Some Thoughts on Politics

     I was standing in line with my parents and my grandmother at K&W one day, I think it was a year or so after graduating from seminary.  We started talking politics – the Iraq War was the news of the day and I was in the process of becoming more politically aware.  At the time, I was in a particularly cynical place about politicians and I was telling my Republican father and my Democratic grandmother that both parties were to blame for what was happening.  This position, I’ll admit, has really not softened or changed in the intervening years. 

     In the midst of the conversation, an elderly woman approached me aggressively and almost yelled: “Democrats have always been for poor people!  Study your history!”  You know, it was the tone that surprised me.  I’ve been yelled at by Republicans, as well.  I was even told once that "you can't be a Christian and a Democrat."  Politics tends to have that effect on us from time to time.  You stake a position and you’re bound to meet somebody who has planted their flag on the other side of the hill.  Tempers flare.  Your blood pressure rises.  You feel that sharp edge of anger and righteous indignation.  Some people might express it in a smug condescension.  Some people might lash out when confronted with a different philosophy.  You might make it your mission to change this person’s mind, to convince them of the common sense of your position.  Or you might yell at perfect strangers in line at the K&W. 

     Politics is a risky proposition.  Though, it’s not all bad.  In the best of circumstances, it gets things done, brings people together, and brings order to a society.  It comes from the Greek word pertaining to citizens and ordering the affairs of the state.  But, as we know full well, it can get people in trouble.  It breaks up friendships and splits churches and divides communities and sets brother against brother.  It leads to violence and even murder, starting arguments and fights and wars. 

     I’d love to stay away.  To leave it at the door of the church and to ask churchgoers to do the same.   I firmly believe in the separation of church and state.  It’s not my job to tell the congregation who to vote for and it’s none of their business who I vote for.  It’s my job to tell people to follow Jesus.  That’s where you find salvation and hope and life and justice – it ain’t in Washington or Raleigh. 

     But (and isn’t there always a “but”?), Jesus was political.  Oh, not in the partisan way we’ve grown familiar with.  There’s enough there in his teachings to make Republicans and Democrats mad in equal measure.  Independents, too, so don’t think you’re off the hook.  If you’re so inclined, you can find verses to support your own political position.  But you can count on finding other verses that you’ll probably want to ignore.  Jesus wasn't interested in giving Rome or Jerusalem advice about how to run their respective governments.  Jesus didn't seem too terribly interested in reforming the current order, but rather, in announcing an entirely new order - the Kingdom of God. 

     The reality of the Kingdom of God takes precedence over any other kingdom or entity or power that we might pledge our allegiance to.  The Kingdom of God supplants, overthrows, renders obsolete all other kingdoms.   And we don’t have the luxury of deciding which elements of the Kingdom we can dispense with.  We can't decide that we like the personal holiness and salvation parts and get rid of the parts which challenge our greed and disregard for the poor.  Jesus really means what he says in those verses that we want to ignore or explain away.  Following Jesus, living in the reality of God's Kingdom present hear and now means that the political positions and ideologies that are thrust upon us are not the ultimate grounds for our identities.  And if you turn on Fox News or MSNBC or CNN and you see your enemy, remember what Jesus taught you.  If you follow Jesus, call yourself "Christian", remember that you are held to a higher standard - the standard of grace, peace, and love.  

The Impossible Call, Part 1 - Genesis 22:1-19

 I have been thinking (off and on) about this story for the past two weeks.  I've not been thinking deeply necessarily, but instead thinking about how I don't really want to engage with story at all.  This is one of the most difficult and shocking stories in all of Scripture.  I had this passage in mind while writing my last post about Abram's call and part of me didn't want to engage with this story at all.  I'm pretty sure that when I come across a Scripture that I actively want to ignore, that's an invitation for deeper engagement.  Other than my intention to look at the concept of call throughout Scripture (which means going through Abraham and his call), I have been prompted to look at this story by my own recent interaction with it.  Every night, Toni Ruth and I read to our children from The Jesus Storybook Bible (which is a great children's Bible, in my opinion) and the other night I was reading this story to my daughter.  The author tried to present this story in such a way as to not be too terribly frightening, but the horror of the story is not able to finally be suppressed.  So here are some thoughts about the Abraham and Isaac story with an eye towards God's call of Abraham.

