In his excellent
book, “How to Read the Bible and Still be a Christian,” John Dominic Crossan
proposes that the Bible tells us about two distinct Gods:
One…God is a God of non-violent
distributive justice [who expects and commands humans to act in similar
fashion….] The other [,] God is a God of
violent retributive justice [who expects and commands humans to act in similar
fashion] (18).
Original sin, as
Crossan sees it, is not sexual impropriety, but rather escalatory
violence. And we see this escalation of
violence in the larger text in which Abraham’s relationship to his sons is
found. When Isaac was born, Abraham had
already had a child by his wife, Sarah’s, handmaid Hagar. That’s child’s name was Ishmael.
Fearing
competition between Ishmael and Isaac for the family inheritance, we read last
week that Sarah commanded Abraham to cast Hagar and Ishmael out of their
encampment, out of their family, and left them in the wilderness to fend for
themselves – the result of which was certain death if not for the intervention
of God. Sarah demanded retributive
justice in an effort to protect her son’s inheritance.
From there, the
violence escalated. In today’s text, we
read that Abraham took his son Isaac to the land of Moriah where Abraham
intended to offer the boy as a burnt offering.
This is the original sin, played out once more, of escalating violence. We fear scarcity, we cast out that which we
find threatening, we seek to destroy that which reminds us of our fears and our
failures.
The scriptures
record Abraham’s experience – that God spoke to him (without witnesses). Abraham alone heard God’s call and command
for sacrifice. How often do we hear
God’s call in our life? How often do we
explore our experience in the context of God’s non-violent distributive justice
and our call to act likewise?
We are given
little information in the text as to what is going on for Abraham next. He is deliberate and methodical in his
approach. He saddles his donkey, he cuts
the fire wood, he invites with him two helpers and his son Isaac, and he
travels for three days. These three days
are recorded without embellishment or even explanation. There is no record of conversation or even of
Abraham’s thoughts.
Neither are we
given the thoughts of his two companions who must recognize wonder what this
journey is about. Neither are we given
the thoughts of Isaac who must wonder what is going on. How far will they travel? How many days and nights? What is the purpose of their journey? Does Isaac know that they will be performing
a sacrifice? If so, has he yet
considered the lack of sacrificial animal?
Nothing is given to us as readers.
It is three days of silence – a journey the purpose of which is hidden,
kept secret, as though that part of the story was written behind closed doors.
So, they go. For three days. This is no accident – that it took three days
for Abraham to arrive at the place where he was planning to perform the
sacrifice. Three days is typical motif
in the bible and is often a waiting period for the time of appropriate
preparation, particularly in Old Testament.
From the
beginning, the third day has produced fruit – literally and figuratively. For on the third day of creation, “The land
produced vegetation: plants bearing seed
according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to
their kinds.” Here, on the third day,
Abraham’s escalating violence is about to be met with the non-violent
distributive justice of a loving God. Here
on the third day we see juxtaposed what Crossan calls “the normalcy of
civilization” against the “radicality of God.”
Civilization has
always been about creating structures and strata between people. One of the hallmarks of civilizations is the
social domination by cultural elites. Within
Søren Kierkegaard’s seminal work “Fear and Trembling” we find this truth
played out in the dissection of our Old Testament story:
The ethical as such is the universal, and
as the universal it applies to everyone, which from another angle means that it
applies at all times… As soon as the
single individual asserts himself in his singularity before the universal, he
sins, and only by acknowledging this can he be reconciled again with the universal
(54). The story of Abraham contains,
then, a … suspension of the ethical. As
the single individual he became higher than the universal (66).
Abraham found
himself within a culture that privileged some more than others: stratified, the elite dominated and oppressed
the lower classes – even within the family as Sarah dominated and oppressed her
handmaid Hagar and Hagar’s son Ishmael.
The logical extension of a “call” within this stratified context is to
normalize this domination and oppression, making violence a matter of divine
mandate, believing it just.
This leaves
Abraham prey to Original Sin – escalatory violence.
We
humans escalate our violence from ideological through rhetorical to physical
violence. Ideological violence judges certain others to be inhuman, subhuman,
and lacking in one’s own humanity. Rhetorical violence speaks on that
presumption by debasing those others with rude names, crude caricatures, and
derogatory stereotypes or by excluding them as political “traitors’ or
religious “heretics.” Physical violence, and even lethal
violence, acts on those presuppositions either by illegal attack or, if one has
attained social power, by official, legal, political action (173).
This is where the
radicality of God steps in. This is
where the God of non-violent distributive justice enters the story. “Do not lay your hand on the boy or do
anything to him…. And Abraham looked up
and saw a ram, caught in the thicket by its horns. Abraham went and took the ram and offered it
up as a burnt offering instead of his son” (Genesis 22:12-13).
The biblical God
is a god of distributive justice, not a God who calls for the blood sacrifice
of children. The biblical God expects
and commands us to act in similar fashion.
…justice is about the fair distribution of
the subject involved. In the Bible, it
is primarily about a fair distribution of God’s world for all of God’s people…. The heart of God’s justice is to make sure
that the ‘weak and the orphan’ have received their share of God’s resources for
them to live and thrive (17-18).
Ultimately,
the story of Abraham and Isaac turned out okay.
For Abraham, it went like gangbusters.
He continued and continues to
play a starring role in the Christian faith.
He is mentioned seventy-six times in the New Testament alone – more than
half referencing his great faith. And in
Sunday school, generations of kids learn about “Father Abraham” who “had many
sons and” the “many sons” who “had Father Abraham.” God’s non-violent distributive justice will
always win out at the end of the day.
Yet,
when we decide that some are more worthy than others…. When we hold to ideologies and beliefs that
declare some are lacking in our own humanity – that some could not possibly be
made in the image of God, like we are…. When we begin to speak from those
presumptions and debase with our language those who did not fit our narrative of what it means to be
worthy or deserving of the same access to resources that we have…. It is only a matter of time before we enact
physical violence.
We
fall prey to the same sin that led Abraham to abandon one child to death and to
attempt to “sacrifice as a burnt offering” the other. The God of non-violent distributive justice never demands the blood sacrifice of
children. The Original Sin is the sin of
escalatory violence. Decisions made
behind closed doors, decisions which privilege the one over the universal,
decisions which demand the blood sacrifice of children – especially by those
who proclaim that we are called as a nation by God to live the Christian
message – are not of the God of the bible.
Lest
we spend or entire sermon today in the New Testament, let us consider for a
moment Paul’s reminder to us: “For the
wages of sin is death.” Escalatory
violence always leads to death.
Today
then, may we:
Watch
our thoughts, for they become words;
Watch
our words, for they become actions;
Watch
our actions, for they become habits;
Watch
our habits, for they become character;
Watch
our character; for it becomes our destiny.
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