Mark 3:20-35 is the first example of Mark’s famous bracketing technique known as inter-calculation or sandwiching.
1 This technique involves beginning with one story, which is then interrupted by another story, before going back to the first story. This is clearly seen in the verses from our pericope:
Mark 3:20–21 - Jesus' family wants to take hold of him because they think he is out of his mind.
Mark 3:22–30 – The teachers of the law who come from Jerusalem think Jesus is possessed by the devil.
Mark 3:31–35– Jesus' family comes to call him but Jesus ignores them and reinterprets what it means to be his family according to spiritual and not biological criteria.
Mark often sandwiches
stories together like this in his Gospel. The reason he does so is to allow two different stories to make the same or a similar point. In Mark 3:20-35, the main point seems to be that anyone who attempts to stop Jesus in his work of ministry—whether or not it is his family or his haters—any such attempt is sinful.
20 Then he went home, and the crowd gathered again, so that they could not even eat.