abraham, isaac, angel, donkey, ram (details)

It's not in the lectionary this week, but the Abraham/Isaac saga has the feel of those "deathly encounters with God" that are scattered in the Pentetuch. My painting has a folk quality about it: all the story's particulars are present - the donkey they came in on, the father, the son, the restraining angel, and the ram to be substituted. The fire's already blazing.
How must it have gone?
Abe: I want you to hold still while I tie you up. Thanks for helping me with the fire.
Izzy: What? You were going to do this all along! No way.
Abe: Come on. It'll make God happy.
Izzy: You're looped. I'm outta here.
The reality of two human beings tells me it must have been closer to this. That Isaac, no matter how pious, no matter how much a daddy's boy, must have been put out by this. Perhaps it's our need for clean pieties that makes us imagine it more like this.
Abe: Hold still while I tie you up on these sticks.
Isaac: Sure dad. Say hello to mom.
After all we are trained to think of faith as going along with authority. Following orders. Don't talk back. Go over the trenches and charge.
The Bible has a more contentious working out of faith though. David faces off with Goliath against orders. Elijah and the prophets strike back against the authorities as expressions of their faith. Jonah argues with God, as does Job. All in faith.
Even Abraham, already accounted as righteous for his faith, doesn't really need this further test. Paul writes it as an act of faith. That Abraham considered that God, the creator, could raise the dead and call into existence what didn't exist - and so Abraham was cool with sacrificing his son.
Kierkegaard finds this sacrifice, its very absurdity, the crux of faith. This story brings him into his assertion that faith has an absurdist side. That the absurdity of existence provides the augur where we prove our faith. Something like that.
The person who's really being asked to have faith here though is Isaac. He's the only one whose life is on the line. Or maybe the Faith's God's - whose plan for human salvation is on the line. Certainly what Abraham was doing was common practice among middle eastern peoples of that time. Abraham might of been thinking, "why's God asking me to do what all the other god's would ask?" Perhaps Abraham needed a sign of how this God, with whom he'd covenanted in Genesis 15:6, was different from the gods of the nations.
The angel's intervention says, "no more of this. We're not doing things this way anymore." The story read this way becomes an anti-authoritarian parable. We are breaking with the authority of tradition here, the way things have always been done, and the authority of culture, the power of doing what everyone else does. Abraham is so faithful that he would worship YHWH like everyone else worships their gods - and perhaps this is the test here, and Abraham shows himself to be just like anyone else. He's at least willing to go as far as the nations would go. But God says, "no." We're not going to do things like that anymore. No more of this top down stuff. No more will you assume that I yahweh want what the other gods want, or that I yahweh can be approached like any other god. The faith that you have with me and that I show to you is face to face, not top down.
And so Jesus calls us as a servant. He is lord, but he is servant of all. And he calls us to sacrifice our pretensions to lordship. To break away from authoritarian structures.
The world loves authority. Counter cultures are demonized. The gods of patriotism and market forces demand that we comply: put a pin on our lapel and let investment banks graze on the earth's people without restraint. But the righteousness of God, which judges a nation on how its weakest members (psalm 41, and other places) are treated, is different. In scripture we read that God's wrath is reserved for the most authoritarian of regimes. Regimes that quell dissent, that demand blind allegiance, that use violence to have their way. Authoritarianism would sacrifice the youth, the future, and the promise of God.
Here, in this story, we see God leading Abraham to a different kind of faith. Not an absurdist faith, or a "following orders" kind of faith, but a faith that approaches God as a partner.

