Faith or Attempted Murder? -- A Sermon

Faith or Attempted Murder?
John Shuck

First Presbyterian Church
Elizabethton, Tennessee

November 13th, 2011

Genesis 22:1-9

After these things 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.’

The angel of the Lord called to Abraham a second time from heaven, and said, ‘By myself I have sworn, says the Lord: Because you have done this, and have not withheld your son, your only son, I will indeed bless you, and I will make your offspring as numerous as the stars of heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore. And your offspring shall possess the gate of their enemies, and by your offspring shall all the nations of the earth gain blessing for themselves, because you have obeyed my voice.’

So Abraham returned to his young men, and they arose and went together to Beer-sheba; and Abraham lived at Beer-sheba.

Carol Delaney begins her book Abraham on Trial: The Social Legacy of Biblical Myth with these words:

In the beginning of the last decade of the twentieth century, in that most modern of places, California, a tragedy of Biblical proportions unfolded with the morning newspaper:

Father Sacrificed Child. God Told Him To.

So accustomed are we to horrendous tales of domestic violence that this headline might seem only a bizarre twist on the ordinary. People who read about he incident over their morning coffee noted it, registered a reaction, and turned the page, muttering, “The man must be crazy.” In this way, the man was defined, the deed was labeled, and the whole thing could be put out of mind. A year later, when Cristos Valenti came to trial, only one of the jurors remembered the newspaper story.

Yet once upon a time, God asked another father to sacrifice his child. For his willingness to obey God’s command, Abraham became the model of faith at the foundation of three monotheistic (Abrahamic) religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. His story has been inscribed on the hearts and minds of billions of people for millennia. P. 5.

We are working our way through the myths of Genesis. These are the foundational myths for Western culture, not just Christians or Jews, but Muslims too. Not just Bible believers or religious people, all of us, secular and religious. These are the myths that are so pervasive that they rest in the marrow of our bones. They are so central that we may think they are natural in regards to issues of gender, authority, and power. They are not “natural”.

These myths have been constructed. The views and vision they propagate regarding men, women, children, fathers, and God, were created and constructed by human beings in a particular way. They are not universal to all humanity. They are not what “makes us human”. Not all cultures have shared this vision and these views. If they can be constructed, they can be deconstructed.

The via negativa, the spiritual path we have been honoring during the season of autumn, is a path to God that says, “God is not this.” One of the ways to approach God is to say what God is not. This is a way of spiritual growth because it invites us to dismantle images of God that no longer work or are no longer true for us. The via negativa is the way of letting go. We let go of ways of thinking or believing that are no longer life-giving.

This gives us the opportunity for creativity. After letting go, we can create. We can create new images for God. I am using the phrase “image of God” as a metaphor for creating meaning and morality. This is certainly a secular work as well as a religious one. I don’t mean to suggest that we can just decide tomorrow to create new myths and new images for God. That is a much longer process and it is something that is done collectively and it is something that arises from creativity. We can give ourselves permission to begin.

The via negativa or in this particular case of analyzing myths, deconstructing, is not saying that we need to discard these myths or stop reading them. I think it is the opposite. We need to read them carefully. We need to read them with awareness of their cultural and historical setting. We need to read them with awareness of their agenda and of their assumptions. We need to read them with awareness of the effects that they have had upon us and continue to have.

They have power. Part of their power is that they are assumed to be sacred or holy in a way that other stories and myths are not. These stories come from the Bible. We place them on a brass stand. We use phrases such as “Word of God” or “Authority of Scripture” and we are instructed not to question them. We are told not to analyze their assumptions. We are told not to challenge their view of God or their morality. We are simply told in the words of the childhood hymn, whose chorus I know by heart, “trust and obey”.

Trust and obey for there’s no other way to be happy in Jesus but to trust and obey.

Trust and obey like Abraham, who heard God say:

‘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.”

Trust and obey, like Isaac trusted and obeyed his father. Trust and obey like Jesus who obeyed his father and went to the cross never saying a mumbalin’ word and died for the sins of humanity in order to satisfy his father’s honor and need for blood revenge on sinful humanity. All in love, of course.

Before trusting and obeying perhaps we ought to see if this image of God is worthy of trust and obedience. There is a difference between the god who is a character in a biblical text, the god of theological reflection, and the god of personal experience. They interact, but they are not the same. Just because God does something in the Bible, like tell Abraham to kill his son, that doesn’t mean that the character, God, is the God we need to trust or obey.

And what of Abraham? He is a model of faith. He is not the model of faith because he said no to this voice. He didn’t say,

“You know that is pretty crazy voice to obey. I don’t think I am going to do that. Instead I am going to set up an appointment with my mental health professional.”

He didn’t say,

“You know, I think I might run this plan by Sarah and see what she thinks. “Sarah, honey, God just told me to take Isaac and kill him with my knife and burn his body as a sacrifice. Then I’ll be back for breakfast. Is that all right with you?”

He didn’t say,

Isaac, my boy, we are going on an adventure today. God told me that we need to hike to Mount Moriah. When we are there I am going to take a knife and kill you and offer your body as toast for the Lord. You don’t have any objections do you? I did pray about it.”

Abraham didn’t tell his wife and he lied to Isaac.

Isaac asked. “Where is the lamb?”
Abraham said, “God will provide the lamb.”

Well, that is the truth as the story turned out, but you and I know that is a lie as Abraham didn’t know. If he knew then his near-sacrifice wasn’t an act of faith at all. He was simply calling God’s bluff.

The point of the story is that Abraham was willing to kill his son for God. That is why he is honored as a model of faith.

You may be sensing that I am disrespectful and irreverent regarding Holy Scripture. You are right. This is a text of terror. We dismantle bad texts by removing their halo, their supposedly deserved reverence. The problem with these texts are not the texts but the aura of sacredness we place around them. The unquestioning authority of scripture. I remember my seminary experience of hearing explanation after lame explanation supposedly justifying Abraham.

