Moriah (Proper 8A)

Moriah

Proper 8 Year A

26 June 2011 10 am Morning Prayer

Congregation of the Good Shepherd, Beijing

Genesis 22:1-14; Psalm 13; Romans 6:12-23; Matthew 10:40-42

God tested Abraham. He said to him, "Abraham!" And he said, "Here I am." He said, "Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains that I shall show you." So Abraham rose early in the morning, saddled his donkey, and took two of his young men with him, and his son Isaac; he cut the wood for the burnt offering, and set out and went to the place in the distance that God had shown him. On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place far away. Then Abraham said to his young men, "Stay here with the donkey; the boy and I will go over there; we will worship, and then we will come back to you." Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on his son Isaac, and he himself carried the fire and the knife. So the two of them walked on together. Isaac said to his father Abraham, "Father!" And he said, "Here I am, my son." He said, "The fire and the wood are here, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?" Abraham said, "God himself will provide the lamb for a burnt offering, my son." So the two of them walked on together.

When they came to the place that God had shown him, Abraham built an altar there and laid the wood in order. He bound his son Isaac, and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. Then Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to kill his son. But the angel of the LORD called to him from heaven, and said, "Abraham, Abraham!" And he said, "Here I am." He said, "Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him; for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me." And Abraham looked up and saw a ram, caught in a thicket by its horns. Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son. So Abraham called that place "The LORD will provide"; as it is said to this day, "On the mount of the LORD it shall be provided." (Genesis 22:1-14) 

God, take away our hearts of stone, and give us hearts of flesh.  Amen

 

“God said, ‘Take your son Isaac, your only son, the one whom you love, ... and kill him … for me.’” This is a sentence of horror.  This is a text of terror. This story from the Book of Genesis is without a doubt one of the most troubling and disturbing stories of the Bible.  

Many commentators discuss it.  Eric Auerbach, in his great tour of comparative literature, Mimesis, the Representation of Reality in Western Literature, uses the story to show the basic character of Biblical narrative—it reaches out to the listener and tells its story in such a way that you cannot be a dispassionate observer.  It demands acceptance or rejection, submission or revolt.   It demands that you react.  This narrative element is, I believe, why many university faculties remain uncomfortable in teaching the Bible, even “as literature.”  The Bible, and this story most of all, does not want to be taken as mere literature.

Danish theologian Soren Kirkegaard, in his classic of existentialist theology, Fear and Trembling, tells the story in several different ways, each to underscore how not to understand faith.  To be a “knight of faith” like Abraham, you must make a leap of faith into the dark, without knowing how God might “provide a lamb for the sacrifice.”   You need to be absolutely unwilling to sacrifice your child, but absolutely willing to follow God’s command to do so nonetheless. 

Episcopalian novelist and essayist Madeleine l’Engle in her fine book The Rock that is Higher gives a striking retelling of the story:  God puts Abraham to the test with this command, the story proceeds as in Genesis, but then ends in a conversation between God and the angels.  God is disappointed in Abraham, and says that he has failed the test that She has given him. 

The fact is, people who follow a God who tells them to sacrifice their children often do not find an angel holding them back from the horrible moment or a ram caught in the bush.  Many people who on the basis of religious faith refuse any medical care for their children find their children dead from common and easily cured ailments.  Visionaries who hear and follow voices like the one heard by Abraham in this story usually end up in wards for the criminally insane, having actually slaughtered their loved little ones. 

 

The rabbis didn’t like this story any better than Madeleine l’Engle.   Talmudic and Midrashic treatments of this text often note that in the chapter that follows this troubling story, Sarah dies, some rabbis say, “probably from a broken heart” at Abraham’s cruelty.  Others note that the phrase “Abraham walked with God” never again occurs in the Biblical narrative after this story. 

Jewish, Christian, and Muslim understandings of the story have traditionally differed wildly.

Christians traditionally have seen Abraham as a model of deep faith, who trusted God so much that he was give up all his hopes for the future, hopes only gained through long and steady work and sacrifice, and turn them over into God’s hand’s.  We usually have called the story “the sacrifice of Isaac,” and liturgically read it, as today, during ordinary time, when readings focus on day-to-day living and growing in the faith.  Christians often have seen Isaac the beloved son in this story as a hint or a type of Jesus’ dying for our sins on the cross. 

