When the texts selected for the tenth Sunday after Pentecost are examined in the context of each other, one idea emerges which might sustain them all : God, not the Promethean Abraham, nor the persistent faithful petitioner, nor the believer “rooted and built up,” is the authentic subject of all three.

There is a duality, an apparent contradiction, in Jesus' words about the family which is rooted in the rejection of legality as a sphere for family life and in the creation of a community whose claims transcend those of the family.