One explanation is that this is a story that ends child sacrifice and substitutes animal sacrifice. God did provide a ram, after all. There are a couple of problems. Isaac did ask about a lamb. So there already was a tradition of animal sacrifice even within the story itself.

Or…God could have simply declared that child sacrifice was wrong, as is done in other texts.

Or…Abraham could have refused the command and on his own told God, “No, you get a ram instead.” Then Abraham would have been a true hero.

The point of this story is that Abraham is a model of faith because he was willing to kill his son. Abraham’s faith is what we are to emulate.

Christians have taken this story as prefiguring the sacrifice of Jesus by his father. In that case, the divine father carried it out with the divine son's acquiescence.

Some have said this story is not about killing his son, but his willingness to give up what is most valuable to him. Giving everything to God, even his most valuable possession, his son, is the faith we should emulate. We ought to be willing to give up everything to God, just like Abraham.

OK, except that Abraham didn’t give up everything. He didn’t give up his wealth, for instance. He didn’t even bargain. He had bargained with God over the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah. Remember that story?

God wants to destroy these wicked cities and Abraham tries to stop him by claiming there are good people there. He says to God, “If I find 50 righteous people will you not destroy the city?” God agrees. Then Abraham realizes there might not be 50 righteous people. So he goes down, how about 45? 40? 30? And finally, ten?”

The point is that Abraham was willing to bargain with the Lord for Sodom and Gomorrah. But when it comes to his own son, Abraham doesn’t raise an objection. He doesn’t say, “Take my stuff, instead!” He doesn’t say, “Take my own life.” He just does what God asks without saying a mumbalin’ word.

The next problem we have is the notion of possessions. Is Isaac Abraham’s to sacrifice? Where did we get the notion that Isaac was a possession of Abraham? If a possession, does Isaac not belong to Sarah as well? The story assumes that Abraham owns his son in a possessive sense, in a way that Sarah does not.

This is the major insight of Carol Delaney in her book, Abraham on Trial. What is assumed in this story and not questioned by the authors is a theory of procreation. That theory is what gives patriarchy its power and gives monotheism its vision.

It begins with the word, seed. Isaac is Abraham’s seed. He is not Sarah’s seed. Sarah is the ground that nurtures the seed, but she does not provide seed. Abraham’s seed is the spirit, life, soul, and identity for Isaac. Isaac as the seed of Abraham belongs to Abraham. Sons and daughters belong to fathers in ways they do not belong to mothers. In a patriarchal and patrilineal understanding of procreation, the seed of the father is passed down.

This is seen in the Christian myth of the virgin birth. The seed is God. The Word, the Divine Seed, is passed through Mary. Mary does not contribute anything to Christ's identity. He is not defiled by Mary because she is the ground, the womb. She is not a co-creator. The point of that myth is that Jesus is born of virgin and therefore divine, not sinful.

If Abraham kills Isaac, his seed, he is killing himself, according to this theory of procreation. Killing his son, or killing “himself” is killing the promise of the great nation that Abraham will fertilize with his seed. The land, the ground, is feminine, like the womb, ready to be planted with the seed of the father in order to build a great nation. That is the lifeblood of patriarchy.

We have vestiges of this in our modern secular society. We see it in marriage rituals where the father “gives away” the daughter to another man. We regard it sentimentally today, but marriage, the holy sacred institution that our conservative friends wish to protect, is a legacy of a patriarchal property exchange.

Children, and the rare exception proves the rule, take the father’s surname as does the wife. In fact, I still hear even in my own family that “the line” is not continued unless sons are born to “carry on the name”. The name is the seed. If you have daughters some other man is going to plant his seed and that seed will populate the land, not yours.

Even though we know the science of procreation, that both mother and father contribute genes to the child, it has not changed in our cultural and religious understanding of gender roles and parenting roles. The myths are powerful and resilient.

Abraham is faithful because he is willing to kill his own seed.

Says the father to his son,

“I brought you into this world, I can take you out of it.”

Says God the father, to humanity,

“I made you, I can destroy you. So you better obey.”

Remember, that is an image of God that human beings created. Dare we speak back to this barbaric image of God,

“Yeah, we brought you into this world, and we can take you out of it?”

The effects of Abraham’s sacrifice, or attempted sacrifice, or attempted murder of Isaac, is seen in the real ways we sacrifice children today. Carol Delaney begins and ends her book with the question that should haunt us:

“Why is the willingness to sacrifice one’s child the quintessential model of faith, why not the passionate protection of the child? What would be the shape of our society had that been the supreme model of faith and commitment?” p. 5

Poverty. Punishing disobedience is the legacy of our patriarchal God. We would rather spend our money on prisons than on education, food, or housing for single mothers who raise their children after some father has sown his seed. We are stripping away the social net for women and their children and justify it with the mythology of the “welfare mother” and blame the victim. We would rather punish these women and their children rather than help them.

Parenting. Spare the rod, spoil the child. I am not going into today the horrors of child abuse that is excused by supposedly breaking the will of children so they will be obedient to parents. Every fourteen hours a child under five is murdered in the United States, every five hours a youth between 15 and 19. Delaney, p. 235

War. Did you know that November 11th, 1918 was called Armistice Day? It was the day that honored the end of the war that would end all wars. It was a day that acknowledged peace. This war to end all wars eventually came to be known as World War 1 because there was a World War 2. The war to end all wars didn't. It wasn’t until 1954 that Armistice Day became Veterans Day.

I support veterans. I support them so much that I advocate ending needless wars and paying for providing for the emotional and physical needs of veterans who have been permanently damaged by these wars.

Here I turn to a veteran, a prisoner of war, Kurt Vonnegut from his novel, Cat’s Cradle. The voice is one of the characters speaking at a memorial event, but it is Vonnegut's voice:

"I do not say that children at war do not die like men, if they have to die. To their everlasting honor and our everlasting shame, they do die like men, thus making possible the manly jubilation of patriotic holidays.

"But they are murdered children all the same.

"And I propose to you that if we are to pay our sincere respects to the hundred lost children of San Lorenzo, that we might best spend the day despising what killed them; which is to say, the stupidity and viciousness of all mankind.

