Hi everyone. Welcome back to the Logical Bible Study Podcast. We're taking a look at the gospel reading from today's Mass and then having a look at the literal sense of the text. The church tells us we always have to start with what the author was trying to convey to
his original audience. Today we're going to be looking at Mark chapter 3, but before we do that, I think this is one of those ones where it's actually worth going back to a previous passage and just looking at that before we jump into today's passage because it will make a lot more sense that way. So let's go back to verse 21 in verse 21 of Mark, chapter 3.
So it's about 10 verses earlier. Jesus relatives in Nazareth hear about Jesus. So Jesus is doing ministry in Capernaum and his relatives, his mother and his other relatives who we'll explore shortly, are in Nazareth. So the word gets around to them about what Jesus is doing and people are bringing them this report. So Mary and his relatives are hearing this report that Jesus is out of his mind. So that helps with the context. Now think about family obligations in that culture.
So family ties were really strong. Any action by an individual was seen as a reflection on the whole family, and any breach of family honour would result in severe discipline. You did not want one of your members of your family bringing shame on the family. So from the perspective of Mary and the other relatives of Jesus, really Jesus should be back in Nazareth being a Carpenter rather than doing this crazy tour, attracting crowds and arousing the anger of the authorities.
Think about it, if Jesus is making the authorities in Jerusalem angry, which we know he is, that's not going to reflect well on his family. So they're concerned for him and they're concerned for their own welfare. From what they can understand, this miracle working he's supposedly doing is possibly just evidence of mental imbalance. Remember they've seen him grow up for 30 years just being a Carpenter. All of a sudden he's a a star doing these miracles.
So their current thought is he's a bit mentally imbalanced. We need to go and get him and bring him home. Also, another fact to consider here, Joseph has probably passed away by this time because he isn't mentioned at all after Jesus childhood. So Jesus is probably 30. Don't know how old Joseph was, but if we consider that a lot of people didn't make it past 50 in that culture, it's it's possible. But in fact I'd say it's likely that Joseph is no longer alive by this point.
So Jose Jesus older relatives have sort of taken responsibility for him. Jesus is under their charge, and so they, whoever they are, his older relatives and his mother, set out to find him, and the text in verse 21 says they're going to seize him. So they set out on this twenty mile journey from Nazareth, their hometown, to Capernaum, where Jesus is living and doing his ministry. Then what happens in Mark is there's what's called a mark and
the sandwich. So Mark starts to tell a narrative, and then he stops abruptly, puts a different thing in there, and then resumes the original narrative. Scholars call that a mark and sandwich. So we have the Mark and Sandwich, and in the middle of the sandwich is the passage we heard yesterday about the
unforgivable sin. And then Mark returns to the description of his family coming to get him, which is brings us right up to where we are today in Mark chapter 3, verses 31 to 35. So here's the text of that. The mother and brothers of Jesus arrived and standing outside, sent in a message asking for him. A crowd was sitting around him at the time. The message was passed to him. Your mother and brothers and sisters are outside asking for you, he replied. Who are my mother and my brothers?
And looking round at those in a circle about him, he said, here are my mother and my brothers. Anyone who does the will of God, that person is my brother and sister and mother. So that's the passage we're looking at today. So verse 31, they arrive. The mother and the brothers of Jesus arrive from Nazareth in Capernaum. So they've just arrived in Capernaum. So we have here the mother of Jesus. That's Mary. Now, a lot of Catholics are a little bit uncomfortable with this passage.
Now it's possible she was just dragged along by the other family members, but I think it's reasonable to say that at this point, Mary does not fully comprehend what Jesus is doing. The Angel Gabriel apparently didn't tell her the full extent of what Jesus ministry was going to look like, just that he would be the son of David that everyone had been waiting for. She probably didn't anticipate this massive crowd thing and the authorities persecuting him. She didn't expect all that.
