As the gospel authors are portraying the story of Jesus and its meaning, there's these

two plots of the Hebrew Bible that have been running throughout the whole thing.

There's God's purpose for all the families of the earth, but then to bless them and restore

them, he chose one particular family.

But then that family itself becomes as fractured and violent and split apart as everybody else.

And so, solving the fractured family of Abraham problem is the way of addressing the

fractured human family problem.

So the gospel authors are going to tell the story of Jesus with their eye on both of those.

Now Jesus, for the most part, is laser focused on the family of Israel, his own people,

his extended family, like Matthew 15, where a woman comes to Jesus and asks him to heal

her demon possessed daughter.

But she's not in Israelite, she's a can of night.

Then Jesus answered and said, listen, I sent to the law sheet of the house of Israel.

She's not my responsibility.

But then there's this story where Jesus seems to completely deconstruct what it means

to even have a family.

Jesus' mother and brothers come to visit him and Jesus just dismisses them and says, you

want to know who my brothers and sisters are?

It's whoever does the will of my father in heaven.

Right from the beginning of the Jesus movement, there was a redefinition of what the family

is.

And Jesus had a very expansive, non-traditional view of the family.

...