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I. Jesus’ True Family (12:46–50)
⁴ He was still speaking to the crowds when his mother and brothers came and¹
stood outside, wanting to speak with him. ⁴⁷Someone told him, “Look, your
mother and your brothers are standing outside, wanting to speak with you.”²
⁴⁸But he replied to the person who told him, “Who is my mother, and who are
my brothers?” ⁴ Then he stretched out his hand toward his disciples, and said,
“Look, here are my mother and my brothers. ⁵ Anyone who does the will of my
Father who is in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.”
This little cameo, apparently set inside a house,³ concludes the narrative section
which has prepared the way for the discourse of ch. 13. Chapters 11–12 have
revealed a wide variety of reactions to Jesus among his Galilean contemporaries,
and the parables of ch. 13 will explain how such a divided response has come
about. Most of the reactions noted, especially in ch. 12, have been hostile, but at
the end of ch. 11 the mood was lightened by a brief glimpse of the “little ones”
who have been able to perceive the truth (11:25–30), and now another ray of
light concludes the section. As well as the seeds which have failed or are failing,
there is also seed growing in good ground.
The primary focus is therefore on the “true family” of Jesus’ disciples (Matthew,
unlike Mark, makes their identification explicit), to which his natural family
provides merely a point of comparison. This paragraph, though it begins with
Jesus’ mother and brothers, is not really about them. After the account of Jesus’
childhood in chs. 1–2 we have heard nothing more of his family. We do not even
know whether his move down to Capernaum in 4:13 involved any of them,
though 13:56 tells us that his sisters at least stayed in Nazareth. Nor will they be
mentioned directly again, though some have supposed that the mysteriously
named “Mary the mother of James and Joseph” at the cross (27:56) was in fact
Jesus’ mother (this will be judged unlikely; see comments there). Even Mark’s
brief notice of the attitude of (probably)⁴ Jesus’ family to his activity in Mark
3:21 finds no place in Matthew. Matthew’s narrative as a whole thus reflects the
message of this paragraph: Jesus’ natural family is not the family that matters.
The “disciples” referred to in v. 49 are primarily the Twelve, who might be
expected to be with Jesus, but Matthew’s usage allows for a wider group (see on
8:21), and the inclusion of “sister” in v. 50 demands it. It is these disciples who
constitute Jesus’ true family. In the itinerant life in Galilee it is they, rather than
the Nazareth family, who share his day-to-day life, but the thought here is at a
less mundane level than that. Those who follow Jesus have committed
themselves to “do the will of my Father who is in heaven,” and so have entered
into a new relationship with God as also their “heavenly Father”—the term
which so prominently expressed the essence of discipleship in chs. 5–7. And
those who are children of the same heavenly Father are thus members of the
same family, and are to regard one another as brothers and sisters: for “brother”
used of fellow-disciples see 5:22–24; 7:3–5; 18:15, 21, 35; 23:8. In place of the
earthly families some of them have had to leave, they are promised a hundred-
fold more brothers, sisters, parents and children (19:29). And this extended
family under the one heavenly Father (23:8–9) includes Jesus himself, who
acknowledges the same Father in heaven, so that he can refer to his disciples as
“my brothers” (cf. 25:40; 28:10).⁵
This familial view of discipleship and of the nature of the new community being
formed around Jesus is vividly expressed in this little paragraph by contrast with
the mother and brothers from Nazareth who now apparently form no part of the
Jesus circle. The result is that on the one occasion when Jesus’ natural family
appear in the narrative outside the infancy stories they are dismissed in what
many have taken to be an unfeeling manner. The Jesus who in 15:4–6 upholds
the OT command to honor one’s father and mother here seems to treat his
mother and brothers with scant respect. He is putting into practice what he taught
his disciples in 10:37, that even the most important earthly ties cannot be
allowed to stand in the way of loyalty to the kingship of God. It is a matter of
priorities. But it is unfortunate that this prior allegiance to the work of God and
the call of Jesus (cf. also the case-study in 8:21–22) is not balanced elsewhere in
Matthew by words or deeds of Jesus which demonstrate appropriate filial respect
and love, such as we find in Luke 2:51; John 2:3–5; 19:25–27, or by any
acknowledgement that loyalty to God and to family are not necessarily
incompatible. An unsympathetic reader might well conclude from Matthew’s
account that Jesus’ “honoring” of his family, and his instructions to his disciples
on the matter, left something to be desired.
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