Now, everyone was always eager for Jesus to do some miraculous sign, some awesome work.  They weren’t looking for parlor tricks.  People around them were sick, crippled, blind, deaf, hard-hearted and stiff-necked; they were, too.  They needed help!  Some even admitted it.  They were looking for real help, still, even after all the disappointments, all the deceptions for which they had fallen.  You’d think they’d just wise up and give up, but hope is pesky, and the embers of faith continue to smolder for a long, long time.  It only takes a spark!

Everyone was eager for Jesus to do something; often he did.  More often, he spoke.  There are lots of songs bemoaning talk that is just talk: talk with nothing in it or behind it—all hollow, hot air.  And, as we survey the history of our political landscape, we could be excused for coming away with the conviction that it’s all just talk and no action, as though talk were really just a substitute for action, or just a way to whip anxiety into a froth, leaving us feeling always frustrated and a little hopeless, or just resigned and becoming indifferent, election by election.

God’s election is different.  God’s Word is different.  God’s Word is action.  When Jesus speaks, he is doing something.  His words do something.  Yes, it seems that, for too many, his words elicit rejection, ridicule.  And for some, the elect, the words of Jesus work a miracle, an awesome work of the power of God.

People wanted something from Jesus.  They heard that things happened when Jesus was around.  Some had even seen it.  People came wanting something from Jesus.  What do you want from Jesus?  Peace?  Strength?  Comfort?  Wisdom?  Power?  It was hard for people to reframe the matter.  It was hard for them to listen to Jesus without hearing what they wanted to hear, because they wanted to hear something so badly, so deeply.

His family heard what was happening there, and what they heard moved them to prompt action.  Mark tells us they came right away “to take charge of him” (1:21).  Jesus is getting out of hand, you see; he’s causing problems.  Amen!  If Jesus isn’t getting out of hand, if Jesus isn’t causing problems, there’s a problem!  A Jesus we can control and contain is not Jesus.  A Jesus who causes no problems, who causes us no problems, is not Jesus.  Beloved, I don’t want to contain Jesus, I want to proclaim Jesus.

Jesus is causing his family—Mary, handmaid of the Lord, et cetera, remember? queen of heaven, mother of God, et cetera, remember?—Jesus is causing Mary trouble, and she and his brothers and sisters don’t like it.  It scares them; he scares them, a little—more than a little!  They tell one another, and maybe anyone else within hearing, that Jesus, “is out of his mind” (1:21).  So, they act: promptly, decisively.  “Jesus’ mother and brothers arrived.  Standing outside, they sent someone in to call him” (3:31).

They don’t go in, themselves.  Well, we’ve been told already that the crowd is packed in tight, so how could they get in?  But they send someone in.  They send someone in, but they don’t go in.  They’re not about to go in.  If they went in, they might hear what Jesus is saying.  They don’t want to hear.  If they went in, they might see.  They don’t want to see.  They want it all to stop.  They don’t want Jesus to be a problem; they don’t want him to cause trouble.  Our Jesus, you know, why, he’s no trouble at all!

The last thing you or I need more of in our lives is trouble.  Less, please!  We pray to God about our troubles and want Him mostly to make them go away.  And when He doesn’t seem to be making them go away as quickly or as completely as we would like, we can get a little frayed.  Where’s that peace and comfort and power, God?!

A danger every Christian, every church, and every denomination faces is this impulse to keep Jesus from being a problem, keeping Jesus from causing trouble.  Now, some trouble we don’t mind, like trouble for those who have it coming, those who so richly deserve it: them!  We don’t mind fun trouble—a little hooky, a little mischief we can giggle about together in the back row.  The Pharisees and Herodians were arranging trouble for Jesus and making trouble for him, too.  Oh, we can make Jesus tame enough, bland enough.  The church gilds Jesus by gelding him, but Jesus isn’t so easily penned, or pinned down.

They tell him, there in the house—almost like a little church, a crowded little church!—they tell him, “Your mother and brothers are outside looking for you” (3:32).  Looking for Jesus.  So, they come to where they’ve been told he is, and they don’t know how to find him?  “Who are you seeking?” Jesus asks the soldiers and temple officials, there in the garden.  They’ve come for Jesus, of course, everyone knows that, but not everyone knows Jesus.  I mean, people know all sorts of things about Jesus, some true, some just not true, but they don’t know Jesus himself, and they won’t know him, can’t know him, until they genuinely begin looking for him.  Seek, and you shall find.  Many people know about Jesus, and they aren’t seeking him.  I sometimes fear Presbyterians know more about that than we care to confess.

Jesus is teaching.  Jesus has a purpose in view.  He says many things we treasure up in our hearts, and he says some things we sort of forget he said, or that we just don’t think about.  Why?  Today, Jesus asks a question: “Who are my mother and my brothers?” (3:33).  It’s not that he is denying his family or rejecting Mary, blessed virgin, queen of heaven, mother of God and all et cetera though she be.  He’s not rejecting his brothers.  He still loves them and has concern for them.  He’s also reminding everyone that someone more than the carpenter’s son is with them.  Elsewhere, Jesus says, “If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even their own life—such a person cannot be my disciple” (Lk 14:26).

If anyone believes he or she can come to Jesus to love and serve him completely while loving and serving anyone or anything else first, more, that person is lying to himself or herself.  It’s as if Jesus were saying, My disciples put me first because I was, and am before all.  I always have been and always shall be first.  Those who serve me serve me in Spirit and in truth.  No one can both cling to lies and serve me.  No one can hold onto their prejudices and preferences and at the same time serve me first and best of all.  There’s that old hymn, “I Surrender All,” but all is a lot, isn’t it?  Yet “I Surrender Almost All” doesn’t sing as well.

No.  Jesus is saying we will know his family by one thing: “Whoever does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother” (3:35).  People like to live according to their words, their way.  This is normal and natural and should come as no surprise.  We don’t like to feel inconvenienced, and we’ll do nearly anything to make our religion as convenient as we can: our times are all about convenience: making things easier, not harder—convenience food, convenience packaging, convenience religion.  And when we do that, we aren’t doing God’s will but our own, and then we know who we are worshiping.

Loving and serving Jesus isn’t all inconvenience.  It’s all blessing and glory, and we all—me, too—must grow into understanding that, learn our way into perceiving that, me and you, together.  Those who do God’s will live according to God’s values, God’s priorities, God’s Word.  Only, what are God’s values?  What are God’s priorities?  Who can show us?  Who can tell us?  The answer is so obvious and, more often than we might like to admit, so inconvenient.