The Tenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, June 9, 2024

Mark 3, 20–35

Jesus came home with his disciples. Again the crowd gathered, making it impossible for them even to eat. When his relatives heard of this they set out to seize him, for they said, “He is out of his mind.” The scribes who had come from Jerusalem said, “He is possessed by Beelzebul,” and “By the prince of demons he drives out demons.”  Summoning them, he began to speak to them in parables, “How can Satan drive out Satan? If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand. And if Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand; that is the end of him. But no one can enter a strong man’s house to plunder his property unless he first ties up the strong man. Then he can plunder the house. Amen, I say to you, all sins and all blasphemies that people utter will be forgiven them. But whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never have forgiveness, but is guilty of an everlasting sin.” For they had said, “He has an unclean spirit.” His mother and his brothers arrived. Standing outside they sent word to him and called him. A crowd seated around him told him, “Your mother and your brothers and your sisters are outside asking for you.” But he said to them in reply, “Who are my mother and my brothers?” And looking around at those seated in the circle he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.”

St. Mark frames these events in his his Gospel as a sort of sandwich.  He employs a literary form he uses in relating the raising of Jairus’ daughter and the healing of the woman afflicted with the flow of blood, essentially telling us that he sees these as providing commentary on each other.  The “meat” here is the Lord’s reaction to accusations that he expels demons by the help of demons, a nonsensical proposition.  This is framed by the concerns of his extended family, who say, “He is out of his mind.”  This too is nonsensical.  Both accusations tell us of those who opposed the Lord Jesus and of their desperation to bring him to heel.

Members of Jesus’ extended family in Nazareth were divided in their opinion of him.  Chief among his supporters, of course, was his Mother, the Virgin Mary.  Other members became Apostles, such as James the son of Alphaeus, Simon the Zealot, and Jude.  We know from the Gospels that a number of women including relatives of the Virgin Mary also followed Jesus, even to the Cross.  But others took offense at him, evidently, either out of envy or because he did not act as they thought a Nazarene should.  And there is, at its core, truth to this because the Lord Jesus acted like no one who had ever lived on the earth before: his actions were motivated by a love and a wisdom that far surpassed anything that has ever been seen or imagined.  But the Nazarenes did not see the love. All they could see as that he somehow threatened them.

The Lord easily disposed of the accusations of those who accused him of acting on behalf of demons: “If Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand; that is the end of him.”  This, in turn, led him to teach about the sin against the Holy Spirit which can never be forgiven.  This is sin against faith, whether final apostasy, presumption, or despair.

The Lord’s teaching that those who do the will of his Father are his mother, sisters, and brothers, fulfills the sin of the family.  As great a gift as a family is to its members and to society, it serves primarily as a sign of the belonging to the Lord Jesus that is gained and experienced through baptism and a faithful life.  And this unity cannot be sundered from the outside, as would be the case if a strong man were to break into a house and loot its contents.  To belong to the Lord Jesus is to accept the power of the Holy Spirit which binds us to him so that we might belong to him through all eternity.