Simply Jesus | The True Family Allegiance - Christina Baik

The Holy Ghost Paul valued Jesus Christ, according to Mark, and

his mother and his brothers came and standing outside, they sent

to him and called him, and a crowd was sitting around him.

And they say to him, your mother and your brothers are outside

seeking you. And he answered them, Who are my

mother and my brother? And looking about at those who

sat around him, he said, here are my mother and my brothers,

for whoever does the will of God, he is my brother and sister

and mother, the gospel of the Lord.

Please pray with me, your loving God.

Thank you so much for every single person here whom you know

so deeply in love, so fiercely. I pray that you may speak today

to each of us. Your name and pray.

Amen. Please be seated.

Good morning. Please turn with me to the

passage today. Let's look at it one more time.

Mark 331 to 35. And his mother and his brothers

came and standing outside, they sent to him and called him.

And a crowd was sitting around him.

And they said to him, your mother and your brothers are

outside seeking you. And he answered, then who are my

mother and my brothers? And looking about at those who

sat around him, he said, here are my mother and my brothers.

For whoever does the will of God, he is my brother and sister

and mother. Today's passage reminds me of

that Martha and Mary's story in Luke 10.

In this story, Jesus enters a village and a woman named Martha

invites him over to the home that she shares with her sister

Mary. And Martha busies herself by

serving Jesus while her sister Mary sits at his feet listening

to his teaching. And I identify a lot with Martha

because I often catch myself doing the same thing when I

guess over right serving, tidying, busting around in the

kitchen, missing out on conversations, and being present

with the very people I just invited over.

I actually do the same with my own family at home, serving,

tithing, bustling, when our kids really just want me to sit down

and chat with them and be present with them.

And when Martha complaints to Jesus about it, he says this,

Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things,

but only one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion

which will not be taken away from her.

A good friend recently blew my mind earlier this year when she

we're talking about this passage and she told me that Mary

embodies A radical form of self-care and the best thing we

can do for ourselves is to just sit at Jesus's feet listening to

his teachings. So today, let's slow down

together with these 5 verses from Mark 3 and learn from what

Jesus has to say. The passage begins.

And Jesus's mother and his brothers came, and standing

outside, they sent to him and called him.

You can imagine them standing outside the door peering in,

nudging folks to let hey Jesus know they're calling for him.

So word ripples through the crowd.

Hey Jesus mother and his siblings are here.

They're asking for him. Nudge, nudge, whisper.

The message passes from person to person until finally the

whole room knows right? Jesus family's at the door.

Verse 32 and a crowd was sitting around him and they said to him,

Jesus, your mother and your brothers are outside seeking

you. This moment is charged.

Everyone is watching. And that's when Jesus

deliberately asks the rhetorical question, Who are my mother and

my brothers? You might be wondering if Jesus

is rejecting his earthly family in this moment.

I used to wonder this too. As in, like, those people

outside the door, not my family, those sitting around me actually

are. And that doesn't sit well with

us, right? Because that seems so

uncharacteristic of Jesus, who loves his family.

But when we examine the text, we can see that there's something

far more significant going on here.

For usual Jesus is not rejecting anyone.

He's using his family's arrival as a teachable moment.

Classic Jesus the teacher here. Even earlier in Mark, when Jesus

calls the disciples, he does not explicitly tell them to reject

or leave his family. He simply says follow me.

The emphasis is not on who they leave, but on who they choose to

give their attention to and follow.

And Mark shows us this brilliantly through one specific

detail about this crowd. Notice here that Mark specifies

in verse 32A crowd was sitting around him, around Jesus.

The verb he uses here for sitting is Kathemanoy.

And OK, stay with me for a moment.

This is really cool. In English we usually think in

two modes of action, right? Active voice, I do something, I

open the door. Passive voice, something is done

to me, the doors open for me. Greek though, has another way of

describing action. This is so cool, one that

English mostly lacks. It's often called the middle

voice. This describes action that

someone is personally engaged in, not just doing something and

not just having something done to them, but placing themselves

intentionally into it. There's an entire voice to

highlight this. So think of it as like the

difference between I was seated at the restaurant versus I

seated myself. I chose this table, this view,

this spot, and the verb that Mark uses here works like that.

It doesn't picture people who merely ended up sitting or were

told to sit right there. Instead, it emphasizes their

agency and intentionality. The listeners have put

themselves there around Jesus. They say they're by choice and

they're invested in remaining, so they've arranged their bodies

and thus their attention around Jesus.

So both the grammar and the choreography in these seemingly

simple verses echo the invitation of the story itself.

That's so cool. Faith is not only something that

we do or something that happens to us.

Faith is a posture that we choose to embody.

And here's where Jesus redefines what it means to be his family.

Verses 34 and 35 and looking about at those who sat around

him, Jesus said here are my mother and my brothers.

For whoever does the will of God, He is my mother and sister

and mother, brother, mother and sister and brother.

Jesus's point here is bigger than simply expanding who gets

included in his family. Jesus redefines family by how

people place themselves in relation to him.

And notice something crucial. The listeners in the story are

already deemed family before they even do anything in light

of his teachings, right? They're not.

They haven't even like left and done anything yet.

