Saturday in the Second Week of Ordinary Time, January 22, 2022

Mark 3:20-21

Jesus came with his disciples into the house. 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.”

This little story is found only in the Gospel of St. Mark.  Scholars want to combine it with another story Mark relates for us a few verses further down in 3, 31-35, in which the Lord’s Mother and brethren came to him and could not see him because of the crowd.  On that occasion, the Lord taught that his true brethren were those who did the will of God.  

Since Mark refers to “the” house (Hebrew and Greek, unlike Latin, have the definite article), we can understand Peter’s house in Capernaum is meant.  Like others in that time and place, it would have featured a walled enclosure with a courtyard, and the house situated in the middle of it.  This would not have meant much room, and most if not all of the cooking would have been done outside.  The whole property seems to have been filled on this occasion since “the crowd gathered, making it impossible for them even to eat.”  The people had come to listen to the Lord, as evidenced by the fact that Mark does not tell us he cured anyone.  Now, the tense of the verb Mark uses here is that of the present, as in “Again the crowd is gathering.”  His use of the present denotes a continuous action, so from this we can see that the crowd regularly gathered in this way, every day.  From the fact that the main meal of the day was served in the mid afternoon, we can also see that the crowd persisted for some hours when it did gather: the Lord and the Apostles had no chance to eat at the proper time.

Down in Nazareth, some twenty miles away, his people heard of this and considered it a problem which they needed to solve: “When his relatives heard of this they set out to seize him.”  Who were these people?  As Mark tells the story, they are “his own”, or, literally, “the ones of him”, a Hebrew idiom which we see, for instance, in John 1, 11: “He [the Word] came unto his own: and his own received him not.”  “His own” could mean family, friends, relatives.  In our western culture, we exalt the individual, but in the culture of the ancient Middle East, the family, town, or region was primary, and a person was only a member of these.  He or she exemplified the virtues and other characteristics.  This might extend even to such things as dress and manner of dancing, as is on occasion still seen in Europe.  When “his own” determined from rumor or witness that one of “their own” reflected badly on them — “He is out of his mind” — they felt strongly that he had to be brought home.  Note that they would not have been thinking of the Lord’s well-being but of their own reputation among the Galilean towns, which was never very high.  We recall, for instance, how Nathanael remarked, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” (John 1, 45).

“He is out of his mind.”  The Greek text is tricky here.  The verb is ex-í-steh-mi, from which our word “ecstasy” comes.  The Greek word can mean “to astound”, “to amaze”, but it can also mean “to be insane”.  We do not have a parallel text for this verse in the other Gospels with which to compare it.  Other Evangelists use the word in other passages, though.  St. Matthew uses it to describe the general reaction of people to Jesus: “And all the multitudes were amazed, and said: Is not this the son of David?” (Matthew 12, 23)?   St. Luke quotes the two disciples on the way to Emmaus as telling their companion (the Lord, whom they do not recognize, “Certain women also of our company astounded us” with their witness of the empty tomb (Luke 24, 22).  Based on these examples, we could translate the verse as, “He is astounding [others].”  This would actually be fitting for Mark who, more than the other Evangelists, emphasizes the ironies to be found in the life and times of the Lord Jesus.  According to this idea, the Lord’s people come from Nazareth incensed that he is giving the town a bad name (which it had long before the Lord lived there), for he is astounding others (with his words and works).  We could even support this by quoting the Lord when he returns to Nazareth and voices the thoughts of the people there, “As great things as we have heard done in Capharnaum, do also here in your own country” (Luke 4, 23).  That is, “Astound us!”  The Fathers, though, understand the verb to mean “He is insane”, as it can be literally translated, “he is beside himself”.  Perhaps we can understand the verb in both senses: he is astounding others with his words and works, and he is insane for doing so.  The Venerable Bede comments: “For since they [his relatives] could not take in the depth of his wisdom, which they heard, they thought that He was speaking in a senseless way, wherefore the Gospel continues, ‘for they said, He is beside himself.’ ”  as if to say, It is so much easier to say that God is crazy than to say that I am.