Genesis | Daddy’s angel, mummy’s devil

Notes on sibling rivalry. (Listen here.)

A perceptive young girl said to me once, ‘I’m daddy’s angel, and mummy’s devil. But my sister’s mummy’s angel, and daddy’s devil. It’s a bit difficult, really.’ Then she shrugged dismissively, but I thought ‘difficult’ was the understatement of the year. Those sisters fought every day in every possible way as they lived out their assigned roles and competed for their parents’ affections. Things were more than a bit difficult.

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Genesis | Deep in the weeds with Jacob

On weeds, seeds, scoundrels and descendants like dandelions. (Listen here.)

What wonderful promises! God will give Jacob land to plant roots and descendants to spread across the earth like dandelions. God will ensure the earth will be blessed by him and his countless offspring. And God will bless him, protect him and stay with him until these promises are fulfilled. I should be all starry-eyed, but quite frankly this story annoys the hell out of me. Because Jacob is a complete schmuck. Whatever is God thinking, to grant such glorious gifts to a grifter like Jacob?

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Genesis | Isaac, Ishmael and the Red Menace

If God is as big as we claim, there is no scarcity in God at all.

In her recent address to the National Press Club, the Red Menace rolled out her usual poison about Islam. She reiterated a bunch of frightened and frightening tropes about Muslims. She claimed that Western civilisation and its values are under siege. She blamed migrants for shortfalls in housing and social cohesion. She insisted that Australia must be a monocultural society. And in all this, she reminded me of our ancestor Sarah.

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Genesis | The joint inheritance

Can a common story offer hope? (Listen here.)

‘Leave your country, your people and your father’s household, and go to the land that I will show you… ’ says God to Abram. ‘I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse, and all peoples on earth will be blessed by you … To your descendants I will give this land.’ Then Abram entered the land with some process of negotiation and treaty. However, from the time of Joshua right up until last week in the White House, these same words have been used to justify driving people out.

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Matthew | The life of faith & doubt

It seems that doubt is part and parcel with faith, and this should be deeply encouraging. (Listen here.)

It might shock you to hear this, but there are days when I find it hard to identify as Christian. There are days when I struggle to hold onto faith. And there are days when I wonder what on earth I am doing with my life, preaching these few and futile words. For I scroll through my newfeed and see nothing but chaos and a world going up in flames.

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Funeral | You’ve got to go through it

Death is all around, so let’s put some language around it. A brief homily given at a recent funeral, for one who suffered too long and died too young.

Interesting fact: the Jesus stuff, what we call the gospel, isn’t highfalutin’ literature. Instead, it’s working class language. Like life, it’s rough, it’s raw, and it’s real. But translations tend to tidy things up. Take the word ‘splanchna.’

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John | Her mother’s voice

A promise to all who have been judged and found wanting. (Listen here.)

Last week I caught  up with a friend who told me a sad story. She’d been cleaning up her mother’s place when she found some old letters her mother had written. I would like to tell you how much her mother had praised her in these letters, but I can’t. Instead, the letters were venomous. ‘My daughter is so difficult. She’s so brittle, so defensive, so selfish. She’s hard as nails, she won’t let me in. I can’t understand why I had to have a daughter like that.’ On and on it went, with not a thought as to what might create such a daughter.

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1,2 Peter | A holy nation?

Can a nation be holy? Or is Peter pointing to a different reality? (Listen here.)

‘You are a chosen race,’ writes Peter, ‘a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people.’ ‘Ura!’ shouts Vlad as he orders yet another series of bombings and sends yet another bunch of Russian boys to their deaths in his drive to extend the Holy Russian Empire. ‘Yes!’ screams the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda as it abducts yet more children to be soldiers and sex slaves, victims of a horrific campaign to establish a Christian nation governed by the Ten Commandments. ‘Yessiree!’ crows Pete as he wages an illegal and despicable war against Iran in the name of the God of the Crusades.

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