So at this point in Jesus ministry, it's quite early on. She doesn't understand. And I do. Think it's worth? Discussing this verse a bit because as Catholics you can have different opinions about it as I. Said at the start there, it's possible. That she does fully understand everything that Jesus ministry would entail and she's just been dragged along. That is certainly possible, and many Catholics. Hold to that view.
But we also want to think about what are the possible ways of thinking about it in terms of she genuinely doesn't understand. Well, we know that according to Luke's Gospel, she knows quite early on that he is God. So that Angel Gabriel. Says to her. He'll be the son of David, the son of God, and then when she. Visits Elizabeth. Elizabeth explicitly says you are the mother of God, so she. Does know all of that, but it's not entirely. Clear.
How much Mary knows about the exact details of what Jesus ministry would look like. Theologians do. Discuss this because. Certainly in the early chapters of Luke's. Gospel. It does say that. He's going to cause division, but remember. That she's also. In that same gospel and the Gospel of Luke, she's quite concerned about Jesus when they find him in the temple. That wasn't obvious to her that they would find him in the temple, and she didn't expect him to be doing what he's doing.
So I do think we as Catholics, we have room to say that Mary is concerned about some of the things she's seeing Jesus doing, and there's a whole lot more you. Could say about this as you. Explore Marian theology. You'll see that. Theologians have. Agreed that. Mary had the fullness of grace, but theologians are divided in terms of what that means about her knowledge and. This is one of these verses. It's well worth. Getting into but. Probably by the time of the cross.
She does understand. She gets it then. But at this stage it's OK for us to say that Mary doesn't fully get it and she's concerned about Jesus. She thinks is possibly a little bit gone, a little bit too far.
So there's the mother of Jesus. We also have the brothers of Jesus. Now we need to explore these brothers of Jesus. So firstly, the word brother in Greek is a del force and in that culture is used quite loosely as it is in the Old Testament. We have lots of examples of people being called brothers in the Old Testament and we later discovered they're not actually brothers, they're just close
relatives. So in that culture as it is in some countries even today, people will be called uncle, auntie, brother, when they're not literally that biologically, they're not biologically brothers, but perhaps they are extended family members or cousins. That's the way it was used in Jewish culture. So just seeing the word Adolphus doesn't guarantee that we have here a biological brother of Jesus, just some sort of close
relative. We also know from later in the passage that some of his sisters are there as well. So we have some brothers and sisters, so we know that there's some sort of senior close relative of Jesus. Because remember, they feel responsible what they want to take. They feel that they're responsible for Jesus because Joseph has passed away, which probably indicates that they're older than Jesus. So they're senior relatives of Jesus. Who are they? Let's see what we can work out
about them. These brothers and sisters of Jesus are mentioned several times in the New Testament, though we're never given a full explanation of who their mother and father are. We just get little tidbits. Another thing we know is the early Church unanimously held that Mary remained a virgin her entire life, and that's Catholic teaching as well. Catholics. A Catholic belief is that Mary did not have any children after
Jesus or before Jesus actually. So we know firstly, they cannot be children of Mary, whoever these brothers and sisters of Jesus are, They're not Mary's kids. But also, if Joseph has died at this time, it seems like Mary is living with these other relatives in Nazareth. Since she's still living in Nazareth, and since these other relatives are also living with her in Nazareth, it seems likely that these other relatives probably grew up in Nazareth
too. If we put all that together, probably we're looking at some blood relatives of Mary here, some people who all grew up in the Nazareth area, some blood relatives of Mary, as we already said that they are probably older than Jesus because of their authoritative behavior. So they're born before Mary and Joseph were married.
Now here's the interesting bit. Later in Mark, in chapter 6 verse three, we actually get the names of some of these so-called brothers of Jesus. So there's four brothers of Jesus that we're given names for in Mark chapter 6, verse three, and you can look at this up as well. We have James, Joseph, Judas and Simon.
