Mk 3:20-21
20[Jesus] came home. Again [the] crowd gathered, making it impossible for them even to eat. 21When his relatives heard of this they set out to seize him, for they said, “He is out of his mind.”
HIS RELATIVES: The culture of the Mediterranean world places high value upon the kin-group to which one belongs, to one’s family and relatives. The family is the person’s “world,” that which gives him or her identity and role. It not only was the source of a person’s status in the community but also functioned as the primary economic, religious, educational, and social network.
Aside from Joseph and Mary, Jesus’ family includes his “brothers and sisters” (Mk 3:32). These have been variously understood as blood relatives, step-siblings, or cousins. Some scholars, mostly Protestants, while admitting that Jesus was born of Mary through the power of the Holy Spirit, say that Mary and Joseph had other children, and these are Jesus’ brothers and sisters. Roman Catholic scholars have espoused that the “brothers and sisters” are cousins in view of the Catholic doctrine of Mary’s “perpetual virginity” (Jesus was born of the divine conception and Mary never had sexual relations after Jesus’ birth).
Today’s Gospel echoes a tradition that Jesus’ immediate family was hostile to his cause in the beginning (Luke [2:19] and John [2:4-5] paint Mary as siding with Jesus). His “relatives” (Greek hoi par’ auto, literally “those belonging to him”) think he is out of his mind. This has to do not just with his not having time for himself, his failure to eat and sleep, but with his choice of life. Jesus’ family expects him to live in Nazareth and to carry on Joseph’s occupation as a carpenter, to marry and to raise a family. But Jesus prefers to be a “marginal Jew”—to live as a itinerant preacher, and make other people his “family,” even those of dubious character. His zeal for his mission makes people close to him question his very sanity.