Feb 19: Its God’s will over everybody else’

Mt 12:49-50 And He stretched out His hand toward His disciples and 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.”

One of the most blessed things to have on this earth is: family. To have people young and old that are essentially a part of your own body and blood brings a connection like no other relationship. Brother, sister, father, mother, cannot be replaced by any other. Granted, the dynamics of your relationship with each other might not be perfect all the time, but usually, there is an underlying connection that remains for life. I think this is true especially when you are in trouble and need to rely on somebody.

Jesus had family too. Brothers, sisters, mother and father. Even though He was not conceived through fleshly passion, He came into this world just like any human did – through the womb of His mother. The Bible notes that Mary later had more children, therefore Jesus had siblings too. In fact one of them becomes His follower, James, who later writes a short letter to the church and even refers to himself as a bond-servant of Jesus Christ (James 1:1). Not much is known about His other brothers and sisters, but EVERYONE knows His mother, Mary! Despite all this though, we see Jesus taking a different approach when it came to dealing with family.

In today’s verse, the scene is Jesus speaking/teaching a crowd of people when somebody comes and says “Look! Your mother and Your brothers are standing outside asking to speak to You.” (Mt 12:47) The natural response from any loving son/brother would have been “Sure, let me wrap up this message here, and I will come and see them”, or simply “Sure, lets go”. I mean if Jesus’ mom wanted to speak to Him in the middle of His sermon, it must have been something very important? But what was Jesus’ response? It was like He completely ignored the request, and went on to clarify who His actually family was!! He rhetorically asks “Who is My mother and who are My brothers?” and then points to the crowd of disciples and answers “Here are My mother and My brothers!”

I must admit, I have struggled to understand this response by Jesus. Anyone hearing this would immediately declare that Jesus was out of His mind (they did it!) or get deeply offended and cut all ties with Him for the rest of their lives. Can you imagine the disrespect?

But the more I think about it, whatever Jesus said made complete sense. He was never from this world in the first place. His family was temporary. He was here on a special assignment from the Heavenly Father. And what mattered most was for Jesus to rebuild His heavenly family. He could not spend His time and energy just with one family on earth. He needed to touch as many lives as possible. Jesus had a much broader view of things (He was God after all!) which is why He spent most of His time with the lost sheep of Israel. He loved the world so much that He needed as many people as possible to enter the family of God’s kingdom.

Coming to think about it even more, Jesus who discerns the hearts and minds of people would have figured that whatever his mom and siblings wanted to speak about paled in comparison to His mission at hand. So, during that moment, Jesus basically says “No, not now mom.”

As His disciples, we too must be able to discern how much time to spend with whom. Even family can sometimes be a distraction to the task at hand. Yes, I just wrote that. But that’s the truth. Its God’s will for you over everybody else’. In the process, you will end up offending people. That’s just the reality of ministry. But both you (as a follower of Christ) and God Himself knows the truth, and the task assigned to you. So spend less time worrying about what those around you will think, and dedicate yourself to follow the will of God in your life.

“Not my will Lord, but Yours be done”.  Luke 22:42