Now it's problematic as all four of these names are really common even amongst you can see there that three of them, James, Judas and Simon, they have the same names as Son of Jesus Apostles. And the 4th 1 Joseph is the same as Jesus Father. So it gets really confusing trying to track who these four boys are, but we know for sure that they're not fool siblings. And here's why. The James and Joseph, the two of the boys mentioned here, James and Joseph.
We later get more information about James and Joseph in Mark chapter 15, verse 40. It says that James and Joseph have a mother called Mary, but it's not the Mary that's Jesus mother. So we Mark explicitly tells us that James and Joseph are not full blood relatives of Jesus. They're not full siblings. They are in fact from another mother. So who's this other mother? Mary. Many in the early church, we're not sure about this, but we know Mark tells us for sure that
they're not. They don't come from the same mother as Jesus. And then on top of that, many in the early church believe that this other Mary possibly is Mary the wife of Cleopas mentioned in the Gospel of John and the early church, A lot of the church fathers talked about this other Mary actually being a relative of Mary, the mother of Jesus.
So if that's the case, if this other Mary is a relative of Mary, the mother of Jesus, then roughly what we have here is that these boys, James, Judas, Joseph, and Simon, basically they're Jesus cousins or second cousins, something along those lines. So it took us a while to get to that conclusion. But if we put together all the data, particularly what the Gospels tell us about the mother of these boys, we know for sure that they're not Mary's kids.
They're probably Jesus cousins. There's some other theories as well, but I think this is the most plausible theory that these are blood relatives of Mary, but not blood relatives. Sorry, this that's not a good way of putting it. They are blood relatives of Mary, but they are not Mary's children. OK, so having said that, they arrive in Capernaum. So that's they've been on a 20 mile journey, probably only took a day or two. They arrive in Nazareth and they stand outside.
There's waiting outside Jesus home in Nazareth in Capernaum. Because the crowd is too dense, they actually can't get into the house. Jesus is in his house. He's healing people. He's teaching massive crowds as usual, and it's too dense. They can't get in. So keep this in mind. Often in pictures you'll see it as though they could see Jesus or something and Jesus could see them. He actually can't. From what we can tell, the crowd is too thick.
They can't see each other. So what they have to do is they send in a message. So they get they send someone to squeeze through the crowd to speak to Jesus. And this is the message they send into Jesus. Verse 32. Your mother and brothers and sisters are outside asking for you. That's the message Jesus gets. So remember, Jesus can't see any of his relatives. This is probably news to him. He's probably going oh OK, these people have arrived. I wasn't expecting them. Who knows?
He's the son of God. Maybe he was expecting them. But then his reply in verse 33. Because it says here, he replied, It's seems likely that he's not speaking loudly to the crowd here. Probably only those nearby would have heard his reply. Here That would include Peter. And remember, Peter is the main source for this gospel of Mark. So here's his reply. Who are my mother and brothers now? Jesus here is not pretending to know his biological relatives. He's not being like, oh, who are
my mother and brothers? I don't know. I've never met them before. That's not what he's saying. He's just using this as a teaching opportunity. He's about to springboard off this, to say something more profound. Verse 34, looking around at those in a circle about him. So the crowd that are nearby, sitting, listening to him think about what's going on here, this inner circle of the crowd is sitting and listening to him. And they're accepting the message of the Kingdom.
They're taking in, the message of the Kingdom. They want to hear more about God and about Jesus. He says that here are my mother and my brothers, this inner circle of the crowd. And then he goes on verse 35, anyone who does the will of God. Now let's pause there. Anyone who does the will of God, that's anyone in the world, even up until today. If you do the will of God, this next bit applies to you. That person is my brother and
sister and mother. So anyone who does the will of God, That's the prerequisite Jesus sets out here, can be considered legitimately to be part of the family of Jesus and God. Anyone who does the will of the anyone who does the will of God. So that's not just a nice sentiment. You might go on retreats and things and hear this oh, you're a child of God or Jesus is your brother. Well, it is a nice sentiment, but actually Jesus teaches this here.
