Matthew 10:40-42
40“Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me. 41Whoever
welcomes a prophet in the name of a prophet will receive a prophet’s
reward; and whoever welcomes a righteous person in the name of a
righteous person will receive the reward of the righteous; 42and
whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in
the name of a disciple — truly I tell you, none of these will lose their
reward.”
Genesis 22:1-14
1After these things God tested Abraham. He said to him, “Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” 2He
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.” 3So 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. 4On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place far away. 5Then
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.” 6Abraham 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. 7Isaac 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?” 8Abraham said, “God himself will provide the lamb for a burnt offering, my son.” So the two of them walked on together.
9When 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. 10Then Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to kill his son. 11But the angel of the LORD called to him from heaven, and said, “Abraham, Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” 12He
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.” 13And 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. 14So 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.”
I think it’s important to read the Genesis text through the lens through which Jesus tells us to read all of our lives. In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus tells us that whoever welcomes his followers, welcomes him and welcomes God. This all sounds nice. Doesn’t it? But then there’s that second verse - whoever welcomes a prophet in the name of a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward - hmm. When I think about the “rewards” of the prophets, I think of persecution and exile and abandonment. I think of how Jesus says “prophets die in Jerusalem.” Not necessarily what I’d call a “reward.” And then Jesus goes on, “whoever welcomes a righteous person in the name of a righteous person will receive the reward of the righteous...”
When I think about the rewards of the “righteous” - Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr, and the Apostle Paul? I think about crucifixion, assassination, jail time, -- not exactly winning the Publishers Clearinghouse Sweepstakes. That’s not getting your thirteenth coffee free or an extra ten cents off a gallon of gas or bonus airline miles.
Nope. For Jesus, rewards are different. Rewards are hard. Rewards hurt. Rewards demand that we see the world a little bit differently from how Walmart or the Dow Jones Industrials or Monsanto views the world.
For Jesus, the reward is in the seeing. In the viewing of a “little one,” not as disposable, not as someone upon whose back we build our economy, not as someone whom we should see and not hear, but as the whole point of our existence here on this earth.
See these little ones, he says. See them. Really see them. See their struggle and heartache and mistakes. See their courage and see their determination. See their desire to live and be loved. See their thirst. And then give them something to drink. If you see them, you’ll see me, you’ll see the one who sent me.
And the seeing is the reward.
When you see a little one - a child, a drunk, a family on welfare, a new mom in the throws of postpartum depression, an elderly woman who is in pain with every step, the rich CEO who stares out from his downtown high rise and thinks about jumping off the balcony, when you see them as God sees them, then you see God. And then you can’t stop seeing God in it all.
But we are so distracted by all the little “g” gods. The gods that tell us that we deserve a bigger house and a better job because we’ve earned it. The gods that tell us that the homeless guy under the bridge must have really screwed up to land himself there. The gods that tell us that if we buy our kids one more toy or buy ourselves one more car or put more money in the savings account or post one more piece of social commentary on facebook, that somehow we’ll be loved, somehow we’ll be known, somehow we’ll be able to see the face of God.
Oh yes. We see these gods everywhere. And I am so guilty of worshipping them. So often, more than once a day, I say to myself, “if I just had...”, “if only I could...”, and “why don’t they see...?”
And off I go, chasing another mortgage, another job, another discount, another piece of impossible to assemble Ikea furniture that will help me better organize all my stuff.
But the thing is, those gods don’t see me.
I keep hollering at them, calling to them, giving them my time and my money and my energy and my very spirit. And all I get from them is a passive indifference and a ridiculous desire to shout louder, to wave my arms harder, to fill my calendar up and bounce all the checks.
We run after these gods, chasing them and doing what they say. and then we are left with nothing but the next chase.
We accept what they tell us.
That pesticides in our food is the only way we can feed a growing world.
That politics will always be corrupt.
That that drunk on the sidewalk will always be drunk.
And that jail is good, and keeps us safe from bad guys, and doesn’t just make more criminals.
