Jesus’ words sound so harsh to our Southern ears, don’t they? For no matter how old a Mississippi man may be, he knows better than to sass his mama. So, by refusing to see His family, was Jesus trying to disown them?

Of course not. After all, John’s gospel tells us that even while Jesus was hanging on the cross, He made sure that His mother would be cared for, entrusting her to His disciple John (John 19:26-27). Moreover, we know that Jesus was always obedient to all of God’s Ten Commandments, including the fifth one: “Honor your father and your mother.”

So, why wasn’t Jesus willing to take a break from His teaching in order to speak to His family? Because of the reason they had come to see Him: They thought He had “lost His senses,” so they had come “to take custody of Him” (Mark 3:21). Yes, it seems that Mary hadn’t learned the lesson that the twelve-year-old Jesus had tried to teach her and Joseph when they found Him in the Temple: He had to be about His father’s business, no matter how strange or confusing that business might have seemed to other people (Luke 2:41-51).

So, what is Jesus telling us? On the one hand that His work must take precedence even over our closest relationships. That means we must go wherever God calls us, in the same way that Abraham did, even if that means leaving our country and our relatives and our father’s house (Genesis 12:1).

But on the other hand, trusting Jesus in such a radical way means that we are adopted into an even larger family, the family of faith. And that means that all who follow Jesus become our brothers and sisters and mothers, as we all share One Heavenly Father.

So, regardless of our Southern concern for kinship and our broader cultural preoccupation with ethnic identity, there’s really only one human connection that has eternal significance: being joined to Christ by faith. Will we follow Christ our brother and put our Heavenly Father’s business first in our lives?

Mark 3:21, 31-35 (NASB)

21 And when His own people heard of this, they went out to take custody of Him; for they were saying, “He has lost His senses.”

31 And His mother and His brothers arrived, and standing outside they sent word to Him, and called Him.
32 And a multitude was sitting around Him, and they said to Him, “Behold, Your mother and Your brothers are outside looking for You.”
33 And answering them, He said, “Who are My mother and My brothers?”
34 And looking about on those who were sitting around Him, He said, “Behold, My mother and My brothers!
35 “For whoever does the will of God, he is My brother and sister and mother.”