1. In the first two verses, two things grab my attention immediately.  First, my Bible (NRSV) says, "God tested Abraham".  I've got to admit that I'm pretty uncomfortable with God testing people in this way.  But there it is.  And, after a few minutes of research, the Hebrew word (nasah) doesn't offer any relief either.  There may even be a lesson in that effort - how often do we Christians try to wriggle ourselves out of what God calls us to do in Scripture through interpretative gymnastics?  The implications, theologically, of God "testing" his chosen vessel for blessing the world by commanding him to sacrifice his son (who was promised and made possible by this same God) are staggering.  What kind of God does this?  There is a sizable difference between the God who asks Abraham to sacrifice His Son and the God that is revealed in Jesus Christ.  I honestly struggle with that tension.  The second thing that grabs my attention is God's reference to Isaac as Abraham's "only son" - what about Ishmael?  Chapters 21 and 22 of Genesis are brutal chapters.  Tough reading. 
2. Perhaps these stories are not so tough when you can engage them in the abstract.  I have children - two little people who I love more with each passing day.  Two children for whom I would gladly and without hesitation offer my own life, if need be.  So, I cannot engage these stories in an entirely abstract way.  I read the name "Isaac" and I picture my own child.  I read about Ishmael being rejected (along with Hagar) and that stings.  I read about Abraham being commanded to sacrifice his son and I can't begin to imagine contemplating putting my own child up on an altar, not even for a second.  I'm quite certain that I would fail that particular test. 
3. It's also very easy to read this story through my 21st century lens.  This story was written, after presumably being handed down as part of a larger oral tradition, in a culture that is radically different from ours.  As the first line of L.P. Hartley's book The Go-Between states, "The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there."  Indeed.  One of the lessons that I learned in seminary is that it's not appropriate to hold ancient peoples to the moral and ethical standards of our time.  We should not expect people who lived some 4000 years before our time to live by the standards of our time.  For me, though, that does nothing to lessen the horror of this story. 

4. Reading the (too) brief description of this story (also known as the Akedah, or "Binding") in my seminary Old Testament textbook, the way they handle this is to say, basically, that the end justifies the means: "This story is at once a story that repudiates the ancient custom of sacrificing the firstborn to the deity and a story of the testing and miracle of faithfulness - both Abraham's and God's…(this story) affirms confidence in God's faithfulness."  That's a positive spin on a story that I think is a bit more difficult than that.  And yes, I do believe that God is faithful, that is a cornerstone, non-negotiable article of faith for me.  If God is not faithful, well then, the whole "being a Christian" thing just kind of collapses, doesn't it?

5. Perhaps this story is more of a reflection on the culture in which Abraham found himself - a culture with several religions/cultures that were perfectly ok with human sacrifice, including Canaanites and Sumerians (people  from Abram's homeland).  This story ends with God providing an animal sacrifice in place of Isaac, allowing the reader to exhale and tying the story up into a nice little bow.  Maybe this tells us more about religious and cultural expectations of that time and place than it tells us about the nature of God revealed to us in Scripture, or as a Christian, in Jesus Christ.  Perhaps this story is a reflection on a God that calls God's people to a different way of life, that removes children from altars instead of killing children on them. 
6. Jewish theologians have grappled with this text for centuries and have approached this story from pretty much all conceivable angles.  Some thinkers involve Satan in the story, others theorize that Isaac was actually sacrificed, some state that it was an angel and not God that called for Abraham to stop, while others see God's testing of Abraham as punishment for his rejection of Ishmael.  There's even one Jewish interpreter who concluded "that Abraham offered up Isaac as a burnt sacrifice, and subsequently God transported Isaac's ashes to the Garden of Eden, where the dew 'reconstituted' Isaac." (A Journey Through the Hebrew Scriptures, pg. 172-173)  When I learned in seminary that there were numerous interpretations of this story, I was encouraged by the freedom to have a conversation with the text.  This is something I am still challenged and inspired by.  I am by no means an advocate of excising difficult and even horrific stories from Scripture - the world is a difficult and often horrific place.  As much as it is the inspired Word of God, Scripture is also a reflection of human life and death, including in this instance the reality of human sacrifice in Abraham's time. 