It's literally true. Well, in a spiritual sense, it is correct to say that we're a part of Jesus family. So not only is Jesus establishing the Kingdom of God, he is doing that, but he's also establishing a new family of God. We sometimes forget that aspect of it. Jesus is establishing a new family for God. Now let's go back to the cultural aspect of this. Jesus says here's my brother and here's my mother and brothers. That would have been shocking.
You can imagine a gasp from the crowd because to essentially put aside your own biological family and say, Nah, I have another family, that's shocking. That's putting aside your the expected family obligations, that's quite scandalous. Now one thing to notice who Jesus doesn't list in this family, He says. Anyone who does the will of God, listen to what he says is my mother and my brother and my sister who's missing from that list. Father. There's no father in.
Well, there's no one who's added into the family of God as father. That's significant. Jesus here is saying there's already a father of this family and that's God. I think that's quite an interesting little bit of the text, isn't it? God is the father of the family and Jesus. Part of Jesus mission is to bring more people into that family, but there's no more fathers of the family because there's only one father in there. So let's try and get a Jesus overall meaning here.
He's not dissing his own family. It's what he is saying though is that his obligations to his true spiritual family override his obligations to his natural biological family. He is saying that that he has another family that's more significant even than his biological family.
So we can say that even the closest of human bonds, the biological family, has to take second place to the Kingdom of God. That still applies to US today, and we need to think about how that might apply, you know, our own lives. Now, he's not dismissing his own family completely. He's not cutting them out of his life or something. And think about if things looked different at that particular time. So there's a massive crowd in the house. He can't see them. They can't see him.
If there was no big crowd, things might be quite different. If Jesus was alone up in the hills, or just with his 12 apostles, probably the conversation would have been quite different. It's just that there are so many people there in the crowd with him, and he's in the middle of teaching and healing. So presumably he's saying right now I'm needed here. This is the family that I need to tend to here, and that's more important than my biological family, and that's where the text ends.
Presumably he would have continued teaching. He would have just kept talking for a bit longer, and it's possible maybe that he might have caught up with his family later. Who knows, maybe the crowd stuck with him for too long. But it's possible that he did go and see his mother and his family a bit later on. But that's not recorded for us in the Gospels.
Another thing to keep in mind here is many of his family, many of the people listed here did eventually accept Jesus as the Messiah. Obviously his mother did, and we know that some of his brothers and sisters did. So that's mentioned in Acts 114, one Corinthians 9 verse 5, and Galatians one verse 19. There's these references to the mother and brothers, sorry, the brothers and sisters of the Lord who eventually become his disciples.
Although for many of them it's not until after his death we know that one of them in particular was really important. One of Jesus brothers called James eventually becomes the first Bishop of Jerusalem, and he becomes a really, really important figure in the early church, one of the most important. So that's our passage today.
There's only one catechism reference, and that's paragraph 500, and it's in the discussion about how Mary is ever virgin, and it directly links to this passage and echoes a lot of what I've been saying here. So paragraph 500 against this doctrine of Mary's ever virginity.
The objection is sometimes raised that the Bible mentions brothers and sisters of Jesus. The Church has always understood these passages as not referring to other children of the Virgin Mary. In fact, James and Joseph, brothers of Jesus, are described as the sons of another Mary, a disciple of Christ, whom Saint Matthew significantly calls the other Mary. They are close relations of Jesus according to an Old Testament expression. So I and I think that that's. You know, that's quite a
legitimate thing. It's not that Catholics are grasping at straws here to come up with an explanation. The text of the Gospels, particularly the Mark 15 that we looked at today, actually tells us that these so-called brothers of Jesus actually had a different mother. The Gospels tell tell us that. So it shouldn't be something that Catholics should be too concerned about. The the case here is pretty strong. Hopefully you'll learn something new from this.
It's a really interesting passage to explore for apologetic reasons, but it also tells us a lot about Jesus priorities and about how the Kingdom and family of God works as well. Thanks for listening. If you thought this was an informative podcast, please share it with some other people and we'll see you again tomorrow.