Reflections
“Who are my mother and my brothers?”
Throughout the Gospels, Je­sus confronts a society divided by an intricate code separating the clean from the unclean, the righteous and the sinner, insider and outsider. He turns that society upside down, breaking down the codes that divide God’s family, restoring the bro­ken and excluded to wholeness and community, inviting those outside to a place of special honor in the feast that God has prepared. This tension is displayed in the contrast between Jesus’ old family—constituted by blood kinship—and  his “new  family,” constituted by shared disciple­ship. Jesus’ relatives assume that their kinship gives them a par­ticular claim on Jesus: he belongs to them, not to this crowd. His response could upends the tra­ditional code of “family values”: that “blood is thicker than water.” That challenge applies equal­ly to the new Christian family. Do we cling to Jesus, trying to keep him to ourselves, jealous of his love for the crowd? Instead of claiming family privilege on the basis of race or blood we define the family of Jesus on the basis of doctrine. But do we believe that God’s family consists only of Christians? Heed his words: “Whoever does the will of God is my brother, my sister, my mother.”

© Copyright Bible Diary 2019