We often think of Jesus as someone who is pretty mild-mannered, peacemaker, finder of lost sheep, the teacher of the beatitudes—all of those things. All that is true, of course, but when we think of Jesus in just those terms we can miss a large part of His character.
Jesus is also someone who could have an edge. Think of how He talked to the Pharisees from time to time. He could say things designed to get people thinking, even get them upset, so they would get out of their old thought patterns and look at the world a bit differently. He could shake folks up.
We see some of that today. Today’s Gospel from St. Mark is a continuation of the events in Nazareth, when Jesus arrives back at His home town after working miracles and gathering a huge crowd. There is a lot of discussion about what is going on with Jesus, and the scribes think He is possessed by a devil.
His mother, brothers and sisters, who have concluded that Jesus has gone crazy, arrive at the house but can’t get through the crowd to see Him. So they send word to Him, and try to call to Him. We don’t know what they said, but presumably it was something like: “Please come out and talk to us. We’re worried about you.”
Jesus’ response is pretty harsh. Not only does He not come out. He seems not even to acknowledge that Mary and the others are His “mother and brothers and sisters.” Rather, He points to the people around Him and says that they are His “mother and brothers” and that “whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.”
By extension, of course, He is saying that what His family wants of Him—to stop doing what He is doing and be “cured” of His insanity- -is not God’s will.
Imagine being Mary or Jesus’ other relatives. They think they have Jesus’ best interests in mind, and are trying to help. In response Jesus slams them pretty soundly. Must have been quite a shock.
Perhaps Jesus was trying to get them to reconsider their whole opinion of what Jesus was doing, and a sort of shock therapy was the best way to do that. We have to imagine that they left the house where Jesus was staying after this exchange extremely troubled and confused.
There might be times in our lives where Jesus uses a sort of shock therapy with us as well. Perhaps there are events that leave us confused, upset, knocked off our moorings. We’re troubled and don’t know how to respond.
Who knows, maybe those events are intended to be a bit of shock therapy for us. Perhaps Jesus is trying to wake us up, to get us to see the world a bit differently, to recognize where He is working in our lives in ways that we didn’t previously see.
We might consider that possibility the next time life throws us a curve ball.