Family – Matthew 12:46-50

Here’s part of what the Encyclopedia Britannica says about family:

At its best, the family performs various valuable functions for its members. Perhaps most important of all, it provides for emotional and psychological security, particularly through the warmth, love, and companionship that living together generates between spouses and in turn between them and their children. The family also provides a valuable social and political function by institutionalizing procreation and by providing guidelines for the regulation of sexual conduct. The family additionally provides such other socially beneficial functions as the rearing and socialization of children, along with such humanitarian activities as caring for its members when they are sick or disabled. On the economic side, the family provides food, shelter, clothing, and physical security for its members, some of whom may be too young or too old to provide for the basic necessities of life themselves. Finally, on the social side, the family may serve to promote order and stability within society as a whole.

Jesus needed and desired family, especially as he was experiencing waves of hatred from his opponents. In that context he spoke about it in the tenderest of words.

While he was still speaking to the people, behold, his mother and his brothers stood outside, asking to speak to him. But he replied to the man who told him, “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?” And stretching out his hand toward his disciples, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.” (Matthew 12:46-50 ESV)

To cap off this day of opposition Jesus uses the occasion of his family visiting him and desiring to speak to him as an opportunity to declare who his real family is, his disciples.  This is not to say that Jesus’ family of origin was not important to him.  They are important because they are family and if they are also disciples of Jesus they are his family in a double sense.

From Mark 3:21, however, we learn that not all his family were his disciples and in fact thought he had lost his senses.  Even Mary seems included in this (Joseph is never mentioned after Jesus’ trip to Jerusalem at age 12 so was probably not alive at this point) though she is obviously a disciple of Jesus from his death on (see Acts 1).  Paul tells us that Jesus appeared to his brother James after his resurrection and James, who wrote the epistle and has a prominent role in the Jerusalem church (Acts 15; Galatians 2), likely became a believer at that point.

Our earthly family may not be our real family spiritually speaking, or they may be, but we are to be family to one another as disciples of Jesus Christ. And this is no more especially the case when we are being persecuted. In some ways persecution highlights and deepens our sense of spiritual family. We are opposed all together because we name the name of Jesus. He is our unity, we his mother, brother, sister, his kin. As we revisit the definition from Encyclopedia Britannica, is our Christian family providing what it describes? Are we providing to our Christian family what it needs?