"Perhaps, when we remember wars, we should take off our clothes and paint ourselves blue and go on all fours all day long and grunt like pigs. That would surely be more appropriate than noble oratory and shows of flags and well-oiled guns....

"...But if today is really in honor of a hundred children murdered in war," he said, "is today a day for a thrilling show?

"The answer is yes, on one condition: that we, the celebrants, are working consciously and tirelessly to reduce the stupidity and viciousness of ourselves and all mankind...."

Kurt Vonnegut from his 1963 novel, Cat’s Cradle.

We have created a war mythology not far removed from Abraham’s legacy that advocates sacrificing our children for the honor of the fatherland. We instill this mythology in our children at a young age through war games and constant flag waving. We communicate to them and to all of us that war is the most important and noble thing we can do. Don’t question. Trust and obey.

I have given you a negative reading of this myth of sacrifice. But I want to leave you with a positive message. That message is that we are not beholden to this myth. These patriarchal stories are not all there is to say about God and about faith. I am not saying that you have to agree with all of what I have said or with anything for that matter. But I do invite you to think about it.

We can, if we choose, in the spirit of the via negativa let these stories go. We do not have to defend the god of these texts or the faith of the other characters. We can read them critically. If we choose, we can give ourselves permission to remove the haloes around texts that are no longer sacred and challenge their assumptions.

We can honor the Bible for what it is, a collection of writings written and compiled by limited human beings. But we have new stories to share. In particular, we need new stories and we need to celebrate old stories that serve to honor equality, sustainability, peacemaking, and protection of our children.

I think a practical way of doing that is to acknowledge that each of us has a loose-leaf bible. Whether that bible is literal or metaphorical, it contains stories, poetry, and knowledge that is meaningful for us. What if we began to call our loose-leaf bible sacred scripture? With that we move from deconstruction and the via negativa to the joyful life-long project of the via creativa, the way of reconstruction.

In my loose-leaf bible you find the wisdom of Kurt Vonnegut. I will give him the last word from the conclusion of the war memorial speech I quoted earlier from Cat’s Cradle:

"...This wreath I bring is a gift from the people of one country to the people of another. Never mind which countries. Think of people....

"And children murdered in war...
"And any country at all.
"Think of peace.
"Think of brotherly love.
"Think of plenty."
"Think of what a paradise this world would be if men [and women] were kind and wise.

Amen.

The Story of Broke

From the makers of The Story of Stuff and The Story of Electronics comes a brand new video, The Story of Broke. Are we really broke? Or are we spending our money on the wrong things? The Story of Broke checks it out...

The United States isn’t broke; we’re the richest country on the planet and a country in which the richest among us are doing exceptionally well. But the truth is, our economy is broken, producing more pollution, greenhouse gasses and garbage than any other country. In these and so many other ways, it just isn’t working. But rather than invest in something better, we continue to keep this ‘dinosaur economy’ on life support with hundreds of billions of dollars of our tax money. The Story of Broke calls for a shift in government spending toward investments in clean, green solutions—renewable energy, safer chemicals and materials, zero waste and more—that can deliver jobs AND a healthier environment. It’s time to rebuild the American Dream; but this time, let’s build it better.

Here is your midnight movie...

Essential Tenets and Religious Grottoes

The Presbytery of Stockton (California) has come up with a list of guidelines for examining candidates for ordination. The authors have taken the Book of Confessions and condensed it to thirty pages and in so doing they believe they have captured the essential tenets of the PC(USA). Their document is divided into three sections, Essential Tenets, Reformed Distinctives, and Questions for Examination.

As I read this document I realized that I have virtually nothing in common theologically with these folks. The first "essential" is the "Authority of Scripture" and the document lists a number of things that are "not affirmed" including:

Any doctrine...

• that attempts to subordinate biblical authority to any human authority, cultural norm, or ideology— whether religious, ecclesiastical, governmental, political, economic, psychological, sociological, scientific, historical, philosophical, or other—as though the church should listen primarily to another voice than the voice of the Lord Jesus Christ as expressed in scripture;

Really? Say goodbye to evolutionary theory. Say goodbye to higher criticism of the Bible. Say goodbye to anything that we know about our universe, Earth, life, and our species that contradicts what human beings wrote in the Bible 1900 and more years ago. That would be pretty much everything.

Here is another one. The following is not affirmed. Any doctrine

• that rejects as historical fact the witness of Scripture to the incarnation, birth, ministry, miracles, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ (as, for example, summarized in 1Corinthians 15:3-7 and Acts 10:38);

The "historical fact" of the miracles would be one of the fundamentals of the early 20th century. If you want to believe that go ahead but to claim that as an essential of faith will put you into a religious grotto. As a denomination we decided 90 years ago not to live in the grotto. This listing of the essential tenets is a really a warming over of last century's fundamentalism. The message from the Presbytery of Stockton is clear: Anyone who is not a fundamentalist needs not apply.

I happen to like the Book of Confessions. But this summary that has been adopted by the Presbytery of Stockton is a distortion of that collection of documents. The various, diverse confessions in the Book of Confessions help us honor our ancestors. They are testimonies to faith. To use them as tests of faith misconstrues their particular historical contexts as well as our contemporary contexts.

The simple truth is that we don't live in the 17th century. Or the 16th, 4th, or 1st. Even the 20th. We honor those who lived in those times. We learn from them. We can even be guided by them but we are not beholden to their provisional truths, including the truths of the Bible. What was true then is not necessarily true today. We have to determine what is true and take responsibility for it on our own.

It is that simple.

Call Me Ishmael--A Sermon

Call Me Ishmael
John Shuck

First Presbyterian Church
Elizabethton,Tennessee

November 6, 2011

Genesis 16:1-15; 17:18-26; 21:8-20; 25:12-18

Hagar and Ishmael, Judith Klausner

We are all familiar with the Wizard of Oz. Most of us know the 1939 film version. It was based on the children’s book by L. Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz written in 1900. As a child, I watched the Wizard of Oz on television once per year. I remember waiting for it and watching it year after year. I read the book, too, as well as some his other Oz books.