memories

Here I am now in a new presbytery: the third presbytery of my life. I've ventured from Sierra Blanca in New Mexico, to Greater Atlanta, and now I'm in New Hope. I interned in Birmingham at Sheppard's and Lapsley, so I could count a forth as well.
As I answered questions at presbytery Tuesday, I considered how my study was influenced by the last examination I'd had. Or perhaps by the examination I'd heard on the floor of this presbytery last February. I considered the aphorism that generals tend to fight the last war. And that is a problem: that it is almost impossible to prepare for future problems in a complete way. That is, one can guess, and in some cases, it is possible to anticipate some of what will be asked. Still the tendency to attack yesterday's difficulties in the context of today persists.
This mistake is exemplified when teams try what worked for last year's champions. I remember the year the Falcons adopted the one back offense, right after Washington had won a super bowl with it, and the Falcons failed. It was a miserable experience, painful to watch. The Falcons have made this mistake, and many others besides, predictably over the years.
As an investment firm commercial says, "past performance is no guarantee of future success."
Whatever the past might have been, and past performance can tell you something it's true, you're entering into an investment that is founded on faith.
In life our predictions often don't pan out. Witness how Ivy League trained thinkers are unprepared for the consequences of war for instance. Every day and night on TV we witness intelligent men and women being flat wrong about many things, and their failure doesn't stop them - but certainly when I listen to them, they are consistent in approaching today's problems with solutions for yesterday's problems.
Life is more about faith. The question is What have we put our faith in? Niebuhr reminds us that we sin when we attach ultimate value to finite (non-ultimate) things, and finite value to the ultimate. When we treat God as a thing, a disposable commodity, and when we attach faith to, and give worship to, some temporary thing ( the market, a job, fame, our persona) we sin.
I think an element of faith is to enter into a new thing without thinking about the past, consciously not trying to fight the last battle, or answer the last test. Faith involves a letting go of the past.
Faith also involves imagination. Imagination is vital for living in new moments. I remember Faulkner saying that in the South the past isn't even past, and I think about how stultified the Southern imagination generally is. Part of the failure of unions to take hold down here certainly results from the population in general, seeing the failures of mill strikes in the 1930s, being too much in shock to imagine a world in which they would be better off without these kinds of jobs and that kind of paternalism.
We need faith that things can be different, and imagination to see how we can make these differences real - especially in the face of a world that puts all its effort in the narrative of real politik. The world loves nothing better than that the past should not be past. In the Balkans, in Ireland, in Palestine, all over the world, the past is firmly set in people's minds as an inescapable legacy requiring vengeance (though Ireland has moved beyond this, it's troubles are recent enough to recall how fixed in stone they were). The imagination and faith needed to move forward are hard won.
The Easter text in Isaiah 25 presents just such an imagining of God's abundance (which we must practice faith to see) over against the story of real politik - Moab that is crushed like straw. Of course Israel lives in the context of Moab, of exile, of displacement, and Isaiah's vision of a feast over flowing with wine and meat (and a vegan selection) is an eschatological promise, an elusive promise - but it is where faith leads. We wander in the desert to find it.
And this vision of Isaiah's is God's promised land of milk and honey. It's as if at the end of the Deuteronomist's history that God had said, "not here; this monarchy, this isn't it." Israel has not just wandered 40 years in the desert, but the subsequent 500 years as well. And here we are 2500 years later, called to engage our imaginations to find how faith will lead us to the feast.

See the tree how big it's grown

This is the oak I planted from an acorn dropped by an oak growing in my grand parents' yard ca. 1965. I remember scooping a bunch of acorns into a Swisher Sweet cigar box and scattering the acorns all around our front and back yard. This oak survived, thrived and grew. The Japanese maples mom planted are gone (mom always planted Japanese maples), but this tree remains. I'm as surprised as anyone. I know that one day it will be cut down, but so far, even though it takes up the space of two or three cars, free market principles haven't brought about its demise. I didn't plant it per se: as I remarked I scattered it around, purely by chance, and this tree is the product of that chance. Chance is the foundation of my art. Well, ever since I was in high school I've found chance based art liberating. Duchamp, Cage, Klee, Pollock - all used chance elements in various constructive ways.

