BBC NEWS | In Depth | slavery

BBC NEWS | In Depth | slavery

This week is difficult in many ways. The hairs on their head are numbered too...


God is the deliverer in face of evidence to the contrary, in the face of turmoil even in our own families.

The Witness: The Father's Day Distraction

The Witness: The Father's Day Distraction Let us take care not to be distracted!

Do you hate your family? (Proper A7)

Another interesting text for Father's day, and interestingly enough the Gospel of Thomas shed some light on this for me.

Jesus said, "Whoever does not hate his father and his mother as I do cannot become a disciple to Me. And whoever does not love his father and his mother as I do cannot become a disciple to Me. For My mother gave me falsehood, but My true Mother gave me life." (italics mine)

OK, so the end sounds a little gnostic, but the beginning sounds like the synoptics, with the exception of "as I do." So I got thinking, how does Jesus hate his mother? Well, the road he's on will deprive her of a son. To those who love him, Jesus is going about hateful things. This makes sense in the context of taking up our cross. Unless we love him more than our families, who will hurt at our death, or our own lives, which we count as lost, we cannot follow in his footsteps.

Deliverance (Proper A7)

Jeremiah and Ishmael tell us of God's deliverance from death. The image of the helpless infant's cries under the cover of the bushes reaching the ears of God is powerful. God's provision, for him and his mother, is in contrast to Abraham's faithful action in sending them away. (Abraham is a hard example to preach for father's day.)
The psalmist echoes their prayer, "Preserve my life, for I am devoted to you…"

Jeremiah feels deceived by his heavenly father, but looks to him for deliverance. The psalmist again echo's his prayer, "It is for your sake that I have borne reproach…"

Paul inverts the deliverance of God in New Testament fashion. "So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus." Consider yourself dead to be considered alive by God. God's deliverance from death comes through death.

Jesus' own words echo this. "Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it." The statements about the sparrows and the hair on their head demonstrate that God cares more about them, so they should not worry about their own lives, in fact they must loose their lives to experience the life of God.