Jews call the story “the Binding (of Isaac)” and have usually seen the story through his eyes.  They see themselves as the chosen but suffering nation, blessed and at times afflicted by a demanding Deity.  Here, Israel is identified with Isaac bound on the altar at God’s command, but miraculously saved, again and again, through God’s loving kindness.  They read the story during the High Holy Days, on Rosh Ha-shannah.   The high point of the service is the blowing of the shofar, a ram’s horn trumpet that brings to mind the ram caught in the thicket that serves as a substitute for Isaac at the end of the story. 

Muslims tell the story somewhat differently. The Islamic festival Eid ul-Adha, the Feast of the Sacrifice. commemorates the story.   Elena and I lived in West Africa a few years ago.  We remember very vividly the days before Adha, called "Tabaski" in that part of the world.  Muslim herders from the north would drive large herds of sheep into the city where we lived, and then wash them all in the sea so that they would be clean and beautiful to fetch the best prices from buyers who would take them home, slaughter and roast them, usually stuffed with rice and raisins or dates, and them serve them as the main dish in their holiday meal.

The Quran (in Surah as-Saffat “those ranged in ranks” S. 37) says that when Ibrahim's only son reached the age of adolescence, Ibrahim told him that in a dream he had been commanded to sacrifice him (S. 37.102-03).   The son readily accepts, showing he is as devoted to Allah as his father.  Then, when Ibrahim lays his son face down for the sacrificial slicing of the throat, a voice calls out telling him that he had fulfilled the vision and had passed the test.  Ibrahim is then rewarded with a large feast, said in the oral traditions surrounding the Quran (the haddith) variously to have been a ram, a goat, or a sheep.  Though the name of the son is not given in the Quran, it always has been understood not to be Ishaq or Isaac, the ancestor of the Jews, but rather his older half-brother Ismail or Ishmael, the ancestor of the Arabs.  This is because it is only in the verses following this story that the birth of Ishaq is mentioned.

Clearly, such widely divergent readings and retellings of the story reflect how uncomfortable it made those who heard it, even in antiquity. 

It is important when we read such a troubling text to remember the context when it was written.  We tend to forget as moderns that for the people of the ancient Near East, human sacrifice was a fact of life.   Israel defined itself over against such traditions slowly, and only gradually renounced the practice of human sacrifice.   This story, part of that process, is riddled with contradiction as a result.   

In Hebrew, different names are used for God in the story at different parts of the story.  “God” or Elohim at the beginning of the passage demands the sacrifice from Abraham.  At the story’s end, it is Yahweh, or the LORD who stops Abraham.  The impression is that Abraham is listening to a different god (or at least a different presentation of the same God) at different parts of the story, and that the narrator is suggesting that Abraham is sorting his gods out. 

In his poem, "The Unpleasantness at Moriah," Professor John Harcourt writes of the story,  

... Sometimes it's helpful
To view the old heroic stories aslant,
Enough about Father Abraham,
Exemplar of unswerving, blind faith.

What of Isaac? How long
Did his limbs tremble, his bowels churn,
Hysterical tears mixed with hysterical laughing?
For how many years was his sleep shattered
By the recurring nightmare:
"That old bastard
Was really going to kill me!"

What of Sarah,
She who had borne the son
Of her old age. What did she think, after Moriah,
Of Abraham and Abraham's God?

And the ram
What of its dumb terror at finding itself
Inextricably entangled in a thicket of thorns?
What of its brief glory in momentary release
Just before the true natures of man and God
Were lethally revealed?

It is not an easy story.  But the art with which it is told reveals its key point for us.  Repeatedly in the story, we hear the phrase “Hinneni,”  “Here I am” on Abraham’s lips.  “God tested Abraham and spoke to him, ‘Here I am’” replies Abraham.  Isaac calls on his father to ask him his troubling question of what in the hell is going on, “Here I am,” says Abraham.  The angel puts out his hand to stop the knife, and calls Abraham.  “Here I am,” Abraham replies.   Abraham is open-eyed, open-eared and open-hearted.  Abraham is present.  Hinneni.  Here I am.  And so he hears the other voice of God at the end of the story. 