The film has become a cultural icon. From Dorothy singing, “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” to Glinda the good witch calling to the Munchkins to “Come out, come out wherever you are” while Dorothy puts on the ruby slippers and courageously follows the yellow brick road picking up wounded companions with hidden strengths, the film has been an inspiration for individuals and many groups including the LGBT equality movement.

Her character, and in many ways, the actress Judy Garland who played Dorothy in the film, has been appropriated as an icon as both actress and person who reflects the tragedy and hope of marginalized people.

In 1995, the story took another turn when Gregory McGuire published, Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West. It has been turned into a Broadway Musical. In Maguire’s book, the story of the wicked witch is told with sympathy. She was misunderstood, mistreated and oppressed by the powerful forces and the “beautiful people” represented by Dorothy and Glinda. The wicked witch who was born a little green girl, Elphaba, challenges the notions of good and evil.

All of this is to say that literary characters take off in unexpected ways and become important as they are appropriated by different people for their interests. Old tales get re-written and re-interpreted for new purposes. When these stories have religious interests tied to them, they become even more important.

This is the case with this particular narrative that involves six literary characters, Abraham, Sarah, Hagar, Ishmael, Isaac, and God. For the narrators of Genesis, Hagar and Ishmael are not that important. In this patriarchal narrative, the plot involves God choosing Abraham to be the ancestor and the promise of a great nation. There are threats to this promise, particularly, that Sarai is barren.

Sarai convinces Abraham to take Hagar as another wife and to bear a son for her. Hagar and Abraham have a son, Ishmael. But according to God, Ishmael is not the chosen one. Ishmael and Hagar need to leave the plot and they do, so that God can intervene and miraculously give Abraham and Sarah a son, Isaac, who is the child of promise.

From the point of view of both Judaism and most of Christianity, Hagar and Ishmael are not important. For Paul in Galatians, Hagar, represents bad religion, the law, slavery in a spiritual sense. Sarah, on the other hand, represents promise and freedom.

However, Hagar is an important figure for Islam. For Mohammed writing in the 7th century of the Common Era, and the traditions that followed after the Qur’an, Hagar is a figure of faith. For Islam, Abraham is the first Muslim and his wife, Hagar is the mother of Muslims because it is through Ishmael that Muslims trace their mythical religious ancestry in the way that Jews and Christians trace their mythical religious ancestry through Sarah.

Like Maquire retelling Oz from the point of view of the wicked witch, Mohammed and the Islamic tradition retold the story of Abraham, Hagar, and Ishmael as exemplars of faith. The Qur’an doesn’t specify which son was nearly sacrificed by Abraham, but it is believed to be Ishmael, because it was his only son, and so the logic is that Isaac wasn’t born yet.

In the tradition Abraham sends Hagar and Ishmael away because it is Allah’s command. But Allah watches over Hagar and Ishmael and Abraham continues to visit them and builds the Kaaba in Mecca with Ishmael and places the stone there. The Kaaba is the place of pilgrimage, the most holy site in Islam.

Hagar is seen as courageous and resourceful and filled with faith. While she and her son, Ishmael, are in the desert, she runs back and forth, between two hills, Al-Safa and Al-Marwah in search for water. After her seventh run, an angel hits the ground with his heel and water appears miraculously. It is called the Zamzam well, just a few yards away from the Kaaba. Muslims are invited to participate in the Hajj once in a lifetime, to travel to Mecca. Part of the pilgrimage is to run between the hills as Hagar did to emulate the courage and faithfulness of Hagar who is a model of motherhood and of women’s leadership.

The Muslim appropriation of Hagar and Ishmael culminated in a new narrative and tradition. Muslims will say that their story is the correct story and Jews and Christians will say their story is the correct story. All claim to have their stories written on stone in their respective holy books. All claim to be the true religion, and that they are the people who were really chosen by God. It would be boring if it weren’t so dangerous.

Somehow, we have to get Hagar and Sarah and their children to reconcile. Can we appropriate our religious stories for peace and cooperation? Or will we continue to tell them to justify division and superiority?

One of the ways to at least begin that process is to learn how the different faiths have told their stories. I didn’t know the importance of Hagar in the Muslim tradition even though it is 1300 years old.

Personally, I think it is helpful to recognize that the stories of Abraham, Hagar, Sarah, Isaac, Ishmael and God are not history but religious myth and legend. No one has a corner on “how it really happened” especially since it didn’t happen at all. Legends appear and grow and are reshaped by the interests of the tellers. We can enjoy all of it and take from all of it. I can enjoy and learn from both The Wizard of Oz and Wicked even as it would be pointless to harmonize them. They tell different stories. Could we not enjoy and learn from both Genesis and the Bible on one hand and the Qur’an and the Hadith, the early writings of the Muslim tradition, on the other?

Religion is different from story, although it begins with story. Before they became sacred texts they were stories. They have value because these stories can “read us”. We can find ourselves in them. Plus, tradition and ritual centers on these characters. Perhaps at Christmas as we tell the story of Joseph and Mary we might also tell the story of Hagar and Ishmael as the Muslim tradition tells it.

Participating and incorporating the rituals of another religion can make their stories part of our story as well. Despite the shrill claims of the purists, religion is never "pure." It always changes, adds and subtracts. No book is ever final and finished. If it is good it will be the seedbed for new creativity. We certainly need creativity, a creativity that points toward reconciliation and peace between the daughters and sons of Hagar and Sarah.

Some of this creative work is being done by African-American womanist theologians as they reflect on Hagar from the point of view of the experience of African-American women. In preparation for this sermon I read Hagar, Sarah, and Their Children: Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Perspectives, edited by Phyllis Trible and Letty M. Russell.

One of the contributors to this volume is Delores Williams who taught theology at Union Theological Seminary in New York. In her entry, she says that Hagar has been an icon for African-American woman as a survivor and one who through whom they can say,

"God helped me make a way out of no way.”

