearby, sitting, listening to him think
about what's going on here, this inner circle of the crowd is
sitting and listening to him. And they're accepting the
message of the Kingdom. They're taking in, the message
of the Kingdom. They want to hear more about God
and about Jesus. He says that here are my mother
and my brothers, this inner circle of the crowd.
And then he goes on verse 35, anyone who does the will of God.
Now let's pause there. Anyone who does the will of God,
that's anyone in the world, even up until today.
If you do the will of God, this next bit applies to you.
That person is my brother and sister and mother.
So anyone who does the will of God, that's the prerequisite.
Jesus sets out here. Can be considered legitimately
to be part of the family of Jesus and God.
Anyone who does the will of anyone who does the will of God.
So that's not just a nice sentiment.
You might go on retreats and things and hear this oh, you're
a child of God or Jesus is your brother.
Well, it is a nice sentiment, but actually Jesus teaches this
here. It's literally true.
Well, in a spiritual sense, it is correct to say that we're a
part of Jesus family. So not only is Jesus
establishing the Kingdom of God, he is doing that, but he's also
establishing a new family of God.
We sometimes forget that aspect of it.
Jesus is establishing a new family for God.
Now let's go back to the cultural aspect of this.
Jesus says he's my brother and he's my mother and brothers.
That would have been shocking. You can imagine a gasp from the
crowd because to essentially put aside your own biological family
and say, Nah, I have another family, that's shocking.
That's putting aside your the expected family obligations,
that's quite scandalous. Now one thing to notice who
Jesus doesn't list in this family, He says.
Anyone who does the will of God listen to what he says is my
mother and my brother and my sister who's missing from that
list. Father.
There's no father in. Well, there's no one who's added
into the family of God as father.
That's significant. Jesus here is saying there's
already a father of this family and that's God.
I think that's quite an interesting little bit of the
text, isn't it? God is the father of the family
and Jesus. Part of Jesus mission is to
bring more people into that family, but there's no more
fathers of the family because there's only one father in
there. So.
Let's try and get a Jesus overall meaning here.
He's not dissing his own family. It's.
What he is saying though is that his obligations to his true
spiritual family override his obligations to his natural
biological family. He is saying that that he has
another family that's more significant even than his
biological family. So we can say that even the
closest of human bonds the biological family.
Has to take second. Place to the Kingdom of God.
That still applies to us today. And we need to think about how
that might apply, you know, our own lives.
Yeah, He's not dismissing his own family completely.
He's not cutting them out of his life or something.
And think about if things looked different at that particular
time. So there's a massive crowd in
the house. He can't see them, they can't
see him. If there was no big crowd,
things might be quite different. If Jesus was alone up in the
hills or just with his 12 apostles, probably the
conversation would have been quite different.
It's just that there are so many people there in the crowd with
him, and he's in the middle of teaching and healing.
So presumably he's saying right now I'm needed here.
This is the family that I need to tend to here, and that's more
important than my biological family, and that's where the
text ends. Presumably he would have
continued teaching. He would have just kept talking
for a bit longer, and it's possible maybe that he might
have caught up with his family later.
Who knows, maybe the crowd stuck with him for too long.
But it's possible that he did go and see his mother and his
family a bit later on. But that's not recorded for us
in the Gospels. Another thing to keep in mind
here is many of his family, many of the people listed here did
eventually accept Jesus as the Messiah.
Obviously his mother did, and we know that some of his brothers
and sisters did. So that's mentioned in Acts 114,
one Corinthians 9 verse 5, and Galatians one verse 19.
There's these references. To the mother and brothers.
Sorry, the brothers and sisters of the Lord who eventually
become his disciples. Although for many of them it's
not until after his death, we know that one of them in
particular was really important. One of Jesus brothers called
James eventually becomes the first Bishop of Jerusalem and he
becomes a really, really important figure in the early
church. One of the most important.
Now let's have a look at the catechism passages here.
There's a few really interesting ones.
Paragraph 548, there's a description about how Jesus is
accused of being possessed by Satan.
Paragraph 574, It's the same thing.
It says Jesus is suspected of demonic possession.
Paragraph 539, I'll read out this one.
It's about Jesus temptations. The evangelists indicate the
salvific meaning of this mysterious event.
