Within the Lines

Many children of all ages like to color. Crayons and coloring books are part of childhood, and these days, there are more and more adults enjoying the hobby of coloring, for therapy, for de-stressing, and just for fun. The adult patterns are more challenging. The more intricate the design, the harder it is to stay within the lines. The phrase “staying within the lines” is a generalized metaphor; its meaning is pretty obvious.

If you had a coloring book and were to color the picture on page eight with shapes that would only fit within the lines only on page seven, your picture would look a mess. Seeing it, someone might ask, Hey what is going on here; what are you doing?” We expect the shapes and colors we see to match the page we are on. In the Gospels, we see Jesus under scrutiny from people around him. He seems not to conform to their accepted norms and mores. Jesus was questioned by the Temple authorities, by his family, even by his own followers. The marks he made with his crayons did not fit the pattern they had in view. What Jesus was coloring with his teachings and his acts of healing were not falling in line with some expectations, because they fit the good news design of the kingdom of God, since “now the time was fulfilled.”—Mark 1:14.

This Sunday, the liturgy drops us into the story of Jesus with a crowd, recorded in the third chapter of the Gospel According to Mark. Let’s note the background. Reviewing the opening chapters of Mark, we find Jesus has already, delivered a man with an unclean spirit while at Capernaum, cooled the fever of Simon’s mother-in-law, and cured many. Elsewhere in Galilee, he cured a leper, then back at Capernaum, gave strength and function to a paralytic. At the synagogue, he met a man with a withered hand and restored the form of his hand. Then more unclean spirits were driven away from tormented people.

After all of that, the sizes of the crowds that gathered were getting larger wherever Jesus went. Some wanted to be healed; some wanted just to witness these powerful acts. Some wanted to find fault with the actions and message of this powerful teacher. Read this portion of Sunday’s Gospel lesson:

The crowd came together again, so that Jesus and his disciples could not even eat. When his family heard it, they went out to restrain him, for people were saying, “He has gone out of his mind.”… Then his mother and his brothers came; and standing outside, they sent to him and called him. A crowd was sitting around him; and they said to him, “Your mother and your brothers and sisters are outside, asking for you.” And he replied, “Who are my mother and my brothers?” And looking at those who sat around him, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.”  (Mark 3:20-21, 31-35)

There are always conventions within a society that tries to get people responding within the established lines of thought and behavior. They might be the conventions of family, government, culture, or religious leadership. In the life of Jesus, authorities from these conventions confronted Jesus sometimes politely, sometimes harshly. Jesus, however, was conforming to a power none of them truly knew. He was forming a new family, a family that, with him, would proclaim and promote the reign of God. He was coloring within the lines only he saw clearly, because of the communion he had with God, the Father. It looked like a mess to them, because they only saw their lines, their designs for operation.

At first look, this gospel passage might upset us, looking like a word against the family. Rather, it is a radical and strong statement, that our allegiance to God and the purposes set out through Christ, must be followed above all other devotions. Jesus puts forth a statement he is brother to all who would follow the will of God. We have to be in the right coloring book and on the same page as Jesus, to be completing the picture our Savior has for us to adorn.

We all get lost in projects and designs we launch, or that others put in front of us. We have to discern whether those initiatives are the ones that make us the brothers and sisters and mothers of Jesus. The family time we want to invest in, the lines within which we want to color, are those given us by our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Let’s have some family time! Grab your pack of countless colors, and with Christ fill in the spaces of his design: the vast, creative, unfolding shapes and patterns of the Kingdom of God.