When we left the story of Mary
last week, Jesus had just performed his first miracle. This was a pretty unmistakable sign that it
was time for Jesus to leave Nazareth and start his ministry on earth.
That must have been hard on Mary. She knew it had to be this way, of
course. She remembered what the angel
Gabriel had told her. She knew who Jesus
was. Still, it was hard. Jesus had been a part of her life for thirty
years, more or less. And now, he was not
there any more.
There probably was not a day that went by that she did
not think of him. She wondered where he
was. She wondered what he was
doing. She wondered if he was all right,
if he was eating properly, if he was getting enough rest. She wondered all the things that a mother
wonders when her son is away from home, out on his own.
Once in a while, of course, Jesus would come back to
Nazareth. And I’m sure he looked in on
Mary, to see how she was doing. Wouldn’t
you like to know how those conversations went?
Did Jesus tell Mary about all the things he’d done? Did he tell her about being tempted in the
desert? Did he tell her about healing
people? Did he tell her about taking on
demons? If so, how would Mary react to
that? Would she be proud of Jesus? Would she be worried about him? Did she ever try to get him to come back
home, to come back to the carpenter shop?
Well, we don’t know any of that, of course. But if she ever did try to get him to come
back home, it did not work. Jesus was
never there very long. He’d be there for
a little while, and then he’d be gone again, back to his ministry. And Mary would be alone again, left to wonder
and worry about him.
Obviously,
communication back then was not what it is now.
It’s not like Jesus had a cell phone Mary could call. She could not send him a text or an
email. She could not even contact him on
facebook. Still, though, I’m sure she
heard things. Probably lots of
things. Maybe she heard about the time
he fed five thousand people with five loaves of bread and two fish. Maybe she heard about the huge crowds he was
drawing to hear him preach. Maybe she
even heard about him walking on the water and calming the storm.
If she did, she must have been really proud of him. I mean, think about it. Think about if your son or your daughter
could do stuff like that. Most parents
are proud of their children anyway, but this would be something really incredible
right. To think that your child was
doing that. It’d be incredible.
But she probably heard some other things, too. She probably heard about the times Jesus broke
the Sabbath law. She probably heard
about the times he argued with the Pharisees.
She probably heard about the times he got into trouble with the
authorities. And you just know that
there were some people eager to tell her about stuff like that, right? After all, it’s not like gossip is a recent
invention. People did it back then, too. There were probably people who just could not
wait to tell Mary when they heard something critical of Jesus.
So we come to our Bible reading for today. We’re told that Jesus and his disciples go to
a house, and there’s a huge crowd there, so big that Jesus could not even
eat. Then we’re told, “When his family heard
about this, they went to take charge of him, for they said, ‘He is out of his
mind.’”
Now, we don’t know who this “family” was that thought
Jesus was out of his mind. Some people
think it was not actually his family at all, at least not in the sense of blood
relatives. And that does kind of make
sense, because people sometimes gave “family” a broader meaning back then. People who were family friends were sometimes
referred to as uncles or cousins, even though they were not actually
related. Whoever it was, though, it must
not have been Mary, and it must not have been Jesus’ brothers, because we’re
told later in the passage, “Then Jesus’ mother and brothers arrived.”
And that’s the part I want to focus on. Jesus is talking to the people, and he’s
telling them things about God and about their faith. And the things he’s telling them, the way
he’s interpreting scripture and telling them who God is, are things they’ve
never heard before. They’ve certainly
never heard them from the Pharisees. And
Jesus is saying it like he’s someone in authority, like he knows this stuff and
has no doubt that it’s true.
And because of that, some people think Jesus has gone
nuts. And other people think he’s
possessed by demons. And in the middle
of all this chaos and confusion, Mary and Jesus’ brothers show up. They cannot even get in the door because of
the crowd. So they send a message to
Jesus to tell him that they’re there and want to talk to him.
And here’s Jesus’ response. He says, “Who are my mother and my
brothers?” Then he looks at the people
around him, the people who believe in him and trust him, and he says, “Here are
my mother and my brothers! Whoever does
God’s will is my brother and sister and mother.”
