Missional Jesus establishes and forms the kingdom of God, and he does so in the form of a new family of faith.
Then Jesus’ mother and brothers arrived. Standing outside, they sent someone in to call him. A crowd was sitting around him, and they told him, “Your mother and brothers are outside looking for you.”
“Who are my mother and my brothers?” he asked.
Then he looked at those seated in a circle around him and said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother.”
1. Missional Jesus must summon his own mother and siblings into the kingdom’s new community.
2. Missional Jesus defines those who are in his community as “whoever does God’s will.”
3. Doing God’s will needs to be defined as Jesus defines it: and a capsule summary of that meaning is “God’s Torah, now brought to completion in the mission and message of Jesus, and expressed now as God’s will.” A good place to see the will of God is the Sermon on the Mount or in texts of discipleship to believe in and follow Jesus (say Mark 1:14-15).
4. This means that missional Jesus is forming a new community and that community is noted by adherence to Jesus. There is no distinction between a kingdom ethic and a following-Jesus ethic.
5. All missional work leads to adherence to and encircling around Jesus.