The Gospel lesson for Trinity Sunday ends (John 8:48-59), “So they picked up stones to throw at him, but Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple.”  Strange way to treat the Son of God who with the Father and the Holy Spirit created the throwers to be, according to Psalm 8, “a little less than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor.”  Moreover, they used stones which God had created to try to kill God. All this dishonorable and inglorious behavior took place in what was claimed to be God’s earthly residence.  Thus, they drove God out of his own home.

Jesus had already made himself unpopular in Chap. 2, when he used a whip to chase out of the temple courts those selling oxen, sheep, pigeons and those exchanging currency to the special temple money.  Imagine the narthex at church filled with bellowing oxen, bleating sheep, cooing pigeons and all the odors that go with having animals, including piles of manure and the merchants calling out offering the best deals on their sacrificial animals.  And we tend to take notice of a crying baby.

 Chapter 8, is the conclusion of a nasty exchange between God (Jesus) who was accused of having a demon. He protested that he was honoring his Father.  However, they were honoring their father, who was not Abraham as they claimed, but the devil who was a liar, murderer and wouldn’t know the truth if it bit him on the nose.  And neither would they.

One gets the idea that this isn’t going to end well.  Which it doesn’t because these folks created to be a little less than the heavenly beings, managed to not only chase God out of the temple, but even out of Jerusalem where they hang God on a cross and bury him, thinking “good riddance.” Of course, we know how that ended, with Mary Magdalene meeting Jesus in the garden cemetery and becoming the first apostle telling the disciples, “I have seen the Lord.”

I guess we can say on this Father’s Day, “Father knows Best.”