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Hall of Heroes: James, the half-brother of Jesus 17th Sunday after Pentecost, September 7, 2008
We’re concluding our Hall of Heroes series today with a look at one of the most unlikely people to ever come to faith in Jesus. We’re talking about Jesus’ half-brother, James, and we’re going to primarily be looking at Mark chapter 3, verses 20-21, and 31-32, but we’ll also be referencing a few other verses, too. Mark is the second book in the New Testament, so it goes Matthew – the tax collector who stole from his own people to fund the government who was occupying their land as well as to fill his own pockets, and then Mark – a young man who initially ran away from serving Jesus, but came back later in life to be one of the biggest supports to the Apostles Barnabus, Paul and Peter. Again, we’re looking at verses 20-21, and then 31-32: Then Jesus entered a house, and again a crowd gathered, so that He and His disciples were not even able to eat. When His family heard about this, they went to take charge of Him, for they said, “He is out of His mind.” And then 31-32: Then Jesus’ mother and brothers arrived. Standing outside, they sent someone in to call Him. A crowd was sitting around Him, and they told Him, “Your mother and brothers are outside looking for you.” First, let’s set the context and look at what’s happening here. Jesus has been preaching and teaching all throughout the area, and His popularity has skyrocketed. For some, Jesus is ‘popular’ because He’s a ‘good guy’, possibly a prophet, most definitely a teacher from God. For others Jesus is the center of their attention because He’s challenging and changing the old ways, He’s going forward and proving Himself to be superior to them and their thinking through the authority of His teaching and the use of His miracles. In fact, at one point Jesus even asked those who didn’t like Him a “trick” question: Which is easier, to forgive sins or to heal a paralytic? It’s a ‘trick’ question because both are impossible for people – only God can do both – and then Jesus turned around and showed He was God by not only forgiving the sins of a paralytic, but also restoring strength to him so he could walk again.[1] In these verses from Mark, Jesus came to a house and the crowds following Him were so large He couldn’t even get a few moments to get a bite to eat. When His mother and brothers heard where He was, they decided to come and take Him out of there, because they thought He was insane. Let’s be clear on a couple of things. Who exactly are we talking about here? You can make a note in the margins of your Bibles, Matthew 13:55-56: “Isn’t this the carpenter’s son? Isn’t his mother’s name Mary, and aren’t his brothers James, Joseph, Simon and Judas? Aren’t all his sisters with us? Where then did this man get all these things?” Who came to get Jesus? Mary, His mother, and His brothers James, Joseph, Simon and Judas. There are a couple of things we can learn from just this: One, even Mary doubted Jesus at this point – she was coming with the cavalry to get Him out of there because she thought He had lost His mind. So Mary was not sinless and did not always fully understand and believe who Jesus was. A second thing we tend to overlook is that Jesus was not an only child – Mary and His earthly father, Joseph, had children together after Jesus was born. I know there’s this idea out there that Mary and Joseph never came together as husband and wife, but there’s just no Biblical evidence to support that. In fact, the evidence is exactly the opposite: Joseph and Mary had many children together. In our verses in Mark is says they went to take charge of Him. In the Greek the word is kratēsai, and it means to make an arrest. Mary and the brothers, specifically James, since that’s who we’re actually focusing on today, didn’t go to Jesus to say, “How are you doing? You wanna come home and lay down and rest for awhile?” They went to Jesus to physically grab Him, and place Him under what we today might consider ‘house arrest’ or ‘custodial custody.’ The reason? They said, “He is out of His mind.” In the Greek this literally means they kept saying He was out of His mind. They thought Jesus was a mentally unbalanced religious fanatic. That’s our introduction to James, the bother of Jesus. This is a different person than the disciple James. The disciple James was the one of “Peter, James, and John” fame, as in, “Jesus took Peter, James and John” up to the top of the mountain, or Jesus took Peter James and John with Him when He went into the Garden of Gethsemane before He was arrested. The James we are talking about today is not the disciple, but the brother of Jesus. The one who thought his brother, Jesus, was mentally unbalanced. One who thought He was going to have to take charge of Jesus and spend the rest of his life watching over and taking care of Him. One who walked into a crowd of people with Jesus’ other brothers to grab Him by the scruff of His neck and drag Him home. One