Hi everyone. Welcome back to the Logical
Bible Study Podcast. We're taking a look at the
gospel reading from today's Mass and then having a look at the
literal sense of the text. The church tells us we always
have to start with what the author was trying to convey to
his original audience. Today we're going to be looking
at Mark chapter 3, but before we do that, I think this is one of
those ones where it's actually worth going back to a previous
passage and just looking at that before we jump into today's
passage because it will make a lot more sense that way.
So let's go back to verse 21 in verse 21 of Mark, chapter 3.
So it's about 10 verses earlier. Jesus relatives in Nazareth hear
about Jesus. So Jesus is doing ministry in
Capernaum and his relatives, his mother and his other relatives
who we'll explore shortly, are in Nazareth.
So the word gets around to them about what Jesus is doing and
people are bringing them this report.
So Mary and his relatives are hearing this report that Jesus
is out of his mind. So that helps with the context.
Now think about family obligations in that culture.
So family ties were really strong.
Any action by an individual was seen as a reflection on the
whole family, and any breach of family honour would result in
severe discipline. You did not want one of your
members of your family bringing shame on the family.
So from the perspective of Mary and the other relatives of
Jesus, really Jesus should be back in Nazareth being a
Carpenter rather than doing this crazy tour, attracting crowds
and arousing the anger of the authorities.
Think about it, if Jesus is making the authorities in
Jerusalem angry, which we know he is, that's not going to
reflect well on his family. So they're concerned for him and
they're concerned for their own welfare.
From what they can understand, this miracle working he's
supposedly doing is possibly just evidence of mental
imbalance. Remember they've seen him grow
up for 30 years just being a Carpenter.
All of a sudden he's a a star doing these miracles.
So their current thought is he's a bit mentally imbalanced.
We need to go and get him and bring him home.
Also, another fact to consider here, Joseph has probably passed
away by this time because he isn't mentioned at all after
Jesus childhood. So Jesus is probably 30.
Don't know how old Joseph was, but if we consider that a lot of
people didn't make it past 50 in that culture, it's it's
possible. But in fact I'd say it's likely
that Joseph is no longer alive by this point.
So Jose Jesus older relatives have sort of taken
responsibility for him. Jesus is under their charge, and
so they, whoever they are, his older relatives and his mother,
set out to find him, and the text in verse 21 says they're
going to seize him. So they set out on this twenty
mile journey from Nazareth, their hometown, to Capernaum,
where Jesus is living and doing his ministry.
Then what happens in Mark is there's what's called a mark and
the sandwich. So Mark starts to tell a
narrative, and then he stops abruptly, puts a different thing
in there, and then resumes the original narrative.
Scholars call that a mark and sandwich.
So we have the Mark and Sandwich, and in the middle of
the sandwich is the passage we heard yesterday about the
unforgivable sin. And then Mark returns to the
description of his family coming to get him, which is brings us
right up to where we are today in Mark chapter 3, verses 31 to
35. So here's the text of that.
The mother and brothers of Jesus arrived and standing outside,
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 round at those in a circle about 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 the passage we're looking at today.
So 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 del force 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 what 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 fool 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 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 the
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 here's my brother and
here'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. Now, 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. So that's our passage today.
There's only one catechism reference, and that's paragraph
500, and it's in the discussion about how Mary is ever virgin,
and it directly links to this passage and echoes a lot of what
I've been saying here. 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 and I think that that's. You know, that's quite a
legitimate thing. It's not that Catholics are
grasping at straws here to come up with an explanation.
The text of the Gospels, particularly the Mark 15 that we
looked at today, actually tells us that these so-called brothers
of Jesus actually had a different mother.
The Gospels tell tell us that. So it shouldn't be something
that Catholics should be too concerned about.
The the case here is pretty strong.
Hopefully you'll learn something new from this.
It's a really interesting passage to explore for
apologetic reasons, but it also tells us a lot about Jesus
priorities and about how the Kingdom and family of God works
as well. Thanks for listening.
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