She writes:

The African-American community has taken Hagar's story unto itself. Hagar has ‘spoken’ to generation after generation of black women because her story has been validated as true by suffering black people. She and Ishmael together, as family, model many black American families in which a lone woman/mother struggles to hold the family together in spite of the poverty to which ruling class economics consign it. Hagar, like many black women, goes into the wide world to make a living for herself and her child, with only God by her side.
--Diana L. Hayes, Hagar’s Daughters: Womanist Ways of Being in the World (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1995), p. 58.

Hagar is a three-fold victim of oppression by gender, class, and race. Phyllis Trible writes of Hagar:

She is the first person in the Bible to flee oppression; the first runaway slave; the first person whom a messenger of God visits; the first woman to receive an annunciation; the only woman to receive a divine promise of descendants; the only person to name God; the first woman in the ancestor stories to bear a child; the first surrogate mother; the first slave to be freed; the first divorced wife; the first single parent; and the first person to weep. Given all these distinctions, Hagar haunts the biblical narrative and its afterlife in ways that the other characters do not. Trible & Russell, p. 61

Hagar is a survivor.

According to Delores Williams, Ishmael is the abandoned child. Abandoned by his home. Abandoned by his father. Abandoned even briefly by his mother as she cannot bear to watch him die. Yet, he and his mother, find a way out of no way. The ambiguous story narrates that God hears the cry and responds. Hagar and her son represent endurance and resistance.

Letty M. Russell writes:

“One discovery we can make as we reflect together on the enmity between Hagar and Sarah is that the struggle between us will not cease unless we become children who struggle for the wider gift of God’s justice, peace, and wholeness in our lives and in the whole creation.” Trible and Russell, p. 196

Survival and quality of life come from courage, resistance, and making a way out of no way. Perhaps the struggle of Hagar can be a model not just for African-American women but for all of us. We are all children of struggle. Sarah and Abraham both were victims and oppressors. Our history of religious and political struggle has been one in which we have crossed those lines.

Maybe there will be a new way of telling our story and a new way of hearing the stories of others, such as the Muslim Hagar and the African-American Hagar, so that we can hear the cry that ultimately says,

“I am a human being.”

We might all have been Ishmael or Hagar at some point in our lives. Perhaps we have been Abraham and Sarah too. If we can identify with them in any way, maybe we can realize that others identify with them as well. If that can happen, if we can recognize that others also feel abandoned or mistreated, misunderstood, and rejected, and yet have discovered the spiritual strength to make a way of no way, we can realize that we really aren’t all that different.

Maybe we can with our lives write new chapters for Hagar, Sarah, Ishmael, Isaac, and Abraham, and go where the authors couldn’t—away from chosen vs. unchosen—away from special vs. rejected, and instead be human beings whose very lives are sacred struggles for survival and dignity.

Reformed Again and Again and Again and Again...

Happy Halloween!

In the spirit of the season, the true believers in the PCUSA are trying to bring back the inquisition.



Those were good times. Burning heretics at the stake. Elevating superstition above reason.



Meanwhile, our denomination's leadership keeps its chin up and reminds us that we are in the midst of a new reformation.

“Today, in our time, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) is in the midst of another reformation. God is creating a new church in and through us. Signs of it and responses to it are plentiful.” They cite new worshiping communities that are “springing up,” a more flexible Form of Government, and several committees currently at work to “further the work of congregations and presbyteries.”

I think whatever reformation is coming will be bigger than we can imagine. It might be fun in the spirit of Reformation Day, to imagine what a reformed church would look like.

Here are some folks who have made some points. You might not like any of them, but they might spur your own thinking. Thinking for ourselves will be the heart of any real reformation.

• Robert Funk, Twenty-One Theses
• John Shelby Spong, Twelve Theses
  
• Matthew Fox, Ninety-Five Theses
• Creation Spirituality, Twelve Principles
  
• The Center for Progressive Christianity, Eight Points
• My own eight points

A new magazine, Provoketive, followed me home today on Twitter so I decided to keep it.

I found a series of articles I thought important by Deanna Ogle, entitled, Where the Church Lost Me. When you read those, you might see why the church needs, in the words of John Shelby Spong, to change or die.

The change may take many different forms.

For me, it is getting back to Earth.

Here is my reformation hymn by Peter Mayer.

Life, Love, and Loot--A Sermon

Life, Love, and Loot
John Shuck

First Presbyterian Church
Elizabethton, Tennessee

October 30, 2011

Genesis 12:10-20

Now there was a famine in the land. So Abram went down to Egypt to reside there as an alien, for the famine was severe in the land. When he was about to enter Egypt, he said to his wife Sarai, ‘I know well that you are a woman beautiful in appearance; and when the Egyptians see you, they will say, “This is his wife”; then they will kill me, but they will let you live. Say you are my sister, so that it may go well with me because of you, and that my life may be spared on your account.’ When Abram entered Egypt the Egyptians saw that the woman was very beautiful. When the officials of Pharaoh saw her, they praised her to Pharaoh. And the woman was taken into Pharaoh’s house. And for her sake he dealt well with Abram; and he had sheep, oxen, male donkeys, male and female slaves, female donkeys, and camels.

But the Lord afflicted Pharaoh and his house with great plagues because of Sarai, Abram’s wife. So Pharaoh called Abram, and said, ‘What is this you have done to me? Why did you not tell me that she was your wife? Why did you say, “She is my sister”, so that I took her for my wife? Now then, here is your wife; take her, and be gone.’ And Pharaoh gave his men orders concerning him; and they set him on the way, with his wife and all that he had.

Those of you who have watched the Major League Baseball playoffs and the World Series may have seen the advertisements for Captain Morgan Rum. The character is a swash-buckling 17th century pirate. He is suave and cool. When an enemy ship approaches, and begins shooting, he strips down, walks to the end of the ship’s plank and does a forward somersault dive. The enemy captain is amused and instead of fighting they all party and drink rum. Captain Morgan, the icon of the advertisement, is a lovable, cool, hip, non-violent pirate. To life, love, and loot.

