This week's readings are Genesis 18:1-15, 21:1-7 and Matthew 9:35-10:8.  

You have to admit that our Genesis reading this week is a pretty good fit for the idea of Father's Day, telling, as it does the story of both the promise to Abraham that he would become a father - and the birth of his son Isaac.  Abraham's name even literally means 'father of many'.

It's very easy to see our faith (along with other faiths) as large, a personal, international, intergenerational things; as vast conglomerations of doctrines and ethics standing as perpetual monoliths in the landscape of human history as a vast sprawling epic.  This reading reminds us that that is not how it began.  It's a deeply intimate story of family - a tale of a man and a woman, their longing for a child, and a God who meets them in their deepest hopes and fears.  It's a tale in parts of sacrifice, betrayal, homecomings, laughter, and love - but not on a grand international scale around a globe, instead on a domestic level, around shared hearth and home.

That language of intimate family abounds in our Christian vocabulary - we call God our Father collectively, and our liturgies and scriptures refer to us as brothers and sisters.  Perhaps it's worth remembering that.  Perhaps its worth remembering the origin and destiny of our faith on an individual level - that it happens in the moments between us and the person beside us, in the way we treat them, speak to them, love them, and that it's those little, individual interactions, that come together to draw the bigger picture.  Start small again, day by day, just by loving the person next to you; laughing with them in their joy; crying with them when they weep; forgiving them when they make mistakes; listening when they need to talk; and facing the silences together when words fail... like you would, like you do, with family.

Sisters, brothers, God bless you,