Here are my thoughts for the 6th Sunday after Pentecost.

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If the overlying theme of the Bible is care for the poor and downtrodden, then the second theme has to be the family and the relationship between members of the family and with God. From the very beginning of this story, it has been about the relationship between mankind and God. And in each chapter of the story, the subplot has been how we have rejected God’s direction and how God has always tried to direct us back to Him.

Now, the key thing about this story of the family in which God is the Father is that we, the children, are not the ones defining what the family is. And therein lays the problem; because too often, we tried to do just that. We try to tell God what He should be thinking and what He should be doing. I came across a very interesting reading as I was preparing this piece. Simon Tugwell wrote in Prayer,

It is assumed that if God is omnipotent he can do anything; but this is not strictly true. What God’s omnipotence does mean is that nothing can obstruct Him, nothing can prevent His being fully and eternally Himself.

But this means that it is actually a part of His omnipotence that God does not contradict Himself. He is free to determine the manner of His own working; and in fact, as we know from revelation, He has chosen to work in such a way that we can interfere, and interfere very drastically, with His creation. God made man such that man could rebel against Him, and set up his own “world” in opposition to God. Of course, God is not without allies even in “our” world; He knows that we can never really be satisfied with any world of our own devising, so that it will always be vulnerable to His influence in one way or another; and God exploits this to the full. But He always respects the freedom and independence that He has given us.

Abraham was told that he would be the father of many nations but he was told this when both he and Sarah were childless and Sarah was well beyond the natural years of child-bearing. As we know from the chapters preceding today’s Old Testament reading, they both conspired to seek a solution to God’s plan without involving God. Abraham has a son, Ishmael, with Hagar, Sarah’s servant.

And while Abraham may be celebrating the prophecy of God that he, Abraham, would be the father of many nations would be fulfilled through Ishmael, Sarah does become pregnant and gives birth to a son of her own, Isaac.

There is a rivalry born out of jealously and, if you will, natural law. For Ishmael, as Abraham’s oldest son, is the heir to the fortune and Isaac will be left with a minimal amount. So, as we read today, there is hardness in Sarah’s heart towards what she considers her son’s rival and his mother.

But even though she had been involved in the plan, Sarah quickly turns against Hagar and demands that Abraham cast Ishmael and Hagar out of his household. Our reading for today (Genesis 21: 8 – 21) points out that Ishmael will ultimately become the father of his own nation. We know today (or at least we should know today) that this prophecy is the basis for the founding of Islam and its spiritual ties back to Abraham.

There will be enmity between Isaac and Ishmael for years to come and it will only disappear when their father dies and they join together in the grief common to all families when the patriarch dies. But we still see that enmity today in the fighting that takes place in the Holy Land. We forget that the differences between Arab and Jew are not just differences found in modern-day politics but differences that are centuries old. They are resolvable differences, to be sure, but to solve these differences we must find a radical new way of thinking; one not based on force and violence but on peace and cooperation. It is not an easy solution as anyone who has had argument with their own siblings well knows. But there is an answer.

And I think that is what Jesus is telling us in the Gospel reading for today (Matthew 10: 24 – 39). I don’t think that He seeks to destroy the family nor do I think that He wishes war. But when our focus is on the world on which we stand, we are certainly not going to be focusing on the Heavenly Kingdom. How many times have children rebelled against their parents because they seek a different path than the ones the parents wish for them to walk?

With His teachings and actions, Jesus showed us a new way, one that differed greatly from the one offered throughout the generations. And for those that followed Him, it was a way that would cause grief amongst their relatives. Did not Jesus’ mother and siblings try to pull Him out of His ministry when it began? And did not Jesus seemingly renounce His family, proclaiming that those who followed Him were His true brothers and sisters? It was not that He gave up His lineage; rather He expanded it.

And that is what He wants us to do. We are not to see things from a limited view of things immediately around us. Rather, we are to expand our horizons and our views to include everyone, even those whom we may despise and those who would despise us.

The Bible tells us an interesting story of Father and child, of how the child rebelled against the parent, and wandered through the ages. It is a story of how brother fought brother, father fought son, and parents and children became estranged from each other. Throughout the Bible, we read the story of mankind separating into factions and groups, each with anger and hatred for others. In our anger and our hatred, we become lost in this world.

But, as Paul points out in his words to the Romans for today (Romans 6: 1 – 11), the Father sent His Son to save us from our wanderings and our indecision and our hatred for others. God sent Jesus to bring us back into the true family, the family begun at the beginning of the story.

When Abraham died, Isaac and Ishmael reconciled their differences to bury their father. God gives us the answer for the unity of the family. He provided the answer when He reunited the two brothers, Ishmael and Isaac, in grief. He provided the answer for each one of us when His Son died on the cross for our sins.

And so it is, the story of the Bible is all about the family, the family of God. A family separated at the beginning through jealousy, envy, greed, hatred, and anger but brought together when the Father sent His Only Son to die on the Cross to save his children from sin and death.