“And he called them to him, and spoke to them in parables, ‘How can Satan cast out Satan? If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand.'” – Mark 3-23-25
We’ve seen so many times and in so many places just
how right you were back then.
Divided nations run to evils unimagined, but
so bitterly recalled.
You set aside the critics’ pointed accusation that
in healing, you performed
Satanic will by arts Satanic, too, which made no sense
as you so rightly said.
And then they brought you word: your mother and your brothers ask,
“How are you, brother, son?”
Kept back from you by the besieging crowd they could not see
how changed you had become.
“A house divided cannot stand,” yet you would break your home,
insult your family.
Had they not done the will of God who sent you? Were they not
still one with you in love?
A poem/prayer based on Mark 3:20-35, the Revised Common Lectionary Gospel Reading for Year B, Proper 5 (10).
The image is Toute la ville étant à sa porte (All the City Was Gathered at His Door) by James Tissot (between 1886 and 1894) – Online Collection of Brooklyn Museum; Photo: Brooklyn Museum, 2006, 00.159.78_PS1.jpg, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10195908.
ordainedgeek 
Powerful retelling of the text.
I’m with you in the challenge of the last stanza. I think my poem this week was an attempt to understand or ameliorate that brushing aside of his mother and brothers.
People read it in very different ways. During Bible Study this week a number of people read it as expanding Jesus’ family rather than than discounting his biological family. It really leaves me wondering what Jesus meant, and also how his mother and siblings took it in that moment. And I don’t really know.