who just could not grasp or believe what Jesus was saying. Why was James in this place? He was there because he refused to listen to Jesus’ claims about who He was and what He was about. The claims of Jesus were too outrageous for James to accept: Jesus is God in the flesh; believing in Jesus is the only way to get to Heaven; God the Father will not listen to the prayers of those who do not pray in the name of Jesus. For James these claims were too ‘out there’ for him to take seriously. Now what about us? Back during Lent and leading up to Easter, we did a series called, “I want to meet Jesus” and we asked the question, “Was Jesus a liar, a lunatic, or Lord?” He is either one who claimed to be someone He knew He was not, and was able to dupe a lot of people through slight-of-hand and fancy words to believe in Him, or He was what His mother and brothers thought He was: insane; a mentally unbalanced religious fanatic. OR He was who He said He was – God in the flesh. Next to these verses you can write the scripture reference Mark 8:27-29 – Jesus and his disciples went on to the villages around Caesarea Philippi. On the way He asked them, “Who do people say I am?” They replied, “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets.” “But what about you?” He asked. “Who do you say I am?” Peter answered, “You are the Christ.” Who do you say He is? Was He just a good man, a 1st century Mr. Rogers with a beard and a robe? Was He a madman, a religious fanatic who needed to be corralled and put aside by His brother? Or is He more? Is He who He said He is – God in the flesh who came to take the punishment for your sins and mine? Take a look at this video, and hear how others respond to that question. …. Jesus was everything but the Savior to these folks. He was a good man, a good teacher, someone who ‘linked into’ God. He was cool for His time, and borders on history and myth. One person in this clip went so far as to say they do not believe He is God. Who do you say He is? Is He the God who loves you where you are, but loves you too much to leave you there? Is He the God who will not leave you alone, but comes to you in order to save you from your sins? Is He the God who from the beginning of creation put everything in place so He could come to you? He put the ore in the ground that would be used to form the nails that would fasten Him to the cross. He planted the seed in the ground and watched over the tree that would be harvested to form the cross He would hang on. He gave life to, and took care of, the Jewish authorities that condemned Him, the Roman soldiers who would arrest and torture Him, and the guards who would crucify Him. And He did it for you. He did it because He would rather go through and to hell for you than to be in heaven without you. Who do you say that He is? James came face to face with this question during Jesus’ earthly ministry, refusing to believe Jesus is the Messiah, the only way to get to God. Know what it took for him to change his mind? He met Jesus face-to-face after He rose from the dead. In the margins of your Bibles, you can write 1 Corinthians 15:3-7 For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that He was buried, that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that He appeared to Peter, and then to the Twelve. After that, He appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. Then He appeared to James, then to all the apostles… This is what it took for Jesus’ brother to change his mind; to come face to face with the reality of who Jesus is. And that encounter changed his life forever, both on the earth and into eternity. After Jesus appeared to him, James became one of the leaders of the new church that was centered in Jerusalem, but extended out to all ends of the earth.[2] He wrote the book of the Bible that bears his name, James. Know how he addresses himself in that book? He could have called himself, “the brother of Jesus.” He could have patted himself on the back and reminded everyone that He knew Jesus longer than the rest of them. He could have claimed some special knowledge and insight about Jesus, but He didn’t. He said simply of himself that he was “A servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ.”[3] James went from being one who thought Jesus was an insane, religious fanatic, to one who knew Him for who He is: the Lord, the Christ, the Messiah, the Savior, the way, the truth and the life. The One who would forgive him for ever doubting, and the One who would use him to spread the Gospel to the farthest reaches of the Roman Empire. This is our last message in this series this year, but the same question, “Who do you say that I am?” and the same truth, “You are the Son of God”, still exists for us today. The same Jesus that came to His own brother who denied Him, who tried to place Him under house arrest, who was embarrassed and ashamed of Jesus still comes to us today. He loves us right where we are, but loves us too much to leave us there. It’s His promise to you and me.
Amen |
