Christian Art | Jesus’ Family | King James Audio Bible KJV
Luke 8: 19-21 – Week 25 Ordinary Time, Tuesday (King James Audio Bible KJV, Spoken Word)
19 ¶ Then came to him his mother and his brethren, and could not come at him for the press.
20 And it was told him by certain which said, Thy mother and thy brethren stand without, desiring to see thee.
21 And he answered and said unto them, My mother and my brethren are these which hear the word of God, and do it.
Relatives of Jesus, with Jesus’ mother Mary, have come to speak with him, but Jesus does not wish to meet with them. Jesus had problems with his family. We may consider some of the ways in which our own families support us, and at other times may hinder us from doing what is right. Jesus’ refusal to meet with his family is clearly expressed in all three of the Synoptic Gospels.
We may wonder at the family of Jesus’ coming to meet with him, presumably to try to take him home – what we might now term an ‘intervention’. They must have been greatly troubled by what Jesus was saying and doing. In Mark, we are told that Jesus’ friends thought him beside himself, that he had lost his wits. Perhaps it was partly a question of what the neighbours might say, but in these difficult and dangerous times there would be real fear about making oneself the centre of attention, and in such a revolutionary way as Jesus really did – this in addition to how Jesus might have been perceived to have been doing so politically.
To return Jesus from Capernaum to Nazareth would indeed have been to take him to a place of relative safety, up in the hills – but then how could Jesus have continued so effectively to speak to so many? Jesus’ mission is sacrifice. His cross is implied throughout. All that we hear about Jesus is continual self-giving. It must have been difficult for Jesus’ close friends and relatives to accept this.
Jesus’ response to his being told of his mother’s and relatives’ asking to speak with him is, above all, to extend for us the notion of family. It is a grand gesture, one which holds for us the truth of God’s Kingdom. Through faith, we become most intimately related with Jesus. We are mother and sister and brother – all family relationships are invoked to grasp the overwhelming truth of our oneness in Jesus Christ. Through our kinship with Jesus, our very being expands.
Concluding Prayer | Love Revealed By Jesus Christ
Almighty God,
we recall how you sent your angel to the centurion Cornelius
to show him the way of salvation.
Open our hearts to work more zealously
for the salvation of the world,
so that your Church
may bring us and all men into your presence.
Through Christ our Lord.
King James Audio Bible | Endnotes
Amazed And Afraid | Reactions To Jesus
Even Jesus’ family – even Jesus’ Mother Mary – were made amazed and afraid by Jesus. Throughout the Gospels, we see numerous instances where people were filled with fear and amazement in the presence of Jesus. These emotions reflect the power and authority that Jesus held over the people around him. His teachings were radical and challenging, and his actions often defied conventional wisdom and expectations.
Mary, Jesus’ mother, had a unique perspective on Jesus life and ministry. Mary knew Jesus in a way that no one else could, having carried Jesus in her womb and raised him from a child. Despite this, Mary was not immune to the powerful impact that Jesus had on those around him. In fact, we see in the Gospels that Mary herself was filled with fear and amazement on more than one occasion.
One such instance is recounted in Luke 2:41-52, where Mary and Joseph find Jesus in the temple after he had been missing for three days. When Mary expresses her anxiety and frustration to Jesus, Jesus responds with the words: ‘Did you not know that I must be about my Father’s business?’ (Luke 2:49) This response would have been shocking and bewildering to Mary, as it suggested a level of divine calling and authority that went beyond what Mary had known of her son before.
Similarly, in Mark 3:20-21, we read that Mary and Jesus’ family went to take charge of him because they thought he was ‘beside himself’. This suggests that they may have been struggling to come to terms with the powerful impact Jesus was having on the people around him and the radical message Jesus was preaching. They may have also been afraid of the religious authorities who saw Jesus as a threat to their power.
These moments of fear and amazement reveal the extent to which Jesus’ teachings and actions challenged people’s preconceived notions and defied conventional wisdom. Even those closest to Jesus – his own family – were not immune to the powerful impact Jesus had on those around him. However, as we see in Mary’s unwavering faith at the foot of the cross in John 19:25-27, those who were able to overcome their fear and embrace the message of Jesus were able to experience a sense of peace and purpose that they had never known before.
This fear and amazement that people felt in the presence of Jesus was not limited to his own family. Throughout the Gospels, we see that people from all walks of life were drawn to him, and that Jesus’ teachings and actions elicited a wide range of reactions, from awe and reverence to anger and disbelief.
One notable example of this is the story of the calming of the storm in Mark 4:35-41. In this story, Jesus and his disciples are in a boat when a fierce storm arises, threatening to capsize the vessel. Jesus, who is asleep in the boat, is awakened by the terrified disciples, who beg him to save them. In response, Jesus rebukes the wind and the waves, and the storm immediately subsides. The disciples are left in awe of Jesus’ power and authority, wondering aloud, ‘Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?’ (Mark 4:41)
Similarly, in Mark 5:1-20, we see the reaction of the people of the region of the Gerasenes to Jesus’ healing of a man possessed by a legion of demons. After witnessing the man’s transformation, they are filled with fear and beg Jesus to leave their region, not knowing how to reconcile the power they had witnessed with their own beliefs and way of life.
