He Who Called YHWH Mad
by Royce
“And when his family heard it, they went out to seize him, for they were saying, ‘He is out of his mind.'” — Mark 3:21
Every Jewish boy recited it daily. Shema Yisrael — Hear O Israel, the LORD our God, the LORD is one. James recited it every morning of his life. What he didn’t know was that the LORD was sitting across the table, passing the bread.
James grew up in the same house as Jesus. Same table. Same synagogue every Sabbath. Same carpentry shop in Nazareth. For at least thirty years, James knew Jesus the way you know someone when there is nowhere to hide — in the ordinariness of shared meals, shared chores, and the grief that likely came when Joseph, their father, was gone. He knew the sound of his brother’s breathing. The way he held a tool. The particular silence he kept when he was thinking.
And when Jesus began his public ministry, James’s response was not awe. It was alarm.
His family went out to seize him, saying, “He is out of his mind” (Mark 3:21). This was not polite skepticism from a distance. This was an intervention. James looked at his brother — this carpenter from Nazareth who was now drawing crowds and making enemies of the religious establishment — and said: he has lost it.
The unbelief didn’t stay quiet. Later, when Jesus’ reputation had grown and the Feast of Tabernacles approached, his brothers pushed him to go to Jerusalem and perform publicly. “Show yourself to the world,” they said (John 7:3-5). It was not encouragement. It was a dare — the kind you give someone you think is deluded. Prove it, or stop embarrassing us.
James was not a quiet doubter. He was an active one. He had maximum proximity to YHWH and used that proximity to try to shut him down.
Then came the cross. And then Jesus appeared to James. Paul records it in 1 Corinthians 15:7 with striking specificity: “Then he appeared to James.” A private appearance. Separate from the twelve. Jesus went to his brother.
James had called him mad. Had tried to stop his ministry. Had watched him die cursed on a cross. And then he showed up.
What do you do when the person standing in front of you is the one you dismissed — and the wounds in his hands are the proof that he was right about everything? What does your body do when you realize that the face you know better than almost any other face in the world belongs to the one who was before Abraham, who made the stars, who dropped armed soldiers in a garden with two words (John 18:5-6)?
In Exodus 3:14, God answered Moses from the burning bush: “I AM WHO I AM.” The divine name. YHWH. And in John 8:58, Jesus said plainly: “Before Abraham was, I AM.” Not “I was.” Present tense. Deliberate. They immediately picked up stones. They understood exactly what he was claiming.
James had eaten breakfast with the I AM. Had argued with the I AM. Had thought the I AM delusional. And the resurrection forced him to go back through thirty years of memory and re-read every moment with the recognition that the one he had tried to silence was the I AM of the burning bush. The one who spoke the stars into existence had grown up in his house.
James — the brother who called Jesus mad — became the leader of the Jerusalem church. The skeptic who tried to stop the ministry died for it — executed around 62 AD, according to the historian Josephus, for refusing to deny the resurrection. James did not merely change his opinion. He rebuilt his entire understanding of reality around a single fact: his brother had come back from the dead, and the brother was the I AM.
Reflection Questions
- James spent thirty years in proximity to Jesus and still missed who he was. When you are honest with yourself — is the Jesus you follow someone you have encountered personally, or someone you know mostly through what others have told you?
- If the answer is mostly secondhand — do you actually want to know him personally? What would it mean for you to say yes to that this week?
Prayer
Jesus, reveal yourself to me. Not the version I inherited from someone else’s faith. Not the version I constructed to stay comfortable. You. The I AM. The one the soldiers could not stand before. The one who went looking for his own skeptical brother after the resurrection. I don’t want secondhand faith anymore. Come find me the way you found James. I am not asking to understand you fully. I am asking to know you personally. That is my one request. Amen.