The Witness of the Gospels<\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\nOnce I moved away from the not-as-airtight-as-I-thought passages in Romans and the false notion that Catholics think Mary did not need a Savior, my mind turned to the Gospels, most prominently Mark 3:13\u201335:<\/p>\n
And he went up on the mountain, and called to him those whom he desired; and they came to him. And he appointed twelve, to be with him, and to be sent out to preach and have authority to cast out demons: Simon whom he surnamed Peter; James the son of Zebedee and John the brother of James, whom he surnamed Bo-anerges, that is, sons of thunder; Andrew, and Philip, and Bartholomew, and Matthew, and Thomas, and James the son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus, and Simon the Cananaean, and Judas Iscariot, who betrayed him.<\/p>\n
Then he went home; and the crowd came together again, so that they could not even eat. And when his family heard it, they went out to seize him, for people were saying, \u201cHe is beside himself.\u201d And the scribes who came down from Jerusalem said, \u201cHe is possessed by Be-elzebul, and by the prince of demons he casts out the demons.\u201d And he called them to him, and said to them in parables, \u201cHow can Satan\u00a0cast out Satan? If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand. And if Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand, but is coming to an end. But no one can enter a strongman\u2019s house and plunder his goods, unless he first binds the strong man; then indeed he may plunder his house.<\/p>\n
\u201cTruly, I say to you, all sins will be forgiven the sons of men, and whatever blasphemies they utter; but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin\u201d\u2014for they had said, \u201cHe has an unclean spirit.\u201d<\/p>\n
And his mother and his brethren came; and standing outside they sent to him and called him. And a crowd was sitting about him; and they said to him, \u201cYour mother and your brethren are outside, asking for you.\u201d And he replied, \u201cWho are my mother and my brethren?\u201d And looking around on those who sat about him, he said, \u201cHere are my mother and my brethren! Whoever does the will of God is my brother, and sister, and mother.\u201d<\/p>\n
Some readers may suppose I made a mistake by including that chunk of Scripture\u00a0at the beginning about Jesus\u00a0calling his disciples. But part of Mark\u2019s purpose in arranging these stories together is to get us to understand that Jesus\u00a0is creating a new covenant family that\u2019s greater than the biological family because it\u2019s rooted in his divine power, not in mere biological kinship. (Luke and Matthew make exactly the same point in Luke 11:27\u201328 and Matthew 12:46\u201350.) So Mark shows Jesus\u00a0calling his disciples and concludes with Jesus\u00a0declaring that they are his family.<\/p>\n
But it\u2019s easy for a modern reader to perceive a different dynamic in this narrative than the one Mark intends. That\u2019s partly because Jesus\u00a0couches some of his affirmations in statements that sound to our ears like denials. To see what I mean, note this peculiar exchange:<\/p>\n
And as he was setting out on his journey, a man ran up and knelt before him, and asked him, \u201cGood Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?\u201d And Jesus\u00a0said to him, \u201cWhy do you call me good? No one is good but God alone\u201d (Mark 10:17\u201318).<\/p>\n
This passage, taken in isolation, is a favorite among those who like to argue that Jesus\u00a0denied he is God. The problem is, the same author who records this saying also records numerous sayings of Jesus\u00a0that make it extremely clear Jesus\u00a0did claim to be God. From Jesus\u2019 forgiveness of sins (Mark 2:1\u201312) to his frank and open application of the divine name \u201cI AM\u201d to himself (Mark 14:61\u201362), Mark records Jesus\u2019 claim to deity. So why does Mark also record Jesus\u2019 apparently problematic response to the young man\u2019s question? Precisely because Jesus\u00a0means for us to recognize that he is called good because he really is Good, and therefore really is God. What appears to be a denial is, when we think about it, actually another claim to deity.<\/p>\n
Jesus\u2019 seeming rebuke of Mary has the same character. It\u2019s an apparent denial that turns out to be an affirmation. For neither Jesus\u00a0nor Mark is saying that biological families are evil and should be repudiated, while only spiritual families are good. Rather, Jesus\u00a0is saying that biological families are good, that spiritual families are even better and, in a larger context, calling us to unite these two aspects of family altogether. Jesus\u00a0declares, \u201cWhoever does the will of God is my brother, and sister, and mother.\u201d The only way we can take that as a rebuke of Mary would be to show that she refused to do God\u2019s will. But Luke has already made clear that she eagerly obeyed God. Indeed, Mary\u2019s words are those of the quintessential disciple, \u201cBehold, I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word\u201d (Luke 1:38). So she is Jesus\u2019 mother in both the biological and the spiritual sense and he means us to understand this, just as he means us to understand that he really is good, and therefore really is God.<\/p>\n