‘Death,’ says His Grace, ‘throws it all apart. For we are not as we should be. Faith requires our adjustment to God’s truth. God’s triumph in a very real sense requires in us the loss of our everything. Which, as with Mary at the other end of Jesus’s life, is God’s truth.’ The Gospel reading is of John 11: 1-45, which is a long passage, and His Grace’s homiletic theme commences in textual wilderness. Our brokenness – in this place – a family home. Our faith, our doubt, our death… The irruption – death, doubt, fear – within our precious scenes and our most intimate places. Our domesticity. His Grace speaks from the chair, as is a bishop’s prerogative, and says: ‘So much is obscure in the Gospels. We’re always reaching through them. We’re never there. Really, we never are. Our knowledge, our understanding, of the Gospels is never complete, and with each reading comes a new revelation. There are always new riches there. Just as there are between all of us, between myself and you. The Gospels are living texts. This is a part of the conversation we have with our own Christianity. It is a part of who we are in our relationship with Jesus. We are in this sense always on the brink. ‘So yes, there is plenty that doesn’t seem to make sense. As one of the order of bishops, we would be lying if we said that weren’t the case. They are not easy texts to encounter, if by that word we may signify something more than a superficial glancing off against, but rather a profound search for the word of God. The Gospels are written by people who had their own ideas, and often didn’t know what had really happened. Luke is quite explicit on this point. His is an investigation, from the explicitly claimed point of view of an historian, rather than that of a first-hand witness, who attempts, so he says, to set out an orderly account, out of the chaos, the sheer muddle, that has been handed down to him. It is possible to imagine Luke researching and composing his account after many years, when there has arisen a desire to know what exactly happened, and this implies a certain call to faith and certain demands of historicity, to historical exactitude. So in these different ways, the people of the first years of Christian faith are in the dark. There is also a decisive need to define the life of Jesus. And people didn’t get Jesus. The whole meaning of Christianity is only now beginning to take root throughout the composition. So much needs to be evangelized. The light shines almost in tentative fashion like that first star, which drew the wise men from the east to our Lord’s cradle. ‘John’s is widely held to be a very late Gospel. There are others who say that John’s Gospel might have been the first to acquire its true shape, because it most fully expresses Jesus, as we know him to be, as members of the Catholic Church. We don’t really know when any of this is being written, but we get a feel in John of a Gospel refined over many years, through a community. So there’s a lot going on there that I’d like you to think about. ‘What I would like to suggest to you is that, while within the Gospels we are often confronted with clues, guesswork, stories that have been handed down through so many people, and so in this sense we might find ourselves to be in the wilderness, this is the very desolate space itself to which we must give ourselves in order to experience Christ’s full redemption in our lives. I suggest it is for God’s glory that we do so. ‘As we become aware of ourselves, in this seminary, we find ourselves in a very secure, comfortable setting, and there are signs of Easter everywhere. Within the very fabric of these buildings, our Lord is risen; our Lord lives. But now this is our Lenten journey, where death enters, where death breaks us. We are to ride into Jerusalem in triumph, and then we are to be utterly broken, all hope gone, our hope extinguished. And really, I suggest to you, it is only by inhabiting this thought, as if we don’t know Easter is there, that our new life can follow, just when we have given up all hope, when every promise that Jesus made to us seems to have been cancelled. ‘And here now we have the story of Lazarus. I should like to suggest to you that we have a very powerful call now. In our very comfortable space, our domesticity, with all this comfort, where so very little might seem to happen each day, so it might seem to you, there is a disturbance within all of this comfort, and that is a disturbance within ourselves, and that is our call to Jesus. I think it is correct to say that our most comfortable places break in the light of Jesus from the inside, in order that we may take the necessary steps to be with Jesus. ‘Faith is not comfortable. I think that we can all receive the message of the rolling away of the rock from the tomb of Lazarus to say something of vital importance to ourselves concerning our openness to God’s love. The rock we roll away can come in all sorts of guises, but we know when we are blocked, and I firmly believe if we are truthful then we know where those blocks might be. ‘Next Sunday, which will be Palm Sunday, we process as it were to Jerusalem, to begin our Holy Week. Now as I speak to you we are on the brink. Even now, I suggest it might be very good for all of us to lay aside what we think we know, to fall apart a little, and so […]
The second reading for the Office of Readings on Ash Wednesday is from the letter by Pope Saint Clement I to the Corinthians. In this passage, Saint Clement urges believers to focus on peace and unity, encouraging them to fix their eyes on God and embrace His gifts. He emphasizes the importance of humility and harmony within the Christian community, reminding the faithful to adhere to the teachings and commandments of the Lord. This reading serves as a call to self-examination and renewal, aligning with the penitential nature of the Lenten season [ … ]
Psalm 90 meditates on brevity of human existence juxtaposed against the eternal nature of God. Psalm 90 invites readers to ponder the fragility of life while seeking solace in the enduring and transcendent character of God [ … ]
