Luke 8:19-21--Jesus' Mother and Brothers

Luke 8:19-21
English Standard Version
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Jesus' Mother and Brothers
19 Then his mother and his brothers came to him, but they could not reach him because of the crowd. 20 And he was told, “Your mother and your brothers are standing outside, desiring to see you.” 21 But he answered them, “My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it.”

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Since Jesus started His teaching ministry after His baptism and temptation, we really haven't heard much about His family.  We're now going to see Jesus' mother and brothers come on scene again.  The fact that Joseph is not mentioned here is probably an indication that Joseph has died.  While Joseph was not biologically the son of Joseph, Jesus came under Joseph's authority while He was growing up and living with them (longer than age 12 from what Luke told us about Jesus staying behind in Jerusalem and speaking with the religious leaders in the Temple when He was 12).

Jesus' mother and brothers came to Him to see Him and cannot get through the large crowds to be able to see Him, so they send word probably by way of what we'd call the "telephone game" (tell someone to tell the next person to tell the next person until the message gets to the intended recipient) to tell Jesus that "Your mother and brothers are standing outside, desiring to see you."

Perhaps this is even the point where Joseph died and they all came together to tell Jesus about it.  If most of us heard that the whole family came to see us unexpectedly, we would probably be anxious and think "what's wrong?" as well as being at least a little overjoyed to get to see everyone.  Life would probably come to a standstill for most of us, especially the oldest in the family if they felt their family needed them.  That would be our expectation, but Jesus does not stop teaching.  He was on a mission and He only had a limited amount of time to prepare these people before His death, and there weren't many personal issues that Jesus would get involved with during this time--probably the one exception will be the death of His friend (and probably cousin) Lazarus.

Jesus sends a message back to them that seems kind of rude, those of us who are Christians understand what Jesus is saying.  There is a kind of family that we have through Christ that is a stronger, deeper, and thicker than even the love that is from blood relation.  Jesus said that His disciples were His family now--the family He had chosen.  They were the ones who hear the Word of God and do it.  I don't think this was a slight against Mary as we are told that is exactly the kind of person that she was early in the book of Luke, but this might have been meant for Jesus' brothers who we are told in places in the Gospels that they did not believe Him about His identity until after His resurrection.

Jesus had to a make a choice here that was probably a hard choice to leave His family behind in order to fulfill what God had called Him to do.  If I'm right and this was about them coming to tell Jesus about the death of Joseph, they were probably there to ask Jesus to take responsibility as the firstborn son to come home and take care of Mary.  We will see that Jesus is actually going to give that responsibility to one of His disciples, the apostle John, from the cross.  It is strange that Jesus didn't even seem to trust His brothers at that time with this responsibility and this is a further indication to us about what Jesus is showing us there that John was in some ways closer by way of the family of God to Mary than her own children were.  He would be like a son for her and she would be like a mother for him.

I'm sure this was more than a little off-putting for Mary and her other sons.  They came at least for fellowship and maybe because they were grieving and felt they needed Jesus to fix their problem, but whatever their reason for coming, Jesus' answer tells us that His need to continue to preach, teach and heal was greater.  He had to chose to continue to be on mission, even if that was at the expense of his family, and He'll tell His disciples that this is part of the cost of discipleship later.  We'll talk more about that topic when we reach that passage because it is one of those "hard to hear" teachings, but one that is necessary for us to understand.  I just wanted to draw attention to the point that Jesus is not calling us to do something that He didn't already do Himself.