“Who is my mother? And who are my siblings?”
Jesus’s question to guide us on our dive deeper into the Gospel of Mark – past the sensationalism of Jesus’s early miracles, into the meat and heart of his message here on earth. Chapter 3 marks a turning point: Rising Criticism, new enemies… but also an ever-growing audience. The people flocking to see this strange new teacher are no longer just from Galilee… And they’re no longer just… Jews…
The video of Mark chapter 3 – written and narrated by me – is below. Check out chapter 1 or chapter 2 first is you missed them. The story really does build on itself, and that’s becoming more and more apparent as we move into chapter 3. The full script I am reading from is pasted below the video, in case you’re one of those people who wants to read along.
Children’s activity books are (and will be) available to accompany each chapter. Sign up to my newsletter to have them delivered in PDF format to you weekly, ready to print (and yes, the chapter 2 activities are available for download immediately upon sign up). Click here if you’re interested.
1.) Jesus went again into a synagogue, and a man was there who had a withered up hand.
2.) And they watched Jesus closely, to see whether he would heal this man on the Sabbath, because they were trying to gather evidence against him.
(remember, for strict observers of the Jewish law, working on the Sabbath was strictly forbidden, and just about anything counted, or could be made to count, as “work” on the Sabbath…)
3.) But Jesus said to the man with the withered hand: Get up and stand in the midst of us.
4.) And then he said to everyone else: On the Sabbath, is it right to do good or to do evil? To save a life, or to kill?
And they were silent
5.) So looking around at them in anger, upset about their calloused hearts, Jesus said to the man: “Stretch out your hand.”
And he stretched his hand out.
6.) At once, the pharisees went out to meet with the Herodians to discuss ways they might work together to destroy Jesus.
Now the Herodians were, simply put, Jews who supported King Herod (or, by the time Jesus was teaching, Herod’s sons) and the Roman occupation of Judah. In other words, the Herodians supported the very government that the Pharisees usually criticized so harshly. But the enemy of my enemy is my friend—as they say… The Herodians were responsible for the arrest of John the Baptist, Jesus’s predecessor, so it was reasonable for the Pharisees to expect them to find Jesus dangerous, too.
Interesting, isn’t it, that even when it comes to his enemies, Jesus has the effect of bringing people together.
7-8.) So Jesus withdrew with his disciples—that is, with the people following him to learn from him—to the sea—meaning, probably, the Sea of Galilee, which is actually a large lake…
And a great multitude accompanied him from Galilee.
And when they heard about all the things he was doing, another great multitude came to him from Judea and from Jerusalem, and from Idumea, and beyond the Jordan, and around Tyre and Sidon…
Now the geography here matters far more than we might realize at first glance.
Jesus was a Jew, and for a thousand years, the center of Jewish worship and religion has been the Holy City, Jerusalem. Jerusalem is in Judea, the homeland, where “real” Jews lived. A few hundred years before Jesus’s birth, a Jewish dynasty called the Hasmoneans resettled the area north of Judea. This became Galilee. The people who lived in Galilee in Jesus’s time were, therefore, both ethnically and religiously Jews who also considered Jerusalem to be the center of all true or legitimate worship.
Between Judea and Galilee was a region called Samaria. The people living in Samaria were part Israelite mixed both ethnically and, more importantly, religiously with many other groups of people from the area. Jews and Samaritans both came from the Israelites—that is, long, long ago, they had a common ancestor, Jacob, also known as Israel. Because of this, they worshiped the same God. But Samaritans rejected Jerusalem as the one legitimate place of worship, and they also had many practices and traditions inherited from non-Israelite religions.
In some ways, Idumea, the territory south of Judea, was worse than Samaria… Idumea is the Greek name for a people the Jews had long known as Edom, the descendants, according to legend, of Jacob’s twin brother Esau, and, historically, one of Israel’s greatest enemies. The same Hasmonean dynasty that had resettled Galilee also conquered Idumea and converted the area to Judaism, but the people living there were never considered Jews. The infamous King Herod was so hated, in part, because he was an Idumean, a descendant of Esau, not Jacob.