Similarly, he clearly does not want to do what he thinks God is demanding.  Note the detail that he takes the two slave boys with him, and these are put ahead of Isaac in the list of people making this deadly trip.  He is hoping for maybe a substitute?  He takes his time on the way, and the narrative progresses slowly.   Some rabbis take this element of the story to suggest that Abraham never intended to sacrifice Isaac, regardless of what God had said.  In this view, Abraham was putting God to the test, deliberately stalling and stringing out the process to see whether God would back off from such an evil thing. 

However that may be, Abraham in the story is present, and open, and takes the necessary next steps in trying to do what he thinks God is demanding.  Just as he left Ur “not knowing where he was going,” he does not know just how things will turn out on Moriah.  

And so God does a new thing (at least from the point of view of that age).  He does not demand a human sacrifice.   Redemptive violence is questioned, and undermined, and in the end only remains in the story as something directed at an animal, the ram.

The deep conflicts in the story are seen clearest when we note that God blesses Abraham in the end because Abraham had been willing to do precisely the thing that God eventually prevents him from doing.   This contradiction may have not seemed unusual for people in antiquity accustomed to the idea of human sacrifice as something demanded by the gods.  But it should strike us as outright strange.  We, after, have benefited from the religious shift accomplished by such texts as this one and believe that God does not demand any such thing.   

Those earlier people may have been justified in praising Abraham’s faith shown by the fact that he almost did the very thing that he didn't end up having to do.  But I do not think that this is a good way for us today to see the story. We must praise his faith shown by the fact that he ultimately did not end up doing what he originally had felt he had to do. 

Abraham’s openness and presence, within the context of a developing covenantal relationship with God, meant that his understanding of himself and of God would, in time, change.  Originally, his relationship with God had started by his trusting God and rejecting the idolatry around him.  Ultimately, his fidelity to the God was expressed in ignoring the demands and expectations of the religion and people around him that had found their way into his own heart and mind. 

There are still those who claim that there is redemptive value in violence.  In popular culture, we have a cult of not getting mad, but of getting even.  Most action films praise violence.  Many of our nations’ international policies are steeped in exerting our will on others through force of arms.   Within the Church, there are those whose only understanding of the death of our Lord on the cross for us is one of substituted penal torture. And in all three of the Abrahamic religions, there are those who say that the ultimate sign of faith is willingness not only to die for, but also to kill for one’s God.  Redemptive violence is alive and well in the theologies of our age. 

For me, the true faith of Abraham is expressed in ultimately ignoring these voices.  Openness to God, being present and responsive to a living God with whom we are in covenant—this means that we must question those parts of our faith and our habits of the heart that would have us metaphorically or literally slice the throats of others, whether gladly or mourning, in pious devotion to some voice we think is God’s.  

So who was being tested here?  Abraham or God?  And if it was Abraham, did he pass or fail the test?  Given that the truth of Moriah, the Mountain of the Vision of the LORD depends on where we stand in the story, I think that it is we who are being tested. 

May we during this week reflect on it, and make it connect to our own relationship with God. 

We All Need God (Holy Baptism)

 

We All Need God (Holy Baptism)

19 June 2011 

Trinity Sunday

Eucharist with Baptism of Children

All Age Worship 11:45 a.m.

St. John’s Cathedral Hong Kong

Matt 28:11-20

God, take away our hearts of stone, and give us hearts of flesh. Amen

A couple of years ago, I was in Seattle Washington.  I had been asked to meet a group of men from the parish where I live there.  In a weekly effort for outreach to the community, we were to meet in a bar, for discussion of faith over drinks, in what is called “Pub Theology.”  I arrived in my clerical clothing a few minutes early because the place was easier to find than I had anticipated.  I didn’t see the young lay minister who organized the event and had invited me.  But immediately, another young man called over to me, “Father, come here and drink with me, I want to talk.” 

