If the king says so, you have a place in his family.
Open Matthew 12:46-50.
Joseph was absent from Jesus’ adult life, so responsibility for the family fell to the oldest son. Jesus was firstborn, but he’d been travelling instead of looking after his family.
Suddenly they turn up: Continue reading “Belonging to the royal family (Matthew 12:46-50)”
Why does Jesus invite us to call God our Father?
Jesus’ favourite word of God isn’t YHWH. It’s Father. That’s new. Why?
If a little bird falls in the forest, does anybody hear?
Open Matthew 10:29-31.
What was your first pet? A puppy? A kitten? A budgie? Remember its name? What did it mean to you?
How deeply we feel responsibility for a creature in our care! It’s beyond commercial value: even if you paid for it with pocket money, its precious life depends on you. Where does this sense of responsibility come from?
Jesus believed this tenderness is a glimpse of something beyond, an echo of God’s heartbeat for the creatures in his care: Continue reading “The kingdom is God with his creatures (Matthew 10:29-31)”
Does God have a gender? Is he male?
“Does God have a gender? Like, is he male?” I’d already dismissed the class for the night, but her question was important. How would you have answered her? Continue reading “Is God male?”
Why did Jesus call God “Father”? Nobody else was doing that.
Open Matthew 5:43-48.
Did you notice that Jesus is using Father as his preferred word for God (5:16, 45, 48)? Father becomes the central core of his Sermon (6:1, 4, 6, 8, 9, 14, 15, 18, 26, 32). No one talked about God like this in Jesus’ world. Why did he make this radical and innovative move?
Jesus was the eternal Son of the Father, but he wasn’t talking about his own unique relationship. Check out the verses above: he consistently spoke of your Father. Where did that come from? Continue reading “God as Father (Matthew 5:43-48)”