Next week (or maybe later this week, if time allows), I'll look at how this story intersects with our faith in Jesus and how this relates to a concept of God's "call".

Thanks for reading!

Wes

A Reflection on Genesis 12:9

Genesis 12:9 - "And Abram journeyed on by stages toward the Negeb."

     The story of Abram seems to begin pretty abruptly.  We see some biographical details at the end of chapter 11.  He is Terah's son, married to Sarai, Lot's uncle, and hails from Ur of the Chaldeans.  Ur was an important Sumerian city-state which was located in what is modern-day Iraq.  We are given very little in the way of biographical information.  Over the next few chapters, we begin to fill in the blanks about who Abram actually is - liar, scoffer, quasi-adulterer, doubter.  He's also faithful to God to an extreme degree, nearly sacrificing his son before God intervenes at the very last moment.  This story, by the way, is LOADED with meaning and depth. 

     There is not much that explains why God would choose this person as opposed to any other person.  And this is encouraging to me as it relates to God's call on my life.  Who am I that God would call me?  The answer: it's not about me.  It's about God.  It wasn't about Abram or David or Noah or Jacob either - it's about God.  And there's something in me that resists this truth.  I want it to be about "great people".  I want heroes and heroines.  I want people occupying the pedestal of "greatness".  But that's not how life works, really.  Jesus wasn't joking when he said that only God is good. 

     As I grow in faith and experience, the more this makes sense to me and the more admirable it becomes when people actually make morally courageous choices that require sacrifice.  And it relieves me of the notion that people that I admire are perfect.  They are not.  As a minister, I find myself being less and less surprised by the messiness of people's lives.  I'm beginning to find it refreshing when people are honest with themselves and with others about their struggles, failures, and disappointments.  Self-righteousness is a complete fabrication and no one is more fooled than the self-righteous themselves. 

     I'd like to think that Abram was not self-righteous.  We're not given much to go on as far as his personality, but he strikes me as a fairly humble guy.  My memory may be failing me on this point, but I can't recall any instance where Abram used his call by God to his own advantage.  Abram strikes me as a complicated individual, conflicted about what God is calling him to do, faithful in fits and starts.  He journeyed on by stages indeed. 

     I've always loved that phrase, for some reason.  "And Abram journeyed on by stages toward the Negeb."  There's something poetic about it, it seems cinematic to me.  I imagine a vignette of Abram's travels, his "stages", as he makes his way from Ur (on the Euphrates near what we know as the Persian Gulf - a place that in Abram's day would have produced abundant crops) to the Negeb (or Negev), a desert region south of Jerusalem.  From the riverside to the desert.  From home to a foreign land.  From the known to the unknown.  Yep, this sounds like a call from God. 

     My life, like yours I'd wager, has been a journey by stages also.  Not as dramatic or important as Abram's, obviously, but one defined by God leading me to this place and then to this place and then to this place and then to places that seemed an awful lot like  a desert.  I never had to lie to a Pharaoh nor has God promised me a child in my old age (at least not yet), but I've done my own share of traveling and made my mistakes...and still making my mistakes.  Thankfully, God is forgiving.  As is my wife. 

     My call is nowhere near as daunting or massive as God's covenant call of Abram - and for that I'm also thankful.  But God calls us and we go on our own journeys by stages.  At each stage, God is with us - teaching us, leading us, at times cleaning up after us, chastising us and calling us to repentance.  All the while whispering, shouting, reminding - I have called you by name, you are mine.  So be it with me, God, so be it with me.