Afer a few minutes of chit-chat, he asked me a hard question.  “I just had my little girl baptized. My wife wanted to do it even though our daughter is just six months old.  I’m not that religious, but I am a Christian and believe in God.  I know that we need to repent of our sins and be baptized.  But something really bothered me.  Our little girl is so innocent and helpless.  Why in the world did we need to baptize her?  I asked my priest, but he just said that I shouldn’t be confused by Protestants and their way of doing things—baptism of only older young people or adults. ‘Why not wait until she’s older?’ I asked him.  He replied, ‘you want to raise her as a Christian, and to be Christian, you need to be baptized.’  But that wasn’t very helpful.  Why does she need to have her sins washed off when she’s too young to have committed any?  Doesn’t this show a really negative view of life?  That you’re contaminated from birth?” 

What I said was this: 

“You’re absolutely right about the meaning of baptism.  It is a symbol of washing, or cleansing.  But that symbol is better applied to older people who have “gotten dirty” as it were.  But baptism is also a symbol for new life.  When a child is so young, it is hard to think that their life is old and in need of newness.   But that isn’t the point.  Earlier Church fathers like Augustine thought that we were all dirty.  Most theologians today—whether Roman Catholic or Protestant—do not agree with this negative view, and attribute it to some of Augustine’s own personal problems.  Instead, they talk not about moral corruption or dirt in the newborn, but rather about the inadequacy of all human beings.

The fact is, all of us—no matter how young or how good—need God.  What we’re born with, as good as it may be, is just not enough.  We see this early enough in the development of children.  We are by nature imperfect, and that is the case for each and every one of us.  That is the theological reason we baptize little ones.  It is a sign that we are all in the same boat.  We all need God.    God is his love gave us this sign that he is willing to help us, each and every one. 

Thank you parents for bringing you little ones to Jesus this morning.  He welcomes them.  And may He bless you to continue raising them in the love and nurture of God.  

In the name of God, Amen.   

Love's Cost (1 Cor 13:1-13)

Love’s Cost

18 June 2011

Wedding of Dale Guy Kreisher and Man Ka Wing

St. John’s Cathedral Hong Kong

Gen 2:4-9, 15-24; 1 Cor 13:1-13; Mark 10:6-9, 13-16

Imagine that I can speak in many human and angelic languages, but that I am a person who does not love anyone.  What I am I then?  Simply a noisy and annoying gong or cymbal, nothing more.  And what if I were a prophet who knew every bit of God’s plan, and every item of knowledge there was to know, and even had such complete faith  that I could move mountains at will.  If I weren’t a loving person—what would I be?  Nothing, that’s what.  If I gave away everything I own—and if I gave over even my body—a praiseworthy thing, to be sure—and yet if I did not have love, it wouldn’t do me any good.    What is love?  When you love someone, you are patient and kind with that person.  You are not jealous of those you love, and you don’t try to show them up.  You don’t talk down to them, or act rudely toward them.  You don’t try ot have your own way at their expense, nor do you get annoyed or resentful at them.  You don’t get pleasure at any injustice done to them or by them, but rather you rejoice when truth prevails.  When you love someone, you put up with whatever they do, you trust whatever they say, you hold every hope for them, and you are willing to endure anything for them.  When you love, you never stop loving.  Not so with prophecies, languages, or knowledge—these will all cease one day.  For our knowledge and our prophecy are partial only.  And when wholeness arrives, partial things will come to an end.  When I was a child, I used to talk, think, and reason as a child does.  When I became an adult, I put aside a child’s way of doing things.  At present, we see things indistinctly, as if through a clouded mirror.  But then it will be face to face.  At present, I know things only in part, but then, I shall have a knowledge of others just as I also am fully known.   But as matters stand now, only these three things really last—faith, hope, and love.  And of these, the greatest is love. (1 Cor 13:1-13)

God, take away our hearts of stone, and give us hearts of flesh. Amen

Video of this Homily

 
In Chinese, when we talk about someone who is a soul-mate, a true friend—we say we share yuanfen. The idea is that we have a link that goes back to some kind of previous life, back to a whole set of good deeds we may have done one another from before we remember.   In Western romantic literature, this idea is expressed by the phrase, finding your “one and only” true love. It certainly describes the kind of love my parents had—they met in second grade, were best friends, and fell in love as soon as they were in high school. They secretly married when they were seventeen years old, much to the chagrin of their parents. But they remained faithful and true to each other for sixty-some years, until they died.