The real Captain Morgan, Sir Henry Morgan, was a privateer. He was empowered by England to hassle and plunder Spanish ships. His pay was what he could loot. To do that kind of work you have to be a ruthless guy.

The title of my sermon, Life, Love, and Loot, came from the advertisement for Captain Morgan as I was reflecting on Captain Abram in our biblical story. In the midst of a famine, Abram and Sarai go to Egypt. They go there to survive, to live.

Life.

While there Abram is afraid that when the Egyptians see Sarai, they will kill him and take her because she is so beautiful. So instead, he has her say that she is his sister.

We have no idea what is going through Sarai’s mind. We don’t know what is going through Abram’s mind either. But she does it. To spare Abraham she apparently says she is his sister and she becomes a mistress or wife or something for Pharoah.

Love.

Since this is a myth of patriarchy, in which women always belong to some guy, fathers, brothers, or husbands, Abram gives her away to Pharoah in trade for sheep, oxen, male and female slaves, donkeys, and camels.

Loot.

The Lord doesn’t like this arrangement so he sends plagues on Pharoah. Somehow Pharoah knows that these plagues, whatever they are, are connected to Sarai and he learns the truth, that Sarai is Abram’s wife. Pharoah sends Abram home with his wife and his loot.

Did Abram and Sarai do well with this deal?
What is this story about?

Abram and Sarai together create the biblical icon for the married couple. Yet from our point of view, to say that they are opaque and distant is an understatement. We are given little dialogue between them and even less internal dialogue. The author of Genesis is not John Updike or Virginia Woolf.

This icon of marriage is a patriarchal icon. Human beings can be traded for sheep and donkeys. We don’t know what these characters were thinking. Sarai is Abram’s wife in a possessive sense. We don’t know if beyond patriarchy and the roles it prescribes for them if there is a relationship of love. The faithfulness of Sarai seems to be measured by her obedience to Abram. She follows him and his God.

These characters are like inkblots. We have the barest of narrative. There is no character description or development. It is up to us to give these characters voices and self-awareness. There is no right or wrong in doing that. It is an activity of creative expression on our part. The only limits might be the words in the text, but upon that bare skeleton we can put flesh, our flesh, on these icons, father Abram and mother Sarai.

Two books that I am reading as I am working through this series of sermons on the myths of Genesis are Peter Pitzele’s, Our Father’s Wells: A Personal Encounter with the Myths of Genesis and Carol Delaney, Abraham on Trial: The Social Legacy of Biblical Myth.

Pitzele uses psychodrama or what he calls bibliodrama to enter into the text. In his groups, he invites participants to take over the characters and be them in the first person. Instead of asking in the abstract what was Abram or Sarai thinking, he invites participants, you and me, to be Abram and Sarai and then say what are you thinking and feeling.

Pitzele says this:

But here a voice inside me asks, Why make up anything at all? We have what we have of the story. It is highly condensed, highly charged, but it is all we have. By what right and license do you fill in blanks and intrude your contemporary experience into these ancient figures who were wrought by the imagination of a distant, different age? These mute characters cannot step from the frieze of the old book and speak our words or borrow our voices that they might tell us more of their stories. This is, after all, the Bible.

He goes on…

Precisely these questions face me each time I pass from merely repeating the biblical stories to re-creating them. I must deal with the guardians of the text, those internalized deacons who warn me against toying with Holy Writ. Yet through my years of psychodramatic explorations I have come to recognize the immense vitality of these characters, and the silence of the text has become not a barrier but an invitation for acts of imaginative projection that seem at once to reflect ourselves and to reveal the biblical drama at a deeper and more human level. p. 98

I remember in seminary that my professors would criticize my papers for "psychologizing" the texts. They were trying to teach us disinterested, scientific exegesis. It was good to learn. But it was refreshing after seminary had ended to find Pitzele who breaks the rules and invites psychologizing. It is the opposite approach. Rather than remove yourself, instead insert yourself.

The other book, Carol Delaney’s Abraham on Trial is a critique of the patriarchal myths and their influence today. She shows us that patriarchy is not the natural human condition, but a particular social condition. One that we can reject. But we have to know its assumptions. She writes:

Religious myth has social implications….We can never recapture the living quality of the culture of the biblical writers, but we can investigate their vision of the world and its legacy. We can ask about the role of the Abraham story in that vision. And we can ask if this vision is one we wish to perpetuate. P. 11

Her book is specifically about the near sacrifice of Isaac by Abraham. We will get to that story in a couple of weeks. She is asking why Abraham’s willingness to kill his child is a model of faith and what that means for us who have inherited this story. What are the assumptions behind this story? Why is the story of sacrificing children a story of faithfulness as opposed to a story of saving children for example?

The Abraham story is central to Christianity. It is the model for the Christian myth of the Father sending his only begotten son to death on a cross for the sins of humanity. The myth says that humanity is saved by this. Why that myth? There could be other myths. A Divine Father killing the Divine Son to save the world is not a universal human myth. It is not eternally written in the heavens. It is a patriarchal myth. It arises from a particular social location. In this social set up, that is not universal, children are the property of fathers and women are tradable assets like sheep and donkeys. The Father’s honor is paramount and is maintained by violence. These assumptions continue to have effects in the way we regard children, issues of gender, and social roles.

These stories are fictions. But why these fictions? Why have these fictions become holy scripture? What are the implications and assumptions these stories have in our lives today? How do these stories inform what it means to be a good wife for instance or a good father?

October is domestic violence awareness month. The case is easily made that the assumptions behind the myths of Genesis still exist today in a culture that continues to look the other way in regards to violence in the home. Well, she is his wife. Those are his kids. The good, faithful wife forgives and follows her husband and whatever schemes he dreams up.

Here are the points I am trying to make:

1. These stories are not quaint and harmless. They have a legacy and influence today on society.
2. They are not stories of the universal human condition. They are not divinely ordained. They are human stories that have arisen out of a particular culture that is shaped by patriarchal assumptions.
3. We who read these stories today and even call them scripture have the freedom and the obligation to deconstruct them and challenge their assumptions.
4. Entering these stories with awareness may help us uncover these assumptions in the stories, in our own personal lives, and in the lives of our culture.
5. We can then make choices about how we interpret these stories and how we might treat them.
   