Jesus is the new Adam who remained faithful just where the
first Adam had given in to temptation, Jesus fulfills
Israel's vocation perfectly, in contrast to those who had once
provoked God during 40 years in the desert, Christ reveals
himself as God's servant, totally obedient to the divine
will. In this, Jesus is the devil's
conqueror. He binds the strong man to take
back his plunder. Jesus, victory over the tempter
in the desert, anticipates victory at the Passion, the
supreme act of obedience to his filial love for the Father.
So you'll hear there the echoes about binding the strong man.
Paragraph 1864 is the one that we want to spend the most time
on. This is in the section about
different kinds of sin, mortal and venial sin.
And this paragraph is about the unforgivable sin.
Therefore I tell you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven
men, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven.
There are no limits to the mercy of God, but anyone who
deliberately refuses to accept his mercy by repenting rejects
the forgiveness of his sins and the salvation offered by the
Holy Spirit. Such hardness of heart can lead
to final impenitence and eternal loss.
So really clear Catholic teaching there about anyone who
deliberately refuses to accept his mercy by repenting rejects
the forgiveness of his sins and the salvation offered by the
Holy Spirit. Now I want to read out a bit of
an extended quote here because this paragraph that we just read
out 1864 of the Catechism is largely informed by an
encyclical written by Pope John Paul the 2nd called probably not
going to pronounce this right Dominum.
It's Vivicantum, that's the Latin and it's the English title
of that encyclical is on the Holy Spirit in the life of the
Church and the world. Now I want to read out paragraph
46 because this is where the teaching of the Catholic Church
on what the unforgivable sin is is explained here in this
encyclical. So if what I've said so far
hasn't made sense, hopefully this will help clarify it.
And certainly, you know, I don't have any authority to proclaim
Catholic teaching, But the Pope does, and so I think it's well
worth listening to him describe how we should understand the
unforgivable sin. So this is paragraph 46 from
Pope John Paul the second's encyclical.
Why is blasphemy against the Holy Spirit unforgivable?
How should this blasphemy be understood?
Saint Thomas Aquinas replies that it is a question of a sin
that is unforgivable by its very nature, insofar as it excludes
the elements through which the forgiveness of sin takes place.
According to such an exegesis, blasphemy does not properly
consist in offending against the Holy Spirit.
In words, it consists rather in the refusal to accept the
salvation which God offers to man through the Holy Spirit,
working through the power of the cross, if man rejects the
convincing concerning sin which comes from the Holy Spirit, and
which? Has the power to save.
He also rejects the coming of the Counselor, that coming which
was accomplished in the Paschal mystery in union with the
redemptive power of Christ's blood, the blood which purifies
the conscience from dead works. We know that the result of such
a purification is the forgiveness of sins.
Therefore whoever rejects the Spirit and the blood remains in
dead works in sin, and the blasphemy against the Holy
Spirit consists precisely in the radical refusal to accept this
forgiveness of which he is the intimate giver, and which
presupposes the genuine conversion which he brings about
in the conscience. If Jesus says that blasphemy
against the Holy Spirit cannot be forgiven either in this life
or in the next, it is because this non forgiveness is linked
as to its cause to non repentance, in other words to
the radical refusal to be converted.
Blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, then, is the sin
committed by the person who claims to have a right to
persist in evil in any sin at all, and who thus rejects
redemption. One closes oneself up in sin,
thus making impossible one's conversion and consequently
their remission of sins which one considers not essential or
not important for one's life. This is a state of spiritual
ruin because blasphemy against the Holy Spirit does not allow
one to escape from one's self-imposed imprisonment and
open oneself to the divine sources of the purification of
consciences and of the remission of sins.
So that's the end of the quote there from Pope John Paul the
2nd SO paragraph 500 against this doctrine of Mary's ever
virginity. The objection is sometimes
raised that the Bible mentions brothers and sisters of Jesus.
The Church has always understood these passages as not referring
to other children of the Virgin Mary.
In fact, James and Joseph, brothers of Jesus, are described
as the sons of another Mary, a disciple of Christ, whom Saint
Matthew significantly calls the other Mary.
They are close relations of Jesus according to an Old
Testament expression. So I'll put all these paragraph
sorry catechism quotes and the Pope John Paul, the second quote
in the show notes. And this is one of those
passages that needs to be read a few times and perhaps analysed a
few times. So if you think you got the
basics of what I've said but you want to listen to it again,
that's probably not a bad thing to do.
Thanks for listening. Hope you learned something new
about demon possession and the unforgivable sin.
And if you think others would benefit from hearing this
podcast as well others who might wonder about the unforgivable
sin, then please consider sharing this podcast with them.
Thanks for listening.