His mother and his brothers arrived. Standing outside they sent word to him and called him. 32 A crowd seated around him told him, “Your mother and your brothers [and your sisters] are outside asking for you.” 33 But he said to them in reply, “Who are my mother and [my] brothers?” 34 And looking around at those seated in the circle he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers. 35 [For] whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.”
Jesus is teaching inside a house when his mother and his brothers arrive. They remain “outside,” send word in, and call for him. The crowd is “seated around him,” and they relay the message, adding the detail found in some ancient witnesses, “and your sisters.” Mark then places Jesus’ response at the center: he answers the message with a saying that redefines kinship. He looks around at those seated “in the circle” and identifies them as his mother and his brothers, and then he states the criterion plainly: “whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.”
The family is outside, the listeners are gathered around Jesus, and Jesus’ gaze moves across the circle before he speaks. The point is not that family is unimportant, but that the decisive bond to Jesus is now defined by obedience to God. In a world where family ties were foundational, this would have sounded sharp, even scandalous, because it says that loyalty to Christ must come first, even before family. Yet it is not a rejection of the family ideal. Mark is showing that a new family is being formed around Jesus—one defined by hearing God’s word and doing it, rather than by bloodline alone. This is why “brothers” can function as a collective term here, even when “sisters” is not always written into the line.
Mark’s narrative can distinguish between different groups of relatives, even when they appear close together in the story. What Mark insists on is the new standard Jesus sets publicly: nearness to him is measured by doing the will of God. This also keeps the reader from misunderstanding Mary’s presence. Jesus’ words do not exclude his Mother; they place her in the truest place she already holds. Luke presents Mary as the first to accept God’s will in faith: “May it be done to me according to your word” (Lk. 1:38). Luke also preserves the same principle when Jesus says that blessedness is found in hearing the word of God and observing it (Lk. 11:27-28). Mark’s point aligns with that. Mary belongs to Jesus not only by motherhood, but by faithful obedience, and the disciples are being gathered into that same pattern of belonging.
Mark’s redefinition also fits the wider New Testament emphasis that God forms a people by calling and obedience. John speaks of becoming “children of God” through receiving the Son (Jn 1:12). Paul describes believers being conformed to the Son so that he is “the firstborn among many brothers” (Rom 8:29). Mark is not pausing to explain all of that theology here. He is narrating the moment when Jesus names the family that is forming around him and gives its simplest description: those who do God’s will.
Lord God, teach me to hear your word with a willing heart, and to do your will with steady faith, so that my life truly belongs to your Son. Amen.
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Sources and References
- New American Bible, Revised Edition (NABRE), Mark 3:31-35; note on Mark 6:3.
- The Ignatius Catholic Study Bible: The Gospel of Mark, commentary on Mark 3:32, 3:35 (p. 72).
- Raymond E. Brown, Joseph A. Fitzmyer, and Roland E. Murphy, eds., The New Jerome Biblical Commentary (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1990), Mark 3:31-35 (pp. 694-695, para. 23).
- The Navarre Bible: St. Mark (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 1998), commentary on Mark 3:31-35 (pp. 174-175).
- Donald Senior, ed., The Catholic Study Bible, 3rd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), commentary on Mark 3:31-35 (p. 986).
- John R. Donahue and Daniel J. Harrington, The New Jerome Biblical Commentary for the Twenty-First Century, 3rd ed. (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2022), commentary on Mark 3:31-35 (pp. 1250-1251).
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