Jesus against family loyalty in
the canonical sources:
Matt 8v21:
Another of
the disciples said to him, ‘Lord, let me first go and bury my father.’
But Jesus said to him ‘Let the dead bury their dead.’
Matt 23v9:
And call no
man your father on earth, for you have one father who is in heaven.
Matt 10: 35-38:
For I have
come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother,
and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and a man’s foes will
be those of his own household. He who loves father or mother more than
me is not worthy of me; and he who loves son or daughter more than me
is not worthy of me; and he who does not take his cross and follow me
is not worthy of me.
Mark 3: 31-35
And his
mother and his brothers came; and standing outside they sent to him and
called to him. And a crowd was sitting about him; and they said to him,
‘Your mother and your brothers are outside asking for you.’ And he
replied, ‘Who are my mother and my brothers?’ And looking around on
those who sat about him, he said, ‘Here are my mother and my brothers!
Whoever does the will of God is my brother, and sister, and mother.’
Transcending gender in The Gospel of Thomas:
(22)
Jesus saw
infants being suckled. He said to his disciples, ‘These infants being
suckled are like those who enter the kingdom.’ They said to him, ‘Shall
we then as children enter the kingdom?’ Jesus said to them, ‘When you
make the two one, and when you make the inside like the outside and the
outside like the inside, and the above like the below, and when you make
the male and the female one and the same, so that the male be not male
nor the female female; and when you fashion eyes in place of an eye,
and a hand in the place of a hand, and a foot in the place of a foot,
and a likeness in place of a likeness, then will you enter the kingdom.
(37)
Jesus said,
‘When you disrobe without being ashamed and take up your garments and
place them under your feet like little children and tread on them, then
[will you see] the son of the living one, and you will not be afraid.
James M. Robinson (ed.), The
Nag Hammadi Library (San Francisco: Harper, 1988)
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