That war is inevitable and that there is a way to make it “just”
That child sacrifice is ok. That child sacrifice, if god is the one who asks it of us, is really the true voice of God, and is just a “test” and if we pass it, God will love us more.
But a close reading of this Genesis text, this classic text of what Christians call the “Sacrifice of Isaac and what many Jewish traditions call the “Binding of Isaac,” suggests that this is not at all what is going on here. And a close reading of the text with the echo of Jesus’ reminder of God’s true rewards bouncing in our ears tells us that there’s more to this text than God’s cruel demand for child sacrifice and God’s last minute rescue in the form of a ram and an angelic voice from heaven.
But you need a little context, and you need to pay attention to a little bit of the Hebrew that this text is written in. So, bear with me a second.
First, during this ancient era of Abraham and Sarah, Patriarchs and nomads, in the Ancient Near East, child sacrifice wasn’t unheard of. In fact, it was downright common in times of crisis among most of the belief systems in the Western Semitic World.
Second. There are two words for “god” used in this text, from two different sources. One is “Elohim” which is literally, “gods,” lowercase g, but is often used for “God” - as in the one true God of Israel. You only know the difference between the two according to how it is used in its context. Mostly, this name for God is used in what scholars call the “E” source - a very old source for the Hebrew Bible.
The other word for God is, in Hebrew, “yod heh wah heh” - or “Yahweh” - which was never to be spoken out loud in reverence for God’s true name. This name for God is often used in what scholars call the “J” source. But whenever you see it, unlike Elohim, you know for sure that the writer is talking about the one true God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
What’s so fascinating about this text is that “Elohim” is the name used for God throughout most of this text. It is Elohim who tests Abraham, it is Elohim who tells him to sacrifice Isaac, and it is Elohim to shows Abraham where he is to go to perform the sacrifice.
And when they get to the top of the mountain, and Isaac dumps his load of firewood and asks Abraham what the heck is going on, where is the sacrifice --The ram, or the dove or the sheep or the goat? -- Abraham says that Elohim will be the one to provide the sacrifice. When they come to the place that Elohim had shown him, Abraham built and altar there and laid down the wood and bound his son to the altar and Abraham reaches out with his knife to kill his son...
Oh yes. Abraham is very devoted to his elohim.
But then an angel of Yhwh calls to him from heaven, calls Abraham out by name, and Abraham hears the messenger of Yhwh say, “Don’t touch that boy!’ For now I know you fear Elohim.”
Ok. I can’t help myself. One more geeky Hebrew reference. The word for “fear” and the word for “see” are very similar. So similar, in fact, that they were also used synonymously, or often mistaken for each other, and often used as puns to show how closely related to each other they were.
For now I know that you “fear” Elohim - you see Elohim. You know the difference between gods and the one true God, your Yhwh.
In essence, God says, “You thought you were following me. You thought you were doing the right thing in sacrificing your son, showing that you love me more than you love the most precious thing in this whole world. But you were following the commands of yet another god. You were buying what they were selling. You were striving to do it all right according to some other code, some other set of rules, some really popular perspectives during your time. You were listening hard and paying attention, but you were distracted by all the voices of the dominating narrative - the voices of your culture and your land and the people around you who said that sometimes God demands blood, sometimes God demands sacrifice of innocents, God demands the death of the very thing that helps you see God in the first place.
Even though you were trying to love me, you were overwhelmed by all the shouting and distraction that is your world and your culture and the demands of the powerful.
You love me. I can see that. But you do not know me. You do not see the real me. The real Yhwh. You do not know what real power is. You do not know what real reward is.
Come and see. Come and see the real me. Come and see that I’m not like other gods, who demand sacrifices of the things that enable you to see the real me. That’s not how I work. That’s not who I am. Come and see.”
And here’s the thing. The text actually says this. A more literal translation of verse 14 is not “So Abraham called that place “The Lord will provide”; as it is said to this day, “On the mount of YHWH is shall be provided”
BUT rather:
“So Abraham called that place “Yahweh sees,” which is said to this day, “on a hill, Yahweh is seen.”
