Dear friends,

Some of you will be aware that two of my sisters emigrated from the United Kingdom to Western Australia nearly 30 years ago now. Over those years the family has grown and changed, just like any other family. Grandparents have passed away, new relationships have been forged and children have been born. In recent times we have enjoyed visits from my sisters and some nieces and nephews, but this time, after a gap of nine years, Julie and I have the opportunity to return to Western Australia this summer. We are blessed to have a large family on the other side of the world.

Our own congregation has many people who have family in different places in the world: that’s the nature of an international community. Some of us are within easy travelling distance from our family, perhaps a few hours by car, but others need to travel to another continent to see them.

It can be difficult being far away from family; particularly as parents get older and knowing what can best be done for them as they become frailer. The good thing today is that we have sophisticated methods of communication such as internet video calls, social media, etc.; all very different from when my sisters left Scotland. In those days, we could look forward to a telephone call or blue airmail letter through the letter box.

Any loving congregation of Christians should be a second family for us. Jesus used the language of family when he spoke to God in Heaven. He referred to God as his ‘Father’ and spoke of himself as his ‘Son’. One intimate word that Jesus used to refer to God in Heaven is ‘Abba’, the Aramaic word that can be translated ‘my Father’. In the Church we extend the language of family to consider other believers as brothers and sisters in the Lord. We can think of fellow believers in the congregation as our brothers and sisters and, similarly, believers in other congregations of the same denomination or from different denominations. This sense of extended family exists between ourselves and the people of Christ Presbyterian Congregation Adentan, with whom we have been twinned for ten years. When Owusu Sarpong and Carol Philips visit Adentan in early July they will meet many brothers and sisters in the Lord, who will welcome them into their Ghanaian church family.

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Dear friends,

On Sunday mornings we have been reflecting on the life of Jesus. We have considered the theological context of his ministry that ‘the word (who) was with God and was God, became flesh and made his dwelling among us’ (i.e. God the Son became human in the life of Jesus of Nazareth). Yet there is also a cultural context to his ministry, which helps us to make sense of him and the world in which he lived.

Judaism, the religious context into which Jesus was born, was as complicated then as it is today and the gospels give us some insight into this. Throughout His ministry, Jesus’ main opponents were the Pharisees. The Pharisees became the guardians of the Old Testament law, after the Jerusalem temple was liberated from the Greeks in 167 BC. Over the years, they developed an oral law in addition to the written law of the Old Testament. By the time Jesus of Nazareth was exercising his ministry, the Pharisees had evolved into different schools, some of which were liberal while other were more conservative. These schools debated the finer points of the Jewish law, particularly on the issues of ritual purity and observation of the Sabbath. Before becoming a Christian, the apostle Paul had been a Pharisee and came from the school of Gamaliel [Acts 22:3]. The Sadducees were often from well to do families of the Jewish elite and their views differed significantly from the Pharisees; Sadducees had no oral law and didn’t believe in the resurrection of the dead. The ruling Jewish Council (the Sanhedrin) was made up of members of these two groups. There was third group within Judaism known as the Essenes who were to be found in the dessert at Qumran, but they also inhabited cities in small numbers. The Essenes believed in regular ritual bathing as part of their cultic practice and the Dead Sea Scrolls are religious writings attributed to them, which have made a huge contribution to modern Biblical scholarship. It is also worth noting that there were also Zealots, who wanted to rise up and liberate Palestine from its Roman occupiers by force if necessary.

So why does it help for us as Christians to understand Jesus’ world? It might be interesting, but what does it contribute to our faith and commitment to Christ?

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