Some things I won't say in Sunday's sermon

For instance: I wish God were a bit quieter in Genesis 21 and 22

Between VBS prep and a memorial service and pastoral care calls, I slip out of church, and slip in to a back row in the Blue Ridge South Room at UNCA. I’m going to hear poetry, but almost immediately the poets start talking about the text I’m preaching on this Sunday. Alicia Ostriker, on stage, is saying that the story of Abraham and the binding of Isaac — the story in which God commands Abraham to take his son Isaac to the land of Moriah and offer him as a burnt offering there on a mountain — has had more commentary written about it than any other passage in the Hebrew Bible.

“And we might say all of the interpretations are right,” she says. I pull out my large green blank book and begin taking notes.

One commentary says Isaac must live, because the son of laughter must continue laughing for God to remain sovereign. Isaac is the first Jewish comedian, she says: all Jewish comedy begins with “my father wanted to kill me.”

One commentary wonders why Abraham argued with God about destroying Sodom and Gomorrah, but didn’t argue with God’s command to offer up his son.

One says the ram was in the thicket all along, but Abraham wasn’t looking.

One, Nomi Stone notes, says God was disappointed that Abraham didn’t understand that he was supposed to refuse to obey.

***

The next day, I return to the Yetzirah summer conference to hear a group of six poets talk about writing contemporary midrash.¹ Again, Abraham and Isaac appear, this time in Nan Cohen’s “Abraham and Isaac 1.”² Speaking about her poem, Cohen says “to have a child is already to lay the fire on the altar.”

I can’t help but think of friends who have chosen not to have children because of the peril of climate change, and about the children dying because of climate change and the choices we and our ancestors have made that have put them on the altar.

***

But what I’ve been thinking most about today doesn’t even fall in the text selected for the lectionary this week, which ends at verse 18. What I’ve been thinking about is verse 19: “Then Abraham returned to his servants, and they set off together for Beersheba. And Abraham stayed in Beersheba.”

Where is Isaac?

As they’d ascended the mountain, the text was clear: “the two of them went on together.” But now, after Abraham has bound his son, placed him on the altar, and grasped the knife; after God has spoken and the ram has been sacrificed in Isaac’s place; now, Isaac isn’t named. Does he descend with his father? Or does he go in a different direction?

Shai Held notes that the next time we meet Isaac, in Genesis 24:62, he has “just come back from the vicinity of Be’er-lahoi-roi.”³ Be’er-lahoi-roi is the place where, in Chapter 16, Hagar had met God after being cast out by Abraham and Sarah. One midrash says Isaac had gone to bring Hagar home. And maybe he had. But maybe he sought Hagar for another reason.

I keep imaging the trauma of having a parent willing to sacrifice you in order to be obedient to God. I keep thinking of the parents who are willing to sacrifice their LGBTQ+ children because they think God requires it of them — because maybe they haven’t noticed that there’s a ram in the thicket. Or I think of AW Tozer, whose devotion to God left his wife and seven children lonely and impoverished.⁴

Would you walk down the mountain with a father who had tied you with ropes and placed you on an altar?

I keep imagining Isaac trying to make sense of it all, and realizing that the person who might be able to help him most would be Hagar, the mother of his brother, the concubine of his father, the woman perceived as a threat by his mother. The woman who Abraham was willing to abandon, who was sent with her son to die in the desert. Another person who had suffered at the hands of his father’s devotion to God —

but then had been met by God. Had named God. Had found freedom, for herself and for her son.

Someday I will ask them what they talked about, out there in the desert. But for now, having been a desert-dweller myself from time to time, I think I can imagine it.

---

Three Things (or four):

• Deadloch on Amazon Prime — a show about two very different investigators working together to solve a string of murders in a tiny Tasmanian town — is satisfyingly scratching that particular Midsomer itch for us right now.

• Desserts with rye flour! Last summer I toured a local flour mill, Carolina Ground, and bought the gorgeous cookbook that tells the story of their baker-turned-miller and their partnerships with farmers and cafes across the south to preserve heritage grains — I really can’t recommend it enough. I’ve started cooking through her desserts that use rye flour, and I love the toothsome nuttiness (yes, I just said that) it brings. You can find a few rye desserts on the website, but my favorite so far is in the book — rye shortbread cookies.

• And finally, may I recommend intergenerational book clubs? A bunch of moms, grandmas, and 5th and 6th grade boys at church read Colin Kaepernick: Change the Game together this month, and our resulting discussion was maybe even more stimulating than regular book club is. Plus, we had nutter butters and juice boxes :-)

• Being startled by ducklings at the river:
  

What are you loving? (Or — any thoughts on Abraham and Isaac?)

Where Goodness Still Grows is available wherever books are sold. My first book, Dangerous Territory, has a second edition coming out this fall; sign up for the Bracket newsletter to learn more.

1. Midrash is an interpretive act, a way of writing about the Scriptures to fill in the spaces between the words we have. It often draws on contemporary realities to re-imagine the stories of Scripture reverently, transgressively, and creatively all at once.

2. If you subscribe to Ploughshares, you can read it: https://www.pshares.org/authors/nan-cohen

3. In The Heart of Torah, Vol. 1.

4. Tozer's biography, A Passion for God by Lyle Dorsett tells how he gave half his paycheck back to the church, and all his publishing royalties to charity. The family lived without a car, leaving his wife to buy groceries for a family of nine via public transportation or walking through the cold Chicago winters. He devoted hours to prayer, but not to his family. After he died, there was little money for his wife to live on. But she married again; and when asked about her happiness, said, “I have never been happier in my life. Aiden loved Jesus Christ, but Leonard Odam loves me.”