Let’s see this story anew. And by that I mean, let’s see this story back in history, in its context, in its radical and impossible attempt to redirect us away from violence and substitutionary atonement.
This is a story of grace. Of love. Of mutual seeing. Abraham thinks he is following God as he trudges up that mountain to sacrifice his son, but the real miracle is that he sees the true God before he has a chance to follow through with what he thinks he should do. He receives a vision on that mountain. A vision of God that is totally different from the visions of his culture, of his upbringing, of the dominating religious traditions of his land.
Isaac is one of the little ones that Jesus is talking about. And so is Abraham. And so are we. God does not command sacrifice. God tells us to give water to all of these little ones. To us.
God is found in the water and in the seeing of this. In the understanding that God does not delight in sacrifice, but in the doing of God’s will, in the unbinding of the oppressed, in the unbinding of Isaac, in the standing up against the voices of the dominant narrative of power and culture and money that says that our worth is in the size of our house or the number in our pews or clicks on our websites.
No. It’s in the water. In the cups of cool water that we give. And in the cups of cool water that we receive. In the dropping of the knife. In the picking up of the bread.
In the seeing of the true God who provides and loves unconditionally, demanding not that we sacrifice our children and our hearts and the things that give us true peace and joy and comfort, but in the offering of cool water to our souls, to our children, to our neighbors, to the folks with whom we think we have nothing in common, to the beggars on the streets and the struggling suburban housewives and the CEOs that we think have it all but are really quite lonely and quite thirsty.
Abraham’s story doesn’t make any sense - a story of a god who says, “prove that you love me by killing an innocent.”
Unless. Unless you are seeing the way Abraham has learned to see - maybe for just the half second that enabled Abraham to stay his hand. Unless you are seeing the true God. The true YHWH. The God of the Resurrected One who can turn even the most broken of relationships and the most misguided of theologies that God requires violence, into a call for justice, a call for peace, a call to bring cool water to littlest ones throughout all the world.
Abraham’s story is one of seeing - for just half a second - the one true God.
And it doesn’t make any sense, unless you are seeing the world the way Jesus has taught us to see. Unless you see that we all belong to God’s family - as broken and distracted and obsessed with all the false narratives of redemptive violence and financial security and the power of the popular. Unless you see that we are all thirsty for a cup of cool water, and that we all have a cup of cool water to give away. Unless you see - even for just half a second, even just long enough to stop yourself from doing something destructive - you see God for who God truly is, the one to redeems, who loves unconditionally, who offers grace upon grace upon grace, who offers us peace from all this striving and struggle and self-doubt. Come and drink the cool water. Come and rest in God’s grace. Come, taste and see that God is GOOD. That is your reward.
Thanks be to YHWH.
When I think about the rewards of the “righteous” - Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr, and the Apostle Paul? I think about crucifixion, assassination, jail time, -- not exactly winning the Publishers Clearinghouse Sweepstakes. That’s not getting your thirteenth coffee free or an extra ten cents off a gallon of gas or bonus airline miles.
Nope. For Jesus, rewards are different. Rewards are hard. Rewards hurt. Rewards demand that we see the world a little bit differently from how Walmart or the Dow Jones Industrials or Monsanto views the world.
For Jesus, the reward is in the seeing. In the viewing of a “little one,” not as disposable, not as someone upon whose back we build our economy, not as someone whom we should see and not hear, but as the whole point of our existence here on this earth.
See these little ones, he says. See them. Really see them. See their struggle and heartache and mistakes. See their courage and see their determination. See their desire to live and be loved. See their thirst. And then give them something to drink. If you see them, you’ll see me, you’ll see the one who sent me.
And the seeing is the reward.
When you see a little one - a child, a drunk, a family on welfare, a new mom in the throws of postpartum depression, an elderly woman who is in pain with every step, the rich CEO who stares out from his downtown high rise and thinks about jumping off the balcony, when you see them as God sees them, then you see God. And then you can’t stop seeing God in it all.