Today a death occurred in the emergency department. A man who'd had a gastric bypass (and he's not the only person to die after this procedure recently) passed out at home and was brought back to the ER where he died when something happened to stop his heart. His wife and sister were distraught. Their church is one of those charismatic churches that emphasize healing and miracles - that God commands us to command him and that our words, our confession brings about reality. The wife looks at me and says, "he's still warm. We can bring him back. There are miracles. You do believe in miracles!" It dawns on me, she expects me to act like I can bring him back from the dead. She expects me to begin praying demanding God to make this man live. And I'm stunned. I say nothing at first only to flatly say that yes, I believe in miracles. Inside I'm thinking, "if I bring this guy back, I'll have to bring everyone back." Once you bring someone back from the dead everyone will demand, will feel entitled - they'll say, "you brought him back, what about my husband? Doesn't my husband deserve to come back? Why isn't my husband good enough?" And then family, "you brought a stranger back, why not aunt Mildred? Isn't she as deserving as some stranger?" Then people are knocking on the door at 2 am: all demanding that someone be brought back to life. Once you start bringing people back from the dead you can kiss a ski vacation to Wyoming good bye - and I want to go to Wyoming: we're going this New Years - and I'm not sacrificing time with my wife and in-laws to raise some guy from the dead, because that's not the end of it. Then people are crashing their cars into trees and trains, once twice thrice - fifty times and more: why not, "Fred'll bring em back." And then the whole country is a Christian zombie nation, people dying and popping back up every day. And then when I die, what about me - no one's bringing me back. The Christian zombies won't care; they won't try.
Also I looked at this guy and I thought, "Jesus died. Jesus was deader than this guy, stone cold non-heart pumping, non-lung expanding, non-circulatory brain dead dead. Jesus was deaddeaddead. And to just willy nilly raise someone up who's still warm seems to dishonor the Lord's death. Death was good enough for Jesus. Death freaks us out; but it didn't freak him out. he was content to be in God's hands - even a God whom he'd felt had forsaken him. "
I'm not looking forward to death. More than ever I value life and want to keep on living; and I would be crushed if I lost Jami. I remember my mom's death, and my grand father's death, and my grand mother's death, and so many others. They all affected me but not the same way. I cried, I felt empty, I was relieved.
Faith to me is more real when it lives without moving mountains. Real faith lives in the fact: the death, the loss, the disappointment. Real faith finds joy when all is down - not a fake joy, pretending. There's something about the kind of faith that exercises the miraculous to engineer my wishes and desires when I wish and desire them that seems like a stupid faith, a dull brained dim watery faith - such a faith denies the pain, the suffering.
But who doesn't want quick results. We live in a culture of results. The free market ideology is about results and immediacies - no waiting, no long term - maximize gains, and productivity is the bottom line, a bottom line that justifies everything. There's no room for death. Death is a luxury, an inconvenience, laziness. Death is nonproductive. Death says there's something more than the bottom line. Imagine a Bergman film, the pointing bony finger of death - but imagine death being shocked at the laughing feasting figure of Jesus. And that is our faith: death sits down at the table with us, but only as a guest, only to pass the salt.

It's all clear now

When I was in college at Brevard, and I was all of 19 years old, I was an ardent Christian. I was also an insecure Christian, stung by years in a country Methodist church where each altar call was like a knife dug into my soul. That experience combined with attending small, sparsely attended Baptist churches with my grand parents - where though sparsely attended, no effort was spared in painting the full grimy picture of my guilt: all slimy, dark, inescapable, woven into my personality like the amino acid sequence in my DNA, and all pointy, and every one could see it, and I should be ashamed to walk the earth in daylight, and I could never repent enough. In light of all this, when I discovered God's grace (which had been there all along; but since it's not a popular topic for revival preachers, you wouldn't know it had been there all along. Oh they'll mention it in passing; there's even a popular hymn with the word in the title. The message of grace, that God has accepted us from the beginning of the world, is antithetical to the production of guilt necessary for the altar call. Best to make grace something you earn, something God gives to the good people, something you can lose), when I discovered God's grace, I discovered that I was all right after all, that whatever litany of accusation went on in my head wasn't from God. I was pretty ticked: years spent feeling like crap when I didn't have to (no one has to), feeling like God hated me. I was an angry Christian. I had unfortunately discovered the truth of grace while hanging out with people who might be called "fundy." I had certainly bought into the whole inerrancy, miracles, "the Church is filled with unbelievers: Liberals!" polemic that continues to be popular to this day.
One day, the group of us had a conversation with the Methodist minister from across the street from campus. He was all about form criticism, documentary hypotheses, Babylonian mythology, and such - very threatening stuff. He said something intelligent and persuasive and I snapped. I laid into him, arguing that he wasn't a real Christian. I was full of indignation. (I was also projecting onto him my frustration with the Methodist Church). I remember him telling me, "you and I are not so far apart." But I would not be reconciled. I was triumphant.
Years later, while at seminary, reading the Anchor Exodus commentary by Propp, I thought, "hmmm, Exodus is probably some kind of vision quest story, like other stories with heroes who go into the desert and have a vision from God. There is no archaeological evidence that it ever happened, but that's not important and doesn't detract from its usefulness or message." I can look at the Bible as a hodge podge of stories, tendentious, politically motivated , disputatious, testimonial, reflecting the crises of exile, death, resurrection, persecution, martyrdom, poverty, loss - all that. Daniel? probably written as a polemic during the Maccabean times, with the intention of avoiding the violence the Maccabees used, while still offering resistance to the Syrian-Greeks: at least when you look at it that way, it all snaps into place.
I was thinking these thoughts and I thought of this minister that I had vilified as "not really a Christian." I thought of him, and I realized that I had become him. I am now the person I railed against 28 years ago.
I've mentioned this realization to a few people now. I was talking to someone yesterday and I said, "it's only a matter of time now before some young kid, full of the Holy Spirit and righteous indignation, latches onto something I say and from the depth of his being launches into a full scale defamation of my status as a Christian. With great anger he'll say, 'You're not really a Christian.' I know it's only a matter of time, and you know, I welcome it."
"What will you tell him, what will you say?" my friend asked.
I thought for a moment. There is only one thing that I could say, "Tag."

