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Winding up MoriahThursday, April 2, 2009
Genesis 17:1-9 Abram fell facedown, and God said to him, "As for me, this is my covenant with you: You will be the father of many nations. No longer will you be called Abram; your name will be Abraham, for I have made you a father of many nations. I will make you very fruitful; I will make nations of you, and kings will come from you. I will establish my covenant as an everlasting covenant between me and you and your descendants after you for the generations to come, to be your God and the God of your descendants after you. The whole land of Canaan, where you are now an alien, I will give as an everlasting possession to you and your descendants after you; and I will be their God."
Then God said to Abraham, "As for you, you must keep my covenant, you and your descendants after you for the generations to come."
Individuals can always be heroes, of course. What surprised Anne Rice was that these individuals stayed together as a people. They seemed stamped and branded with their national identity, never to be parted from it. Over and over, out of ashes and poverty and persecution, they have risen up and called themselves the Jews. Jesus lived his life on earth as a Jew, and the writers of the New Testament made sure their readers knew his genealogy, all the way back to Abraham, at a hundred years old the father of Isaac, and through Isaac, the father of them all. When Jesus spoke of his Father his listeners thought of Abraham. Their community depended on their connection with Abraham. So when Jesus pre-empts their father with his Father, they are confused. Isn't Jesus also a Jew? Isn't his father Abraham too? How can he claim to have existed before Abraham? He is flesh and blood, born of a woman whose ancestor was Abraham. This isn't rocket science, they said. Jesus must be crazy. Well, maybe he was. He was either crazy or God. That choice is stark. Was he present at the creation of the world, did Abraham bow down to him, did Jesus participate in this anointing of Abraham as the father of many nations? Or was he just crazy in the head? Each of us gets to read these stories and ask Jesus himself what we should think. That's the deal. Nobody tells anybody else anything here. I am dependent on God's whisper inside me, the wind that warms my soul, the Holy Spirit that comes alongside me to give me faith. The same was true for Abraham as he headed up the mountain of Moriah carrying kindling to sacrifice his only son Isaac as a burnt offering. Did God really tell him to do that? How crazy is that? What kind of God would require that of a father? Both of them are crazy! Abraham heard the wind, and then he heard God's voice in the wind. "Turn around, Abraham. Use the lamb caught in the thicket instead. I told you I will make you the father of many nations. And I will." God wasn't crazy after all. Very creative, but not crazy. I give thanks, o Lord, and call on your name. I sing praise to you and glory in your holy name. Let the hearts of those who seek the Lord rejoice! |
Anne Rice's return to Christianity was preceded by her amazement at the perseverance of the Jewish people. Both heroic and realistic portrayals of their experience during World War II are familiar to us all. Caricatures of the Jewish mother nothwithstanding, I stand amazed as well.