With those points, that Carol Delaney helps me understand, I want to move toward the the Pitzele approach. I want to jump in and be the characters, take them over, and give these statues voice. The Delaney approach is to analyze behind the text and uncover their assumptions. I am trying to use both approaches in this series of sermons.

I invite you to enter the story. It would be best in a small group in which we could speak to each other and hear each other. In this setting I will lead you in a guided way and you will enter it yourself. Perhaps you can continue it with others later.

You are Sarai.

Both men and women can do this. I invite you to close your eyes if you wish. Enter into the character. I will ask a series of questions. They are not loaded. There is no right or wrong answer. There is no text we can go to look it up. I am just going to give the text, elaborate a little bit, and ask some questions. These are your responses. Don't respond how you might think the real Sarai would have responded, put yourself there. You have the freedom to be yourself in her. What would you do in her position? What do you think? What do you feel?

There is a famine. There is no food. You and Abram have nothing. You need to leave and live as aliens, as immigrants in a strange land. You go to survive. Just before you cross the border, Abram speaks:

‘I know well that you are a woman beautiful in appearance; and when the Egyptians see you, they will say, “This is his wife”; then they will kill me, but they will let you live. Say you are my sister, so that it may go well with me because of you, and that my life may be spared on your account.’

Is Abram asking you or telling you?
Do you agree with him?
Do you talk to him about it?
Does Abram have your interests in mind as well as his?
Is there another option?
Do you take ownership of this decision?
Is it yours and his together or is it his decision and you do what he wants?

As it turns out Abram was right about the men thinking you are beautiful. You catch the eye of the Pharaoh and he takes you into his house. We are given no details. We are not told how much time has passed. You have to fill in those details.

You are Sarai.
How are you feeling?
Do you manage to put the Pharaoh off?
How creative can you be?
Maybe you cannot?
How did you cope?
How do you retain your dignity?
Do you worry about Abram?

You are Abram.
What do you think is happening to Sarai?
How do you feel?
The Pharaoh gives you sheep, goats and loot.
What do you feel about that?
Would you rather have been killed?
Do you plan a daring rescue?
How do you sleep at night?

“But the Lord afflicted Pharaoh and his house with great plagues because of Sarai.”

Pharaoh releases Sarai and Abram and sends them home with all the loot.

You are Abram.
Do you ask what happened?

You are Sarai.
Will you ever tell Abram?

You are both.
Will your marriage ever be the same again?
Is forgiveness possible for the two of you?

This is a painful story. As I enter this story, I have a renewed sense of compassion for these characters. The suffering upon both Sarai and Abram is intense. What relationship can survive this? And yet they do.

Abram is no Captain Morgan. The loot, to me, is a distraction. If these characters are nothing more than patriarchal tropes, then there is no humanity here at all. But if there is any humanity in these characters, this story is pure anguish. And yet, and yet…they come through. We get no dialogue. We get no internal monologue. We have to make that up with our own stories of our own relationships.

I have to allow Abram to be a human being in love. I have to allow Sarai to be a human being in love. I have to have this choice be a choice they both make. I have to have them both be strong. I have to have them both be survivors. I have to have them both experience the pain. I have to have them both do anything for each other. I have to have them both find a way to forgive and be forgiven.

Amidst the greatest pain, amongst the most anguishing choices, they survive. Together.

Amen.

Occupy Aerojet Today

I received this news that I will pass on to you. I will be visiting with the Christian Peacemaker Teams to see what they are about.

Here are two articles about the events this week in the Johnson City Press:

1. Occupy Areojet Movement Planned, Forum Focuses on Depleted Uranium's Usage and Safety, and
2. Peacemaker Group Visits Jonesborough to Raise Awareness of Company's Depleted Uranium.
   

This is from the Christian Peacemaker Teams website:




Depleted Uranium delegation collects samples to be examined for DU contamination, participates in press conference.





Christian Peacemaker Teams will be at the plant today from 11-5. Here is the announcement:

OCCUPY AEROJET:

A day of re-imagining Aerojet Ordnance without the manufacturing of Depleted Uranium weapons.

Open to all of the public!

Bring food, stories, drums, signs, concerns and questions to share. While your dogs are welcome, please consider leaving them at home for their own sakes.

• Where: Across the street from the Aerojet Ordnance plant: 1367 Old State Route 34, Jonesborough, TN
• When: 11am-5pm, Saturday October 29
• 11am: Re-imagining new jobs, products and layout of the Aerojet plant
• 1pm: Storytelling from local residents affected and concerned about the manufacturing of Depleted Uranium weapons in their neighborhood, as well as those who have encountered the DU in war zones of Iraq and Afghanistan
• 3pm: Organizing a clean up of Aerojet
• Why: To raise local awareness that Depleted Uranium weapons are being produced in our midst, as well as its effects on the battlefield on our own troops as well as the families of non-combatants. While we hold environmental and public health concerns for DU production, even more dramatic are the consequences for veterans and citizens exposed to DU particulates after its production.
  

For questions about Occupy Aerojet contact Heather Mitchell (CPT Representative) at 214-502-8035.

Organized by Christian Peacemaker Teams and local citizens concerned about Depleted Uranium munitions, this event is a follow-up to the forum co-sponsored by APEC at ETSU on Tuesday, October 25th.


Hope to see you there!

I May Be A Unipresbyteryversalistian

Thanks to SeaRaven for sending me this. I don't think there is anything here with which I disagree. Does that make me a Unitarian Universalist Presbyterian? A Presbyterian Universalist? A Presbyuni or a Unipresby?

A Religion of This Life

Madpriest and I have been having a conversation of sorts. It started with my post on the Jesus Seminar, Good Old Jesus and Me. He created a thought for the day. He tends to write in hyperbole and because I am such a literalist I am not quite sure if he is being straight with me or not. He sounds snippy and I get defensive but we trundle on.