Just by choosing to sit down and listen to Jesus, to receive his

message, they're already participating in God's will,

being in his family in this way, sitting at his feet, arranging

their attention around him. This is doing the will of God

for any of you listening today who seeks some freedom, freedom

from A to do list expectations, pressure.

Tell me all of us receive this. You can begin with Jesus by just

sitting at his feet, taking him in.

He invites active listening, of course, not mindless lounging.

But you can begin doing God's will by orienting your attention

towards him. And this is counterintuitive for

some of us, right? We expect that doing, doing

God's will means action all the time, right?

Works and accomplishment. We expect some kind of task

list. But here Jesus says that

listening itself is how we begin that posture.

It's where faithfulness starts. Not with striving, how

refreshing, but with sitting. Not with achieving, but with

attending. The people in that room didn't

have to earn their place in Jesus's family.

They simply had to choose to be there to arrange themselves

around him and listen. And that's the invitation for

us, too. Now, it's worth acknowledging

that doing the will of God is not always easy or comfortable.

Many of us know that it can disappoint people we love in our

lives, as Jesus likely did with his mother and siblings standing

outside that door. And it can have some real social

consequences for us too. I had a small but clarifying

reminder of this actually, just this past week.

God does just seem like that. Just putting it right there.

I was visiting a school where I used to teach, and I really love

teaching there. Helping connect the visiting

artists to a literature class Amazing.

It was a joyful reason to return, and the welcome was

really warm. It felt so good to be back.

People hadn't seen in a while. Hugged me, welcomed me back

home, told me that they missed me.

It felt really good to be received back like that.

But there was 1 moment that stood out.

Probably because of that warm reception while I was catching

up with a former colleague when someone else I used to work with

walked through the room, saw me clearly and just passed by

without acknowledging me at all. It was noticeable, super

awkward, and I knew why. Years ago, when we were first

teaching together, this colleague and I, we had

connected quickly. We're like hindered spirits

immediately right over a love of teaching.

But at one point, whenever conversation shifted to talking

about another colleague in a way that made me really

uncomfortable, I remember feeling a quiet but persistent

nudge from Jesus to stop the conversation.

Not dramatically, you know, not confrontationally, but honestly.

So I did. It said something like, I really

love talking to by teaching and we work so well together, but I

really don't want this kind of talk about colleagues to be part

of our relationship. I didn't say it perfectly, and

it was really awkward. It wasn't received very well at

all. But at the time, what I didn't

fully realize with how much gossip and trash talk, to be

frank, can function as social glue, especially among work

colleagues at a school. Ironically enough, saying no to

it meant that over time I would be edged out of some circles,

some social circles. And I was.

Not loudly or cruelly, but noticeably.

And that this is never really closed.

So watching her walk by like that last week stung because it

was so blatant and so obvious. But notably, the sting didn't

fester. And not because I handled

everything Florida State didn't, but because I I really do

believe that that moment of choosing to listen to Jesus

mattered, even when it came with the relational cost.

And I think that's where the passage today presses on us

most, honestly. Because Jesus here isn't just

offering us comfort, He's also offering a call to sit at his

feet. To Orient our lives around him.

May mean that we end up standing inside the room while people we

love are left waiting outside that door.

And it may mean disappointing family members or close friends.

Not because we stop loving them, but because we're no longer

ranging our lives around their expectations.

And that's frightening, right? Many of us would rather remain

respectable and light and easy to understand, then risk the

kind of faithfulness that unsettles people.

Following Jesus can cost us approval and strain

relationships. And if we're honest, part of

what keeps us from fully listening to Him, right, is the

fear that we might follow Him where he goes, actually, and end

up disappointing others in the way that maybe he disappointed

his own family in this moment. Notice, though, that Jesus

doesn't wallow in disappointing his family.

They'll come to understand what he's doing in time.

And we know that his mother, for instance, is thoughtful too.

In Luke 219, in response to the mysteries around Jesus's birth,

which she didn't fully understand at the time, right?

Mary is recorded as quote, treasuring up these things,

pondering them in her heart. Maybe she's doing so now too, at

the door. And since the very next chapter,

literally after this scene that we're looking at today is a

parable of the sower, where Jesus highlights the value of

maintaining fertile soil for understanding his teachings.

There's an invitation here for us to practice good listening

skills to receive what he wants us to understand over time.

Because like most skills, listening improves with

practice. And so the more we place

ourselves near Christ, the more attuned we become to his voice

and his will, and we can hear him when he does speak to us.

So let's choose a good portion now.

Let's not wait until later in the week, right?

When things settle down, when we're feeling it more, etcetera,

right, to sit at his feet. Let's just do it right now, like

today, maybe you go on a walk later without headphones, right?

And just like, pray go around the block.

Doesn't have to be that crazy, right?

Maybe just take 10 minutes. You close your eyes, maybe open

a journal, maybe just begin with a moment of silence, a verse,

maybe a worship song, or maybe invite someone to pray with and

for you to help you listen. Maybe start with one of the

prayer ministers today on either side during communion.

Or maybe just let's just do this.

You just close your eyes right down and you take your breath,

and you think, Lord, here I am at your feet.

Speak to me. Sitting at Jesus's feet doesn't

take that much to start. She just wants you to come

inside. He's inviting you to a place

near him, and He's already set for you to arrange your

attention around him. So let's invite his invitation

to sit down at his feet and listen, trusting that God will

speak to us. Amen.