Tuesday, February 17 – Abraham and Isaac
Genesis 15, 17, 18:1-15, 22
Rachel Barenblat, “Silence,” Velveteen Rabbi (11 Nov 2008). Accessed 31 Dec 2008: http://velveteenrabbi.blogs.com/blog/2008/11/this-weeks-portion-silence.html.
Hebrews 11
“Story of Abraham,” Islamia. Accessed 31 Dec 2008: http://www.islamia.com/abraham.htm.
This week we get to one of the really fascinating stories about sacrifice in the Bible: God has promised great things to Abraham through his younger son, Isaac, and then God asks Abraham to sacrifice Isaac. It nearly came to pass, but God (or an Angel) intervenes, and a ram is offered up instead.
Because Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all claim to be Abrahamic faiths, I thought this was a great opportunity to examine this familiar story from these different perspectives. Here are some questions our readings suggest:
Abraham is often held up as a paragon of faith (e.g. Hebrews 11): does Rachel Barenblatt's poem make you think more, or less, highly of him?
How is the story different if we remember that Isaac wasn't Abraham's "one and only son" (Hebrews 11:17) (even though we know God make specific promises about Isaac)? Does it matter whether it's Isaac or Ishmael that Abraham nearly sacrificed? Or whether the almost-sacrificed son was in on the plan? (The fact that Isaac is kept in the dark in Genesis 22 always left an impression on me as a child.)
Going a little farther afield: Do you admire the role models the author of Hebrew has enumerated? Why or why not? What do you make of the assertion that "Each one of these people of faith died not yet having in hand what was promised, but still believing" (Hebrews 11:13, Peterson)?
Check back before Tuesday, after I get a chance to read up on God's claim on first born (sons, of course). I will also bring the book with illustrations this week.
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Here's one more poem, which I include because I just realized this week that it refers to a relevant passage from the Koran. I read the poem and my commentary in September 2007, when Wes was preaching on "shrewd faithfulness" at Faith.
“The Night Abraham Called to the Stars”
by Robert Bly
Do you remember the night Abraham first called
To the stars? He cried to Saturn: “You are my Lord!”
How happy he was! When he saw the Dawn Star,
He cried, “You are my Lord!” How destroyed he was
When he watched them set. Friends, he is like us:
We take as our Lord the stars that go down.
We are faithful companions to the unfaithful stars.
We are diggers, like badgers; we love to feel
The dirt flying out from behind our hind claws.
And no one can convince us that mud is not
Beautiful. It is our badger soul that thinks so.
We are ready to spend the rest of our life
Walking with muddy shoes in the wet fields.
We resemble exiles in the kingdom of the serpent.
We stand in the onion fields looking up at the night.
My heart is a calm potato by day, and a weeping,
Abandoned woman by night. Friend, tell me what to do,
Since I am a man in love with the setting stars.
Here's my commentary:
Friends, this morning we are discussing probably the most difficult parable of Jesus that is recorded in the Gospels. I have read you a poem that, I submit to you, addresses one of today’s possible worship themes: faithfulness. I got to faithfulness by an admittedly roundabout route. Beginning with the parable of the master and the shrewd servant, I asked, what are we to be shrewd in? We are to be shrewd, I think, not with each other but in the way we follow God, which is to say our discipleship, which means how we live our faithfulness in God and to His Word.
Poet and New Age guru, Robert Bly has given us a moving portrait of just what our poor, human attempts at faithfulness—or rather, faithlessness—can look like. In this poem, Abraham calls to the stars: first to Saturn, then to Venus, the Dawn Star. But they set in the sky; these points of light are not permanent and steadfast the way God is, Bly implies. And us? We are like badgers, happiest when we’re mucking about in the mud of earthly life, of sin. Only in the dark do we cry to be loved. “Friends, he is like us.” And we don’t look very faithful, much less shrewd, standing out in the onion fields.