I never saw them argue, though I often saw them work out differences between themselves.

I once asked my father how it was that you could tell if you had found your one true love, your “one and only.” He looked pained at the question, as if I had missed the point. He said, “it doesn’t really matter if you think you have found your one and only. Many people think they have their one true love, only to discover as they age and change that it was a short-lived emotion, a passing attraction. And their marriages didn’t last. So you shouldn’t ask whether you have found your one and only. You should ask what you need to do today to make the one you love your one and only. Because you don’t find a true soul-mate—you make one through actions each day.”

I thought my father was being terribly un-romantic. But I knew he was deeply and hopelessly in love with my mother.  And that, after nearly fifty years.

I have come to realize that he was describing the only kind of romance that lasts-- one that is strengthened and renewed each day, through thick and thin, by the actions that show and built mutual respect, love, and passion.

The reading from Corinthians that we just heard is often misunderstood.  Because it is often read at weddings, people think that Paul is talking about romantic love.  But Paul is talking about love itself of any kind.  He says that love is not just an emotion that is felt and experienced, but a condition of the will.  He knows that love as emotion, like any passion, can be fleeting or unpredictable.

“When you love someone, you are patient and kind with that person.  … are not jealous of them… you don’t try to show them up.  You don’t talk down to them, or act rudely toward them.  You don’t try to have your own way at their expense, nor do you get annoyed or resentful at them.  … When you love someone, you put up with whatever they do, you trust whatever they say, you hold every hope for them, and you are willing to endure anything for them.  When you love, you never stop loving.” 

Love here is not just a feeling we experience or suffer.  It is an active way we behave, the way we treat the beloved. 

Love in this sense is a type of sacrifice, a limitation on our freedom and our will. 

In another part of this same letter to the Corinthians, Paul writes that in marriage, we no longer own ourselves, but have given ourselves over to our spouse.    “The husband should give his wife what she needs, and likewise the wife should give her husband what he needs. The wife does not have authority over her own body but yields it to her husband. In the same way, the husband does not have authority over his own body but yields it to his wife.” (1 Cor 7:2-5).   

For Paul, love by definition places constraints on our freedom.  That’s why he says at one point, “In love, be like slaves to one another”(Gal. 5:13).  Paul knows that love is risk, and that love is costly.  It involves constraints, though these are not reducible to mere rules.  

Francoise Sagan, the French novelist, was brutally honest about how love limits freedom in an interview she gave to Le Monde.  She said she was satisfied with the way she had lived her life and had no regrets.  The interviewer said, “ Then you have had the freedom you wanted.”  Sagan replied: “Yes… I was obviously less free when I was in love with someone . . . But one’s not in love all the time.  Apart from that, … I’m free.” 

Love is always a risk.  We often are afraid of trusting our fragile hearts to someone else, especially if our heart has been bruised or broken.  But love is a gift from God, and refusing love, not loving, is an option that we take only at the peril of our souls.

C. S. Lewis writes:  “Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken.  If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even an animal.  Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness.  But in that casket—safe, dark, motionless, airless—it will change.  It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.  The alternative to tragedy, or at least the risk of tragedy, is damnation.”

Today Dale and Ice you are making each other important promises in the presence of God, the saints and angels, family, friends, and colleagues.   The vow which you are taking is to love, comfort, honour, and protect each other, and, forsaking all others, be faithful to each other as long as you both live. 

May God bless you to keep and honor these promises.   Be sure to take time each day to listen to each other.  Be sure to allow each other space.  Be sure to be honest with each other.  Both of you are very demanding people, hardest probably most of all on yourself.  Be kind to each other, and help each other be easier on yourselves. 

Like love, this vow is not reducible to a mere set of rules.  Like Love, this vow demands all, demands perfection.  And no one of us is perfect.  So I also pray, that when your imperfections hurt the other, as they are bound to, May God bless you to seek forgiveness from each other, and to forgive each other.  That, after all, is what love is. 