“Beyond the Jordan” could mean anywhere in a large stretch of territory east of the Jordan River. Most notably, the Decapolis, a Greek word meaning “ten cities” and inhabited at the time by a transplanted Greek population. The Samaritans and Idumeans were at least native to the region. Like the Jews, their ancestors on any and all sides had lived in the area for thousands of years. The Greek population, though, was established in the area only a few centuries earlier. They came into the land, moreover, as foreign conquerers. In other words, they were the most foreign of the foreign, and most closely associated with the hated Roman occupiers. Also “beyond the Jordan” is Perea, a sort-of-Jewish territory similar both ethnically and religiously to Samaria—though the inhabitants may have been considered more “properly Jewish” than Samaritans.
And then, we have Tyre and Sidon. These were cities in the Roman province of Syria, north of Galilee. At Jesus’s time in history, they were, like the Decapolis, culturally Greek. However, the cities Tyre and Sidon, specifically, were also great historical enemies of the Israelites going back long before the Greeks appeared in the area.
When Mark tells us that “a great crowd” came to see Jesus from Judea, Idumea, beyond the Jordan, Tyre, and Sidon, he is not just telling us that Jesus attracted people from all over a large geographical area. That’s part of it—but it goes much deeper. He is presenting Jesus as the unifier of extremely ancient cultural, religious, and political divides, all going back hundreds of years, some going back thousands. To put this in perspective: The United States is 250 years old. The culture clash between Jews and the inhabitants of the Decapolis was at least 250 years old. The conflict between Jerusalem and Tyre had been going on, off and on, for about a thousand years (that’s our country’s age times 4). The conflict between Israelites and Edomites (Idumeans) was… we don’t even know how old, historically, because it goes back into the book of Genesis, the time of legend, which is difficult to date. The hatreds and prejudices between all of these groups of people, in Jesus’s day, ran deeper and older than any hatred or prejudice we modern Americans can easily comprehend.
They all came to see Jesus, there, on the shores of the Sea of Galilee.
9.) So, Jesus had his disciples get a small boat to prevent all the people from crowding him.
10.) Because he had healed many people, so everyone who had some affliction kept pressing in to touch them.
11.) And whenever the unclean spirits saw him, they would fall down and yell out “You are the Son of God!” 12.) no matter how many time he rebuked them to keep them from making him known.
13.) Then Jesus went up the hill and called certain people to come with him.
14.) He made twelve of them “apostles”—which means “a delegate” or “ambassador”—so they could stay with him and so that he could send them out to preach
15.) and have the authority to cast out demons
16.) So he made the Twelve:
He changed Simon’s name to Peter.
17.) And there was also Jame the son of Zebedee, and John, James’s brother—he gave them the name Boanerges, which means “Sons of Thunder.”
18.) And also Andrew and Philip and Bartholomew and Matthew and Thomas and James the son of Alphaeus and Thaddaeus and Simon the Zealot
19.) and Judas Iscariot, who also betrayed him.
20.) Then he went into a house. And such a huge crowd gathered that they weren’t even able to eat a meal.
21.) Now, about this time, those closest to Jesus—that is, his family—heard about what was going on. “He’s lost his mind!” they said, and went to get him and drag him home.
22.) Likewise, the Scribes who had come from Jerusalem said: “He’s possessed by Beelzebul!” And they said “By the power of the prince of demons he is driving out demons!”
23.) So calling them together, Jesus spoke to them in parables:
How an accuser cast out an accuser?
24.) And if a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand.
25.) And if a house is divided against itself, that house is not able to stand.
26.)And if Satan rises up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand. That would be the end of him.
27.) No one can break into a strong man’s house and rob him unless he first ties up the strong man. Then he can rob him.
28.) Amen I tell you that the sons of men will be forgiven all sins and blasphamies, not matter how many times they blaspheme—that is, no matter how often they vilify God or speak abusively against God…
29.) Whoever vilifies the Holy Spirit absolutely never has forgiveness, but is guilty of eternal sin.
30.) Jesus said this because they were saying that he himself had and “Unclean Spirit.”
31.) At that point, Jesus’s mother and his siblings arrived. They were standing outside, and sent someone in to call him—there was no texting or email back then, you had to send an actual person to tell another person if you were looking for them.
32.) So the crowd of people seated around Jesus told him: Hey, your mother and your brothers and your sisters are all outside looking for you.
33.) But Jesus said: Who is my mother, and who are my siblings?
34.) He looked around at all the people seated in a circle around him, and said: Behold, my mother and my siblings.
35.) For whoever does the will of God—That person is a brother of mine, and sister, and mother.
