Home is Where the Heart Is

Reflections on Mark 3:20-35 

He came home…his relatives heard of this [and] they set out to seize him, for they said, “He is out of his mind.”

After months of traveling, healing, and spreading the good news, Jesus finally returned home to do the same. He was in his hometown. Home, where his family and relatives were, the people who should have supported him most and been the most excited to learn about the coming kingdom, but they weren’t. 

Like the loving relatives they were, they said he was "out of his mind". Instead of seeing who he really was, their Savior, they saw who they had always perceived him to be. They saw the boy they'd always known, Mary's son, the son of a carpenter, no one special. Maybe to them he was someone quiet, maybe a good listener, maybe a bit strange. 

They couldn't get passed their own perception and see the truth. They were stubborn, and so assumed he was just a crazy relative. So, they set out to "seize" him, like an intervention, to save him from making an idiot of himself in front of the crowds and mucking up their family name. 

So what does Jesus do? He tells them if a house is divided against itself, it cannot stand. Just as the kingdom of the Israelites that split could not stand, a divided house cannot stand. His house, the house of David, the house favored by the Lord, the house that carried the lineage of Christ the savior, would no longer stand. For they, like the rest of the Jews, rejected their Savior. 

Jesus goes a step further and sets the stage for the Apostles to welcome in the gentiles when he says, "whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother". Jesus makes it clear, he doesn't need the support of his relatives. Whoever follows the Father is his family, for they are children of God- Jesus' brothers and sisters. 

Jesus came to make things anew, to unify all people, under one body, one Church. He was not concerned with his earthly home, instead, his eyes were always set on his one true home, the heavenly kingdom. His home, and ours, if we choose to take up our cross and follow Him. If home is where the heart is, where is yours?