\u201cNot so fast!\u201d says the Evangelical\u00a0reader, \u201cAren\u2019t you forgetting that little incident in the middle of the passage: the one where his family thought he was nuts? How is that evidence of Mary\u2019s faith?\u201d<\/p>\n
This is perhaps the favorite moment in the Gospels for critics of the Immaculate Conception. However, as I discovered upon a close reading, it\u2019s plagued with difficulties when used for that purpose.<\/p>\n
In the first place, this claim of Mary\u2019s \u201cfaithlessness\u201d is rather hard to square with the complaints lodged against her by Evangelical\u00a0readers of the story of the wedding at Cana. If Mary believed in Jesus\u2019 messianic powers so much that she was sinfully pushing him to do theatrical wonders in John 2, then what is the sense in saying she had no faith in him as Messiah\u00a0in Mark 3? The complaints cannot both be true. Indeed, there is no reason to think either are true. For it is not Mary who says Jesus\u00a0is beside himself (i.e., crazy or demon possessed). It is \u201cpeople.\u201d Second, Mark tells us precisely who was spreading this notion among \u201cpeople.\u201d It was not his family but Jesus\u2019 worst enemies, the Jerusalem scribes. Indeed, Jesus\u00a0himself makes clear the scribes\u2019 enmity was so bitter that, in charging him with acting by demonic\u00a0power, they were actually committing the unforgivable sin of blaspheming the Holy Spirit. They hated Jesus\u00a0so much that they didn\u2019t mind damning themselves if they could just score a good solid lie against him.<\/p>\n
So what\u2019s the reaction of his family? They come to seize him. Why? Because they think he\u2019s nuts? The text doesn\u2019t say that. And that\u2019s the point. They could just as easily have come to rescue Jesus\u00a0from a feared attack by his enemies as to try to put him in the Home for Messianic\u00a0Crazies. In fact, something rather similar takes place in Acts 19. Paul, like Jesus, has powerful enemies. A group of Ephesian silversmiths, whose trade in silver idols of the goddess Artemis\u00a0was endangered by the spread of the faith, leads a crowd of Paul\u2019s bitterest enemies to the theater and they begin shouting \u201cGreat is Artemis of the Ephesians!\u201d Note the interaction between Paul and his friends:<\/p>\n
Paul\u00a0wished to go in among the crowd, but the disciples would not let him; some of the Asiarchs also, who were friends of his, sent to him and begged him not to venture into the theater (Acts 19:30\u201331).<\/p>\n
In short, Paul\u2019s friends were primarily motivated by a desire to keep their friend from being lynched by his enemies, not by an urge to lock him in the goofy booth. Nobody charges them with lack of faith. Rather, we naturally commend them for faithfully sticking with their friend in a very difficult spot. Yet Mary frequently incurs the charge, not merely of faithlessness, but even of agreeing with his worst enemies that her Son was demon-possessed! Once again, I began to realize that this tells us more about Evangelical\u00a0attitudes to Mary than about anything in the text of Scripture. After all, we have already been told that Mary was the handmaid of the Lord. We have seen the scriptural testimony to her as a living sign of God\u2019s perpetual fruitfulness in Jesus\u00a0Christ, a woman whom all generations would call blessed, a woman who loved Jesus\u00a0deeply and totally with the love of an adorer for her God and the love of a mother for her Son.<\/p>\n
Yet, at the first opportunity to do so, we Evangelicals applied an astonishing double standard to her and concluded that, while the friends of St. Paul\u00a0obviously had his best interests at heart, Jesus\u2019 own mother \u201csimply must\u201d have thought he was a demonically-possessed nutcase. And we said all this despite the fact that virtually the only thing sustaining this view of Mary is John\u2019s remark that \u201ceven his brethren did not believe in him\u201d (John 7:5). But John never tells us, \u201cEven his mother did not believe in him.\u201d On the contrary, neither John nor Mark gives us anything to go on about Mary besides the fact that she was there and that Jesus\u00a0told us a good disciple was basically like his mother.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Yesterday\u2019s gospel is often a favorite with the Jesus Constantly Rebuked Mary Crowd.\u00a0 As a former member of that crowd, I discussed it in my book, Mary, Mother of the Son in connection with her supposedly \u201csinful unbelief\u201d in Jesus: The Witness of the Gospels\u00a0 Once I moved away from the not-as-airtight-as-I-thought passages in Romans […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":92,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[67],"class_list":["post-104303","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-mary-mother-of-the-son"],"yoast_head":"\n
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