Can you imagine Mary’s reaction, when she heard that
response? She was worried about
Jesus. She’d heard he might be in
trouble. She came down to check on him,
to see if he could help. And Jesus sends
a response that basically is a rejection of both Mary and of his brothers.
Now, I don’t think Jesus really intended it that way. It’s hard for me to believe that Jesus
would’ve deliberately hurt his mother. I
think he was more making a point about how we are all brothers and sisters if
we follow God. Or, he may have been
afraid that Mary and his brothers were going to try to make him stop his
ministry. Or there may have been other
reasons Jesus aid what he said. But this
is a sermon series about Mary. And Mary
has come all this way because she loves Jesus and is worried about him, and
Jesus refuses to even see her. Can you
imagine how she must have felt?
We don’t know what happened after that. Mark drops the story at that point and moves
on to something else. So do Matthew and
Luke in their versions of the story.
We’d like to think, of course, that maybe after the meal was over and
the people had left, Jesus went to see Mary and explained things to her. But for all we know, that may not have
happened until much later or it may not have happened at all. For all we know, Mary and her sons may have
simply turned around and gone home, feeling like Jesus did not even care about
them any more.
Have you ever had someone you love hurt you like
that? Have you ever felt rejected by
someone you were really close to?
Someone you were just trying to help?
If so, then maybe you have some idea how Mary felt here. To have her own son, a son whom she’d been
through a lot to have and to raise, and who, after all, was supposed to be the
Son of God, reject her, and in a really public way. It had to hurt.
But here’s the thing.
Somehow, Mary got over it.
Somehow, Mary got past the hurt.
I don’t suppose it was easy. It
probably took some time. It probably
took some prayer. Maybe it took talking
to Jesus at some point, we don’t know.
But somehow, Mary got over it. We
know she got over it because we see her with Jesus later in the gospels. In fact, we see her at the cross when Jesus
is dying, and we see her going to prepare Jesus’ body for burial.
In other words, Mary forgave Jesus. Does that sound odd to you? That Mary would forgive Jesus? After all, Jesus is the divine Son. Jesus is without sin. And yet Mary forgave Jesus. Did Jesus sin, that Mary had to forgive him?
No, I don’t think so.
I believe that Jesus did not sin while he was on earth. He was tempted to, but he did not. But I still think that Mary forgave him.
You see, I don’t think we have to sin, necessarily, to
hurt people. We can hurt people by
accident. We can hurt people with the
best of intentions. We can hurt people by
things we say or do when we don’t even realize how they’re going to take what
we say.
And that can happen to us, too. We can be hurt by people who have no
intention of hurting us. But despite
their intentions, we’re still hurt. And
we have to find a way to get past it.
And that way past it is to forgive them.
We need to forgive them for hurting us even if they don’t know they hurt
us. We don’t forgive them to help
them. We forgive them to help us.
I don’t think Jesus intended to hurt Mary. But I suspect Mary was hurt. And I suspect Mary needed to forgive
Jesus. Not because Jesus needed to
receive forgiveness. But because Mary
needed to give it. She needed to forgive
Jesus so she could get past the hurt and have a relationship with her son again.
Who do you need to forgive? I suspect there’s someone. I suspect we all have someone we need to
forgive. I’d encourage you to think
about who it is. I’d encourage you to
pray about it. And I’d encourage you to
find a way to forgive them. It won’t be
easy. It may take some time. It may take lots of time and lots of
prayer.
But
keep trying. Even if they don’t think
they need forgiveness, keep trying. Even
if they’re not interested in receiving your forgiveness, keep trying. Keep trying until you can do it. Because you’re not forgiving them because
they need to receive forgiveness. You’re
forgiving them because you need to give forgiveness. You’re forgiving them so you can get past the
hurt. Because that’s the only way we can
ever be free of it. And it’s only when
we’re free of that hurt that we can truly be the people God wants us to be.
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