In the middle of concentric circles, Jesus is introduced to us here: In the innermost circle he stands, the Son of Mary, together with his mother. Interestingly, Marcus does not report anything from Josef. Then Jesus' male kin is listed by name, then the female ones are mentioned across the board. Then the "family," then the father. Finally, it is reported that Jesus enters into the "villages in the vicinity." Concentric circles – the human environment of Jesus.

Jesus is not only the true God, but also true man …

On the one hand, Jesus belonged to a large family.

Many who hear the gospel today are relieved t experience a Jesus who is described from "human conditions."

It makes access to Jesus more tangible, however, it apparently had the opposite effect at the time of Jesus' earthly existence. The fact that one knows Jesus so well and knows about his family makes it impossible for the people believe he is God's Son.

Jesus sums this up in the proverb sentence: "A prophet does not apply anything in his father's city, even with his relatives and his family."

What is true about this sentence (to this day), and why is it true?

Apparently, there is a certain strangeness to the man who wants and should be directing God's word, and one does not want to and should not know so much about him; In the past, the salutary Jesus was known.

Anyone who knows "too much" tends to make the messenger of God smaller than he is – the "stories" only obscure the message.

Is this why we learn so little personal and biographical about Jesus in John's Gospel and with Paul? And by considering this, we discover here a danger of modern piety that Jesus sees as a "buddy." Then Jesus is one of us, but at the same time foreign, the mission of God, is the sacred. Have we not tried by all means to draw Jesus more humanely? Didn't biblical sociology and comparison contribute a lot to this?

I feel like it has.

Even on such issues there is obviously the danger of all the humanization of Jesus if it does not strike clear border. The exploration of the historical Jesus has often succumbed to this danger, suggesting that it had just been or something like "it" could have been.

The result of this Jesus has been seen in literature, yet it often comes across as described in Mark 6: We know Jesus as a Jew, as a peasant revolutionary, as half a Zealot, as a humanitarian, pacifist Jew. And with that, everything in truth is troubling interpreted away.

What would be troubling would be if he had to do with the real presence of God and man.

Since we know all human conditions so perfectly, the impression arises that believing in the divinity of Jesus is superfluous.

Whoever dissolves everything into human conditions cheats on himself and others for the actually exciting, the real and real occasion for all Jesus stories.

That this is about the unfathomable, incomprehensible, mysterious God.

We also have to contend with the same phenomenon in pastoral care. Pastoral care is always a reflection of our faith in Jesus. We have become accustomed to providing pastoral care as a sum of pastoral psychology, sociology, medicine and science.

All cases of earlier "pastoral care" are well dissolved into numerous boxes of human conditions. Only the mysterious remnant degenerates under the puzzle word "spirituality."

But it seems to me that we don't want that [the actual spirituality or piety] at all. For this reason we search out alternatives that give us the feeling of piety, compassion and understanding. But it is only a veil that is held in front. Underneath the actual capacity to care is nowhere to be found.

Jesus had the capacity to feel as a person but to care without limit.

It is time we took his message more to heart!