But we are so distracted by all the little “g” gods. The gods that tell us that we deserve a bigger house and a better job because we’ve earned it. The gods that tell us that the homeless guy under the bridge must have really screwed up to land himself there. The gods that tell us that if we buy our kids one more toy or buy ourselves one more car or put more money in the savings account or post one more piece of social commentary on facebook, that somehow we’ll be loved, somehow we’ll be known, somehow we’ll be able to see the face of God.
Oh yes. We see these gods everywhere. And I am so guilty of worshipping them. So often, more than once a day, I say to myself, “if I just had...”, “if only I could...”, and “why don’t they see...?”
And off I go, chasing another mortgage, another job, another discount, another piece of impossible to assemble Ikea furniture that will help me better organize all my stuff.
But the thing is, those gods don’t see me.
I keep hollering at them, calling to them, giving them my time and my money and my energy and my very spirit. And all I get from them is a passive indifference and a ridiculous desire to shout louder, to wave my arms harder, to fill my calendar up and bounce all the checks.
We run after these gods, chasing them and doing what they say. and then we are left with nothing but the next chase.
We accept what they tell us.
That pesticides in our food is the only way we can feed a growing world.
That politics will always be corrupt.
That that drunk on the sidewalk will always be drunk.
And that jail is good, and keeps us safe from bad guys, and doesn’t just make more criminals.
That war is inevitable and that there is a way to make it “just”
That child sacrifice is ok. That child sacrifice, if god is the one who asks it of us, is really the true voice of God, and is just a “test” and if we pass it, God will love us more.
But a close reading of this Genesis text, this classic text of what Christians call the “Sacrifice of Isaac and what many Jewish traditions call the “Binding of Isaac,” suggests that this is not at all what is going on here. And a close reading of the text with the echo of Jesus’ reminder of God’s true rewards bouncing in our ears tells us that there’s more to this text than God’s cruel demand for child sacrifice and God’s last minute rescue in the form of a ram and an angelic voice from heaven.
But you need a little context, and you need to pay attention to a little bit of the Hebrew that this text is written in. So, bear with me a second.
First, during this ancient era of Abraham and Sarah, Patriarchs and nomads, in the Ancient Near East, child sacrifice wasn’t unheard of. In fact, it was downright common in times of crisis among most of the belief systems in the Western Semitic World.
Second. There are two words for “god” used in this text, from two different sources. One is “Elohim” which is literally, “gods,” lowercase g, but is often used for “God” - as in the one true God of Israel. You only know the difference between the two according to how it is used in its context. Mostly, this name for God is used in what scholars call the “E” source - a very old source for the Hebrew Bible.
The other word for God is, in Hebrew, “yod heh wah heh” - or “Yahweh” - which was never to be spoken out loud in reverence for God’s true name. This name for God is often used in what scholars call the “J” source. But whenever you see it, unlike Elohim, you know for sure that the writer is talking about the one true God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
What’s so fascinating about this text is that “Elohim” is the name used for God throughout most of this text. It is Elohim who tests Abraham, it is Elohim who tells him to sacrifice Isaac, and it is Elohim to shows Abraham where he is to go to perform the sacrifice.
And when they get to the top of the mountain, and Isaac dumps his load of firewood and asks Abraham what the heck is going on, where is the sacrifice --The ram, or the dove or the sheep or the goat? -- Abraham says that Elohim will be the one to provide the sacrifice. When they come to the place that Elohim had shown him, Abraham built and altar there and laid down the wood and bound his son to the altar and Abraham reaches out with his knife to kill his son...
Oh yes. Abraham is very devoted to his elohim.
But then an angel of Yhwh calls to him from heaven, calls Abraham out by name, and Abraham hears the messenger of Yhwh say, “Don’t touch that boy!’ For now I know you fear Elohim.”
Ok. I can’t help myself. One more geeky Hebrew reference. The word for “fear” and the word for “see” are very similar. So similar, in fact, that they were also used synonymously, or often mistaken for each other, and often used as puns to show how closely related to each other they were.
For now I know that you “fear” Elohim - you see Elohim. You know the difference between gods and the one true God, your Yhwh.
