Genesis 21:8-21 Psalm 86:1-10 16-17 Romans 6:1-11 Matthew 10:24-39

Psalm 86 says; For you, O Lord are good and forgiving, abounding in steadfast love to all who call on you. Further; Turn to me and be gracious to me; give your strength to your servant; save the child of your maidservant.

God is steadfast and compassionate. He is to be trusted and he stands with us. We know this daily in the lifegiving presence of Jesus. In his accommodation of us in our trespasses, the peace of forgiving and being forgiven.

In Abraham, we see the story of God making good the failings of Abraham and Sarah. Hagar was property, abused and used to bear a child for Abraham and Sarah, before the promised child Isaac was born, after the promise of children when God give new names to Abraham and Sarah.

Yet God accommodates Abraham’s lack of trust in this story and honours the child of Hagar, Ishmael. He would become a nation.

Sarah’s hateful jealousy drove Abraham to send Hagar and the child Ishmael into the desert to die. Abraham trusted the voice of God as he would when that same voice would ask him to also kill Isaac.

Hagar learned to trust God as the God who provides. God spoke to her and the promise of Abraham became hers too.

Ishmael was spared the abandonment of Abraham as Isaac would be spared his knife by the Angel of the Lord who spoke from heaven. Hagar was given water to save her son, Abraham a lamb in exchange for the sacrifice of Isaac.

Hagar would see her son married. Sarah died before Isaac was married to Rebecca. Rebecca was barren. And the story continues, the cycle of deceit and God’s blessing.

God is steadfast in his purpose, only good.

Show me a sign of favour the Psalm says, Hager was favoured. God in his ways is to be trusted to be good. Genesis shows us people are not. Despite this God makes good the fickleness of the human heart.

In Romans 6, we have the good news of Jesus, the seed of Abraham, the fulfilment of the promised blessing to Abraham.

 Romans 6 bears reading again and pondering. Abraham was enslaved to sin but reconned righteous by God. We were enslaved to sin, freed now to walk in newness of life.

Our faith is that Christ’s death is our death. Christ’s resurrection is our resurrection. Why? Only death can separate us from the slavery and dominion of sin. In Christ we have died. In the resurrected Christ, death no longer has dominion over Christ as it did in his life. All die except for the exceptional few taken up into God’s presence. He carried his full humanity into death though he could have commanded legions of angels to save him. Death could not hold him who was fully God and knows no death. In his resurrection, Jesus is revealed as fully God.

This Jesus who was crucified, died once and for all, raised by the glory of God, to live to God. We are called to be dead to sin and alive to God in Christ.

The power of this message is anticipated in Matthew by Jesus.

This is not an easy way. Jesus’ death was cruel and his life an offense to the authorities and powers that took him to his death, to the cross.

The glory of the light of the resurrection expresses to the authorities their weakness and  exposes the principalities and powers for what they are, vanquished. They work their way in humanity exercising dominion yet in Christ we are freed from that dominion. Look around. Take note. Name the powers. You may be subject to their wiles, but you are free from their power.

There is nothing they conspire to do Christ will not expose through the lives of his servants even to death.

Truly the way of Christ makes us vulnerable and is dangerous for us. But death is defeated.

The voice of God that speaks to us in our hearts brings us to our death and the new life we gain turns the darkness to light; the whisper into a proclamation.

Death is judged and evil ends in total destruction of the person, body, and soul. This is to be feared; our loss of humanity.

God feels every suffering of the creation he has formed, even the loss of the sparrow’s life, and knows us deeply, even to the number of hairs on our head. He is with us and for us.

How are we to acknowledge God in the way Jesus asks us to when our very lives might be lost as a result as we expose the works of darkness, the violence and pride of the system and the power of family alliances: the corruption of status.

We are not promised peace but the sword as everyone turns against us. The cross is a tool of the state to punish and rule by fear and we are not to fear it. We are to embrace it. This is no platitude but a serious call to acknowledge God. This is not a comfortable gospel. We pledge our allegiance to Christ, Jesus our only hope and reject the system.

Do not fear, the system may cause us to loss of status, separation from family and a bleak future. The miracle is, in this we find life. We are free. Free indeed.