My Award Winning Sermon

Acts 26:1-24 NRS Acts 26:1 Agrippa said to Paul, "You have permission to speak for yourself." Then Paul stretched out his hand and began to defend himself: 2 "I consider myself fortunate that it is before you, King Agrippa, I am to make my defense today against all the accusations of the Jews, 3 because you are especially familiar with all the customs and controversies of the Jews; therefore I beg of you to listen to me patiently. 4 "All the Jews know my way of life from my youth, a life spent from the beginning among my own people and in Jerusalem. 5 They have known for a long time, if they are willing to testify, that I have belonged to the strictest sect of our religion and lived as a Pharisee. 6 And now I stand here on trial on account of my hope in the promise made by God to our ancestors, 7 a promise that our twelve tribes hope to attain, as they earnestly worship day and night. It is for this hope, your Excellency, that I am accused by Jews! 8 Why is it thought incredible by any of you that God raises the dead? 9 "Indeed, I myself was convinced that I ought to do many things against the name of Jesus of Nazareth. 10 And that is what I did in Jerusalem; with authority received from the chief priests, I not only locked up many of the saints in prison, but I also cast my vote against them when they were being condemned to death. 11 By punishing them often in all the synagogues I tried to force them to blaspheme; and since I was so furiously enraged at them, I pursued them even to foreign cities. 12 "With this in mind, I was traveling to Damascus with the authority and commission of the chief priests, 13 when at midday along the road, your Excellency, I saw a light from heaven, brighter than the sun, shining around me and my companions. 14 When we had all fallen to the ground, I heard a voice saying to me in the Hebrew language, 'Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? It hurts you to kick against the goads.' 15 I asked, 'Who are you, Lord?' The Lord answered, 'I am Jesus whom you are persecuting. 16 But get up and stand on your feet; for I have appeared to you for this purpose, to appoint you to serve and testify to the things in which you have seen me and to those in which I will appear to you. 17 I will rescue you from your people and from the Gentiles-- to whom I am sending you 18 to open their eyes so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, so that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me.' 19 "After that, King Agrippa, I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision, 20 but declared first to those in Damascus, then in Jerusalem and throughout the countryside of Judea, and also to the Gentiles, that they should repent and turn to God and do deeds consistent with repentance. 21 For this reason the Jews seized me in the temple and tried to kill me. 22 To this day I have had help from God, and so I stand here, testifying to both small and great, saying nothing but what the prophets and Moses said would take place: 23 that the Messiah must suffer, and that, by being the first to rise from the dead, he would proclaim light both to our people and to the Gentiles." 24 While he was making this defense, Festus exclaimed, "You are out of your mind, Paul! Too much learning is driving you insane!"