In essence, God says, “You thought you were following me. You thought you were doing the right thing in sacrificing your son, showing that you love me more than you love the most precious thing in this whole world. But you were following the commands of yet another god. You were buying what they were selling. You were striving to do it all right according to some other code, some other set of rules, some really popular perspectives during your time. You were listening hard and paying attention, but you were distracted by all the voices of the dominating narrative - the voices of your culture and your land and the people around you who said that sometimes God demands blood, sometimes God demands sacrifice of innocents, God demands the death of the very thing that helps you see God in the first place.
Even though you were trying to love me, you were overwhelmed by all the shouting and distraction that is your world and your culture and the demands of the powerful.
You love me. I can see that. But you do not know me. You do not see the real me. The real Yhwh. You do not know what real power is. You do not know what real reward is.
Come and see. Come and see the real me. Come and see that I’m not like other gods, who demand sacrifices of the things that enable you to see the real me. That’s not how I work. That’s not who I am. Come and see.”
And here’s the thing. The text actually says this. A more literal translation of verse 14 is not “So Abraham called that place “The Lord will provide”; as it is said to this day, “On the mount of YHWH is shall be provided”
BUT rather:
“So Abraham called that place “Yahweh sees,” which is said to this day, “on a hill, Yahweh is seen.”
Let’s see this story anew. And by that I mean, let’s see this story back in history, in its context, in its radical and impossible attempt to redirect us away from violence and substitutionary atonement.
This is a story of grace. Of love. Of mutual seeing. Abraham thinks he is following God as he trudges up that mountain to sacrifice his son, but the real miracle is that he sees the true God before he has a chance to follow through with what he thinks he should do. He receives a vision on that mountain. A vision of God that is totally different from the visions of his culture, of his upbringing, of the dominating religious traditions of his land.
Isaac is one of the little ones that Jesus is talking about. And so is Abraham. And so are we. God does not command sacrifice. God tells us to give water to all of these little ones. To us.
God is found in the water and in the seeing of this. In the understanding that God does not delight in sacrifice, but in the doing of God’s will, in the unbinding of the oppressed, in the unbinding of Isaac, in the standing up against the voices of the dominant narrative of power and culture and money that says that our worth is in the size of our house or the number in our pews or clicks on our websites.
No. It’s in the water. In the cups of cool water that we give. And in the cups of cool water that we receive. In the dropping of the knife. In the picking up of the bread.
In the seeing of the true God who provides and loves unconditionally, demanding not that we sacrifice our children and our hearts and the things that give us true peace and joy and comfort, but in the offering of cool water to our souls, to our children, to our neighbors, to the folks with whom we think we have nothing in common, to the beggars on the streets and the struggling suburban housewives and the CEOs that we think have it all but are really quite lonely and quite thirsty.
Abraham’s story doesn’t make any sense - a story of a god who says, “prove that you love me by killing an innocent.”
Unless. Unless you are seeing the way Abraham has learned to see - maybe for just the half second that enabled Abraham to stay his hand. Unless you are seeing the true God. The true YHWH. The God of the Resurrected One who can turn even the most broken of relationships and the most misguided of theologies that God requires violence, into a call for justice, a call for peace, a call to bring cool water to littlest ones throughout all the world.
Abraham’s story is one of seeing - for just half a second - the one true God.
And it doesn’t make any sense, unless you are seeing the world the way Jesus has taught us to see. Unless you see that we all belong to God’s family - as broken and distracted and obsessed with all the false narratives of redemptive violence and financial security and the power of the popular. Unless you see that we are all thirsty for a cup of cool water, and that we all have a cup of cool water to give away. Unless you see - even for just half a second, even just long enough to stop yourself from doing something destructive - you see God for who God truly is, the one to redeems, who loves unconditionally, who offers grace upon grace upon grace, who offers us peace from all this striving and struggle and self-doubt. Come and drink the cool water. Come and rest in God’s grace. Come, taste and see that God is GOOD. That is your reward.
Thanks be to YHWH.
No comments:
Post a Comment