To say that the new tribe of believers is more special than the tribe you were born into, well, this was really something for that day. The community of followers and apostles was more important than Jesus’ family of origin? This is a hot knife through the butter of convention, of tradition, and the way things stood. The roles of mother, brother, sister, and father by implication are all resident in this group and do not originate at home in their birth towns down the road in Bethlehem. Ahem, “Can we talk outside for just a second?” Just what does this mean?

It means that in the chosen group called by God, named by a decision, they are in a new tribe of believers unlike anything heretofore. Jesus called them to Him. They are selected at that moment and become the chosen ones who value their community, who want to extricate themselves to a new way of thinking, interior knowing, doing, and being. They were different from the usual roles of being mother, brother, and sister. Better, not superficially, better for the road taken. They were called to be mother, brother, sister, and father to each other. Standing before God in relation to each other, there was Jesus as the one who went before to do God’s will. In this they were first among equals—brother, mother, father, sister, one to another. This is the rule they acted out: “Love one another as you love yourself.”

Their relationship to Jesus was Jesus’s relationship to God and vice versa. “Anyone who does the will of God is brother, sister, and mother to me.” Anyone! This is the trick. To get to Jesus, you pass through God. The sequence of the sentence, if I can say this, is clear. God’s will first, then to Jesus, who is already there in God, in readiness: God in the moment, the eternal now. No monkey business, it just is. In the beginning was the Word. The will of God is active, the verb of Jesus, and is Jesus.