But I do not think that all is lost. Did you know that in some traditions, both badgers and potatoes are symbols of magic, healing, persistence, and benevolence? I don’t know whether Bly meant these higher meanings, or whether he intended the straightforward association of badgers and potatoes with dirt and the earth. However, Bly surely knew of another story about Abraham and stars. Remember that when God made covenant with Abram, “He took him outside and said, ‘Look up at the heavens and count the stars—if indeed you can count them.’ Then [God] said to him, ‘So shall your offspring be.’” Genesis 15:5 (NIV). Today we consider Abraham a paragon of faithfulness, someone who so trusted God that he was willing to sacrifice his son Isaac, with whom God had blessed him and Sarah in their old age.
“Friends, he is like us.” Cold potatoes and muddy badgers could be—like Abraham surely is—symbols of hope that we are not fated to be as faithless as the setting stars.
Now let’s see about becoming shrewd. Amen.
p.s. I find the line "My heart is a calm potato by day, and a weeping,
Abandoned woman by night" rather... hysterical (in both senses of the word).
p.p.s. But I did have fun researching the symbolism of badgers. ;-)
Sorry for the dissertation, but here at the references for child-sacrifice in the Old Testament:
"The firstborn of your sons you shall give to me. You shall do the same with your oxen and with your sheep: for seven days it shall remain with its mother; on the eighth day you shall give it to me." ~Exodus 22:28-29
"All that first opens the womb is mine, all your male livestock, the firstborn of cow and sheep. 20The firstborn of a donkey you shall redeem with a lamb, or if you will not redeem it you shall break its neck. All the firstborn of your sons you shall redeem." ~Exodus 34:19-20
Hannah is barren and her co-wife torments her: “She was deeply distressed and prayed to the Lord, and wept bitterly. She made this vow: ‘O Lord of hosts, if only you will look on the misery of your servant, and remember me, and not forget your servant, but will give to your servant a male child, then I will set him before you as a nazirite until the day of his death. He shall drink neither wine nor intoxicants, and no razor shall touch his head.’” 1 Samuel 1:10-11 This story ends happily: “Samuel was ministering before the Lord, a boy wearing a linen ephod. His mother used to make for him a little robe and take it to him each year, when she went up with her husband to offer the yearly sacrifice. Then Eli would bless Elkanah and his wife, and say, ‘May the Lord repay you with children by this woman for the gift that she made to the Lord’; and then they would return to their home. And the Lord took note of Hannah; she conceived and bore three sons and two daughters. And the boy Samuel grew up in the presence of the Lord.” 1 Samuel 2:18-21
And then there's Jephthah (Judges 11:29-40):
“And Jephthah made a vow to the Lord, and said, ‘If you will give the Ammonites into my hand, 31then whoever comes out of the doors of my house to meet me, when I return victorious from the Ammonites, shall be the Lord’s, to be offered up by me as a burnt-offering.’” That person is his only child, his daughter, who agrees to the sacrifice if she’s allowed to mourn her virginity for 2 months in the wilderness.
And yet Jeremiah brings a message of punishment to Judah and Jerusalem “Because the people have forsaken me, and have profaned this place by making offerings in it to other gods whom neither they nor their ancestors nor the kings of Judah have known, and because they have filled this place with the blood of the innocent, and gone on building the high places of Baal to burn their children in the fire as burnt-offerings to Baal, which I did not command or decree, nor did it enter my mind; therefore the days are surely coming, says the Lord, when this place shall no more be called Topheth, or the valley of the son of Hinnom, but the valley of Slaughter.” ~Jeremiah 19:4-6.
And of course:
“‘With what shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt-offerings, with calves a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with tens of thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?’ He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” ~Micah 6:6-8
If you enjoy the poem for February 17, then check out this poem, inspired by a verse from this week's reading:
http://www.frostwriting.com/issues/article/lunar-eclipse/
PS I don't think that link displayed well. So click here. It's the second poem.
http://www.frostwriting.com/issues/article/lunar-eclipse/
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