The question comes down to afterlife. What happens to us when we die? This is an important question whether we are religious or not. To raise the question creates a crisis. That crisis is my mortality. When we bring our personal mortality into focus we are forced to address our lives and the time we spend doing whatever it is we do.

So I won't have to write this all again, I am taking what I posted at his place with some editing to offer my thoughts on this question. What comes up for me is that I don't find any type of afterlife persuasive. One can argue with me back and forth on that, but I doubt I will change my mind simply because I don't think it is real. That is one argument to have, whether or not afterlife is real or credible.

The other argument is whether or not belief in afterlife is good or not. One might say that believing in it is better than not believing in it as to do so makes life tolerable or provides other benefits.

I don't think you can believe in it if you don't think it is real. In medicine a placebo only works if the patient doesn't know it is a placebo.

The church seems to promote a belief in belief. The unstated argument goes,

"We have a placebo thing going, don't screw it up. It makes people feel good, it gives people hope, don't take it away."

As a minister, I know that argument and I know the compassionate impulse behind it.

I also know that the church's beliefs including afterlife have become less credible for many people. Many people who in times past might have been church members are now into New Age things which I find to be placebos in newer wrappings. Others have left organized religion altogether. It is for these folks, including me, that I want to offer an alternative option to the religion of afterlife.

I make the case that religion primarily is not about afterlife but about helping people cope with this life. It always has been. Religious belief may include afterlife, but must it? Is a belief in afterlife the best way to cope with the suffering of life or has it been the only way we have known?

I personally believe that a religion of this world is a beautiful, meaningful thing, even in the midst of suffering. I know that one day I will enter an unconscious rest like the rest I had before I was born. In one sense I look forward to it, and yet, I have no desire to wish time away. Despite what may happen to me in this life, I have that rest coming. It will be a full rest, an unconscious union with the Divine. Call it eternal life if you like.

With that confidence, I can say,

"Yes, I can live another day. I didn't ask for this day or this life, but I will treat it as a gift and an adventure. I will face my depression. I will notice something beautiful. I will kiss my wife. I will stand up for someone."

I find the religion of this life to be comforting and credible. It fits my understanding of the universe, our cosmic history, and the evolution of species. I have no fear of God, gods or hell or concern about doing certain things to get a better future incarnation or a spot in heaven. I have the freedom to create my own meaning. Nothing is ready-made. I can draw from all wisdom available to me. There is no coercion to embrace certain beliefs. I don't need to "believe" anything. My energy, intelligence, imagination, and love is directed toward this life, this Earth, this present now.

I do acknowledge that we are headed for change on a massive scale due to energy, environmental, population, and economic crises. These unfolding crises as industrial civilization faces its limits will last for centuries. I have been blathering on about this since I started this blog five years ago. I include links to these concerns on the sidebar. My primary concern is that we face whatever changes may come with awareness, compassion, and courage because these are the angels of our better nature.

The church will have a role in helping people cope with these changes. On one hand, one branch of the church will help many people cope by offering traditional beliefs in the afterlife. For folks who find that helpful, then I have no argument.

My branch of the church will help people cope by offering an encouragement to be fully present here and now. Life is a crazy ride and it is best to travel lightly and to recognize that we can be and are blessings to others if we choose to be.

Maybe these two forms of Christianity, the Christianity of this life and the Christianity of the afterlife can work together. We can be with and for one another in the here and now, accept our limits, accept our mortality and be humane, even joyful in the midst of the via negativa.

I have no idea how I will respond when I face severe personal crises. Maybe I will jump over onto the afterlife branch, but I doubt it. I plan to stick with my religion and do what I can while I have breath.

Good Old Jesus and Me

We had a great Jesus Seminar on the Road with Robert Miller and Jarmo Tarkki. Here are some pics on my Facebook.


The subject was Jesus in the first and twenty-first centuries. Bob Miller stayed an extra day and participated in our adult forum and preached on "The Historical Jesus and the Kingdom of God."



It has taken me a long time since seminary, when I first had to wrestle with biblical criticism and critical analysis of Christianity, to make my peace with Jesus. At this point on my journey, I find that the Christ of creed is flat, dated, and oppressive for the most part.

In a liturgical setting, hymns and prayers to the "Cosmic Christ" are tolerable. The Cosmic Christ, Buddha-Nature, God, Goddess, etc. all speak to that transcendent aspect of reflection and experience. Even more so, does good poetry about nature and life. I like liturgy to reflect the creativity of the human spirit. I can appreciate some of the traditional hymns (especially the classical ones) as long as the words aren't too supernatural, archaic, or bloody. I like "secular" music in worship as long as it's good. Moments of silence are nice.

But when it gets right down to what it is about, that is, what I want my life to be about, I find the historical Jesus a good resource. He wasn't perfect. As Bob Miller pointed out on Sunday morning, he died young before he could mature and reflect on his vision and mission. He appeared to be impulsive. He cut himself off from his roots and demanded that others do the same ("let the dead bury their own dead") and it is doubtful that he could have sustained an itinerant lifestyle through middle or old age.

But he stood up against the powerful on behalf of the marginalized and that is enough for me. I don't need much more religion than that. I certainly don't need miracles or afterlife. I don't need supernatural beings telling me what to do. Nor do I need supposedly supernaturally derived books as proof-texts for decisions I need to make on my own.

Back to Jesus. He poked and prodded his listeners to live a life with courage. Be bold. Take some risks. Leave the zone of comfort. Stop whining about whatever isn't going your way and have some compassion for others. I mean, really.


Bob preached on Luke 10:1-9, where Jesus instructs his followers to wander around and heal in exchange for food and in the process tell the good folks that this is the kingdom of God. Or in the words of Kurt Vonnegut, tell them, "If this isn't nice, I don't know what is."

For some people, religion should be more than that. They need miracles, angels, resuscitated corpses, reincarnated souls, complex ladders of being, and life everlasting. Not me. I'm good with good old Jesus, the socialist prophet who thought if we shared and healed we would be doing all right.