Tenth Sunday Ordinary Time – Crazy Jesus

So, Jesus’ relatives came to take him away because they thought he was out of his mind. And not only because he was so busy tending to the crowds who had gathered. He and his disciples had no time to eat. And after dusting off the scribes, his mother and family appeared wishing to speak with him.

Here’s where he’s crazy: Jesus, in the passage before this gospel from Sunday, had chosen Twelve to follow him as a new kinship to manifest the Reign of God in the present and point to its future completion on the Last Day. 

By forsaking their families and following Jesus, the Twelve left what? The very same realities Jesus left behind himself…

1. Security of a small group to trust when the rest of the world was untrustworthy.
2. Security of the families that had to care for them.
3. Property, inheritance, and their ‘name’ to be carried by offspring.

The Twelve probably didn’t know the implications of Jesus’ choice of them to found this new way of relating. They had yet to count the cost.

More tomorrow on what I perceive as the shape of that new kinship and how the Adam & Eve & Serpent story tells us something about it.