Readings:
Isaiah 49:8-15; Psalm 145; John 5:17-30

For Zion was saying, ‘Yahweh has abandoned me, the Lord has forgotten me.’ Does a woman forget her baby at the breast, or fail to cherish the child of her womb? Yet even if these forget, I will never forget you.
Isaiah 49:14, 15

Jesus answered, ‘My Father goes on working, and so do I.’ But that only made the Jews even more intent on killing him, because, not content with breaking the sabbath, he spoke of God as his own Father, and so made himself God’s equal. To this accusation Jesus replied: ‘I tell you most solemnly, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can only do what he sees the Father doing… I can do nothing by myself; I can only judge as I am told to judge, and my judging is just, because my aim is to do not my own will, but the will of him who sent me.‘
John 5:17-19, 30

When we look at Jesus’ life, there is a sense in which we are also looking at ourselves, for the pattern of his life is to be the pattern of our own. ‘In your minds you must be the same as Christ Jesus’ (Philippians 2:5).

What characterizes Jesus’ life and distinguishes him from every great religious leader is his relationship to God, whom he calls ‘Abba’, the child’s ‘Dad’ or ‘Daddy’. Luke’s Gospel gives the only recorded words of Jesus in his first thirty years, ‘Did you not know that I must be about my Father’s affairs?’, his reply at the age of twelve to his mother after she had lost him for three days. This core relationship to ‘Abba’ pervades all his teaching and action in his public life, culminating in his ‘Not my will, but thine be done’, in his agony, and ‘Into thy hands I commend my spirit’, on the cross.

He prays that his followers should have this same relationship, ‘Father, may they be one in us, as you are in me and I am in you’ (John 17:21).

How did Jesus think of ‘Abba’ with whom his whole life is identified? The parables give the clue. One of his favourite parables is that of the king who holds a wedding feast for his son. The king’s one desire is that as many as possible should enjoy the celebration. When some of those invited do not turn up, the servants are told to go into the hedgerows and by-ways and bring them all in, halt, lame and blind. In Matthew’s Gospel the servants are told to bring in everyone, ‘wicked and good alike’. God is presented here, and in so many of the other parables, as a God of prodigal generosity, foolish by our standards, for he readily forgives one debtor ten thousand talents, the equivalent of a few million, but when that same man imprisons a debtor of his for a paltry sum, he is put back in prison until he pays the last penny. God, although prodigally generous, cannot stand stinginess, as in the Dives and Lazarus parable.

This life of God manifests itself in the teaching and actions of Jesus, culminating at the Last Supper, when he takes a piece of bread, blesses it, breaks it and gives it, saying ‘This is me, given for you. Do this in my memory’, an instruction which does not simply mean, ‘Keep repeating this ritual action’, but ‘let this action be the pattern of your life, too, as it is of mine’.

Many people have difficulty in approaching God as ‘Father’. If it is difficult for you, then change to ‘mother’ or, as the Song of Songs does, to ‘lover’. Use whatever is helpful. The reality is more important than the actual name with which you address God, and the reality is God, who is love, ‘closer to me than I am to myself’.

Prayer
Lord, free us of all destructive fear and anxiety, and still our hearts and minds, so that pondering your word in Scripture and contemplating the life of Jesus, we may recognise his Spirit dwelling within us and drawing us to be at one with you and with all creation. We ask you this through Jesus Christ, our Lord.
Amen.