May your love be a source for you to share God's gifts with others.   Be hospitable, and continue enjoying your friendships.  I hope that God blesses you with children, because I know that both of you desire this, and believe that the two of you will be fabulous parents.  That is part of love as well. 

May the vows you take today make your love firmer, and more alive.  May your marriage last as you both live, and your love and relationship become part of the great eternal dance of light that surrounds the throne of God.  

In the name of God, Amen.    

The Harp of the Holy Spirit (Ephrem of Edessa) (June 10)

The Harp of the Holy Spirit

Ephrem of Edessa 

10 June 373

Ephrem (Ephraim) of Edessa (also venerated as Ephrem the Syrian) was a deacon, hymn-writer, teacher, poet, orator, and defender of the Faith.   He was from Edessa (now Urfa), a city in what is now Turkey about 100 kilometers from Antioch (now Antakya).  Edessa was a an early center for the spread of Christian teaching in the East.

Edessa was a commercial center.  The main language in use there was Syriac, a late form of the Aramaic language written in its own script, whose early cursive form was later adapted by the Arabs.  Aramaic had been the lingua franca of the Southwest and Central Asian areas for centuries just as Greek was the lingua franca farther West.  Aramaic, you may remember, was the native tongue of Jesus of Nazareth.   Edessa in the early Christian era was the home of one of the greatest theological schools of the age, along with Constantinople and Alexandria Egypt.  It was later to become a center for the Diaphysite Christians (labelled "Nestorians" by their detractors) who rejected the Council of Chalcedon.  Edessa thus was in some ways the source from which flowed the Great "Church of the East" that proselytized and set up schools, churches, and monasteries throughout the entire South, Central, and East Asian area, including Tang, Yuan, and Ming dynasty China.

Ephrem in 325 is said to have accompanied his bishop, James of Nisibis, to the Council of Nicea.   His writings are an eloquent defense of the Nicene faith in the Deity of Jesus Christ.   He countered the Gnostics' use of popular songs to spread their message by composing Christian songs and hymns of his own, with great effect. He is known to the Syrian church as "the harp of the Holy Spirit."

Of his writings there remain 72 hymns, commentaries on the Old and New Testaments, and numerous sermons.

One of his hymns follows:

From God Christ's deity came forth,
   his manhood from humanity;
 his priesthood from Melchizedek,
   his royalty from David's tree:
 praised be his Oneness.

 He joined with guests at wedding feast,
   yet in the wilderness did fast;
 he taught within the temple's gates;
   his people saw him die at last:
 praised be his teaching.

 The dissolute he did not scorn,
   nor turn from those who were in sin;
 he for the righteous did rejoice
   but bade the fallen to come in:
 praised be his mercy.

 He did not disregard the sick;
   to simple ones his word was given;
 and he descended to the earth
   and, his work done, went up to heaven:
 praised be his coming.

 Who then, my Lord, compares to you?
   The Watcher slept, the Great was small,
 the Pure baptized, the Life who died,
   the King abased to honor all:
 praised be your glory.

(Tr. John Howard Rhys, adapted by F Bland Tucker, [Episcopal] Hymnbook 1982)
 
Here is another one, a favorite of mine:


(Hymn from the Madroshe on Faith)

Lord, your robe’s the well from which our healing flows.
Just behind this outer layer hides your power.
Spittle from your mouth creates a miracle of light within its clay.

In your bread there blows what no mouth can devour.
In your wine there smoulders what no lips can drink.
Gale and Blaze in bread and wine: unparalleled the miracle we taste.

Coming down to earth, where human beings die,
God created these anew, like Wide-eyed Ones,
mingling Blaze and Gale and making these the mystic content of their dust.

Did the Seraph’s fingers touch the white-hot coal?
Did the Prophet’s mouth do more than touch the same?
No, they grasped it not and he consumed it not. To us are granted both.

Abram offered body-food to spirit-guests.
Angels swallowed meat. The newest proof of power
is that bodies eat and drink the Fire and Wind provided by our Lord.
                                                 (tr. Geoffrey Rowell)