Much learning has driven you mad. All the little letters have accumulated in your head until your brain is clogged and now you’re disoriented. I know that I’m a little shaken myself. I don’t think I can stand right now. I haven’t even started drinking but I could use one now. You know a little lubrication of the gyroscope and I’ll be right as rain. But you Paul, seriously, the mid-day sun has effected you. I know a cool place you could go. We could all go there now and get a fine porter or ale. I’ll buy. They know me at this place and know that I’m good for it. It’d be a fine respite from our troubles and now I’m thinking you’re the most troubled of us all. I didn’t know. But come and we’ll talk in a more convivial circumstance and get you back out on the street in no time. This is what I do. I do this for people. That’s how you get to be procurator. Not by knowing too much and – really – not by doing too much. Yet here I am and there you are. Chained and knowing too much. All the words and all the letters zooming in at once.
And what do I wish to say, “that little learning has kept me sane?” Well if you must know, I don’t do more than I need. I read and know what I need to know. Although in truth, it’s not that I don’t know nothing. I did pass the procurator’s exam: laugh at the right times and voice assent without hesitation. I have been educated. I know some passage is from Livy and another from Horace. I know my Aneid too.
Where was I? Yes, Much learning has driven you mad. The letters and words approaching an interchange in your head are jammed together and unable to exit. Like some great circular highway, filled with vehicles, there is no stopping off place. That is, I’ve not followed you. You’ve left me dizzy with your talk of messiahs and resurrections. It’s not incredible that God should raise the dead, to me, but that God should care. Why should I care that God should care? Should it matter to me that the world was created good and that the creator still creates goodness – though frankly what I see is pretty crappy It doesn’t take much learning to see that we’re living in a desert and that enough people here are more concerned about killing those they disagree with than improving the living conditions of a desert. I know for instance that a cool place to talk and have a drink would help us all here.
Did you say that we must turn from darkness to light? From the power of Satan to the power of God? That we should have faith in this dead man, Jesus? See this is where I fall off. I can’t see how faith in this man, (Jesus?) will make a difference for me. But I can see that it’s put you in chains. That’s how I know that you’re mad. It’s the desert and this word heavy culture, all these people with their books and history, fighting to do what? To continue living on a rock in the desert by a still stream. No one here is disobedient to a heavenly vision – would that they were.
Much learning is driving mad. Madly driving you and all these people. And what can I say, that if you try to keep the learning down, you might do something more practical than having heavenly visions. I have no doubt that heavenly visions are occurring right now and that if I knew too much I might feel compelled to obey one. But let me tell you that ignorance, when properly applied, is a good and powerful thing. A bush is still burning in the desert but I don’t want to know it. Let me stupidly gaze at this bright light and then continue on my journeyings.
What I want to say is that much learning is getting you killed. Doesn’t that drive you mad? Heavenly visions; history; salvation: Wouldn’t it be nice to build a home, tend a garden, father a family? You don’t have to know much to be like the rest of us. Disobey the heavenly vision a bit. It gets easier each day – I imagine. Soon you’ll be walking down the street having conversations about the weather and wishing people a nice day. You won’t be here, chained, mad.
Great, learning is driving you mad and me a little tipsy. Did you see the apple orchards on the hillside north of here? They’re blooming and full. Is there nothing more beautiful than hills covered in olive groves? I turn a corner and see the chalky white blocks of houses and villages, sheep herded along the road, and I think: What’s to know? We’re in a quiet corner of the empire, far enough away that government doesn’t bother us, but not so far away that we’re not protected. Imagine there’s no Satan and no God. A little ignorance and we’re cozy. Snug.
Ignorance, quiet, pacific, assuring, holds me safe. I see no vision. I work for no historical outcome. I neither obey nor disobey and the faith I have is in my position and that in a few minutes I’ll have a drink and you can walk out with me and Agrippa here and we’ll be right as rain, unchained. We can know what we know, but why more. And we’ll not talk of dead men walking among us or of Satan and God possessing us and we’ll just worship the night and day that surround us. See no madness, no troubling of the waters.
Paul, why are you mad for this Jesus? Haven’t you learned from your experience and what I’ve told you that things could be better for you? You won’t see Caesar and you won’t lose your head. You’ll see the sunrise and the nightfall. You’ll see the olives grow, pressed and flowing, bread dipped and eaten in the shade.
Let’s say I heard you. I’d be mad for sure. Would I suddenly feed the hungry and help the poor? The empire wouldn’t tolerate a population of well-fed poor people. We have to keep our insurrectionists few and ill fed, not add to their numbers. When the hope of a people is no hope, peace reigns. This is the peace we enjoy: We eat and enjoy our selves without being bothered or fearing for our lives. So you see: The very hope of people without food or clothing, who sleep in fear of the rain and the open road, is to not have hope. Would this dead man, Jesus, save me when they rose up in arms demanding a place to live and sleep safely, when suddenly well-fed and clothed they began demanding rights?
I’m sorry I can’t hear you. I’m mad for safety. I see you’ll go on and I’ll stay here. Your great learning drives you madly. You won’t take a break from Jesus. You’ll obey a bright light and voice that met you in the desert. This dead man’s way will be your death. And his life? If I could have faith in such a life. But then I wouldn’t be a procurator. I wouldn’t be sitting with kings and having some lamb and greens afterwards. The dates here are marvelous.You won’t find them where you’re going.