The Ties that Bind
By the Rev. Janet Baker
(Rutgers Presbyterian Church, June 27, 1999
Genesis 22:1-19, Matthew 10:40-42
“After
these things, God tested Abraham. “Such
a simple sentence, a little foreboding perhaps, but a rather bland introduction
to what is surely one of the most horrifying episodes in biblical history, a
story so viscerally revolting that the tellers and interpreters of the story
have had to produce the most bizarre and elaborate rationalizations to justify
its inclusion in our Bible. This is
a story that can adequately be described only by the phrase coined by Professor
Phyllis Tible to cover a handful of extremely
offensive and disturbing texts in the Bible.
It is, truly, a “text of terror.”
Hear again the command of God as it came to Abraham to Genesis 22.
And God said, “Abraham!” And
he said, “Here I am.” God 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.”
What
are we to do with this text of terror on Gay Pride Sunday?
What do child sacrifice and gay pride have to do with one another?
I wish that I could say that there was no connection; I wish that this
could be a day only for light-hearted joy and celebration.
But when I found out that this was the lectionary text for today,
I immediately saw a connection, and so I have felt compelled to preach on
this dark and disturbing story, and to ask some hard questions about the
authority of the Bible and the nature of faith.
As
we embark onto this perilous journey this morning, we need to remember a key
tenet of the Reformed faith, as we at Rutgers understand it.
That is , that the Bible, while it witnesses to the Word of God, is not
itself the infallible, inerrant words of God, as our fundamentalist friends
believe. Presbyterians by and large
acknowledge that the Bible was shaped by the cultures, worldviews, and time
periods of its writers, and so we are free to assert, for example, that slavery
is not compatible with the gospel, no matter how many times it was condoned in
the Bible. We can approach this
passage with assurance, then, that it is not blasphemous to question its
authority and relevance for Christians today.
And yet, the silence surrounding this text is deafening.
Or rather, the attempts to rationalize the text and take it at face value
are astounding. Every biblical
commentary I have read on this accepts the premise that God needed to test
Abraham, and praises Abraham’s obedience to god as the very pinnacle of
faithfulness. No one seems to ask
what kind of a God would put Abraham to such a test, and what kind of father
would so unquestioningly obey such a God.
What
we need is a fresh look at this story, a new interpretation that doesn’t
flinch from the hard questions. How
might we go about finding such a new understanding?
I would suggest that what we need is a subversive re-reading of the
story. The text tells Abraham’s
story, but what if instead of hearing Abraham’s story, we were to listen
instead to Isaac’s story? What if
we were to release Isaac from being merely the object of God’s command and
Abraham’s obedience, and allowed him to become a subject with his won voice?
Let’s put ourselves in Isaac’s place for a moment, and pulling
together everything we know of Isaac’s life both before and after this
episode, let’s imagine how he might have described it.
Isaac speaks:
“I
shall never forget that day, for as long as I live, and I have vowed that my
sons and daughters will never forget that day, and that they will tell their
sons and daughters how it came to pass that Abraham, my father and their
forefather, prepared to offer me, his only son, child of the promise, as a burnt
offering to our God, Yahweh. I
shall never forget that day because it marked the end of my age of innocence and
the end of my father’s relationship with my mother and I.
It
was before dawn, the sky a rosy promise of a beautiful day ahead, when my father
roused me and told me to saddle up and prepare for along journey.
I was excited as I always enjoyed trips with my father, and I eagerly
prepared to leave. How could I have
known that I would never return to my father’s tents after that day?
Two of our servant men went with us, good friends of mine since
childhood. I didn’t know where we were going but it hardly mattered;
my father and I were embarking upon an adventure together and I was eager to
please him.
But
this journey was different from the start.
My father, usually light-hearted and kind, was morose and irritable.
A cloud of tension seemed to emanate from him, which dampened all our
spirits. All I knew was that we were going to fulfill a religious
obligation, but why was it upsetting my father so? The third day dawned dark and cloudy; it was threatening
rain, but no rain-clouds could compete with my father’s countenance.
He walked as though he were carrying ten bushels of straw on his back, as
though the weight would crush him. I
longed to help him carry this strange burden, but he had gone to a place far
beyond my reach. Gruffly, he told
the servants that we must finish the journey alone, he and I, and I wondered
what this meant. Then he told me we
must offer a burnt sacrifice on the crest of the mountain.
I
carried the wood for the offering, and he carried the coals from our fire and
the knife. Everything should have
seemed normal and yet I sensed that something was terribly wrong.
Finally, I blurted out, Father, where is the lamb for the sacrifice?
For I had an as yet unnamed dread growing in my heart.
He tried to reassure me with his words, God would provide, but his face
and his eyes had turned to stone. Fear
gripped my stomach and intestines and crushed the air out of my lungs until I
could hardly walk or breathe. Finally,
he stopped. Methodically, he
started building a fire, but still no lamb, no animal for the sacrifice.
By then I knew something unspeakable, some ungodly crime was about to be
committed, but I didn’t know who had been appointed victim and who priest.
Was I to be the offering, or would he ask me to slay him, my father, as
an offering to God? At the same
moment that the question formed in my mind I knew the answer.
I would not, could not, sacrifice my father to his God, but if he asked
me to climb onto that pyre, I would do it.
How could I defy him, how could I refuse him anything.
He had given me life, and as his son, in life and death I belonged to
him. He owned me, as surely as his
God owned him.
You
know the rest of the story. I
cannot bear to speak it aloud again. His
God did provide, but not before an impenetrable wall had come down between us.
God’s gift of the lamb spared my body, but my soul; my soul had already
been sacrificed. I have looked
everywhere for it, but I have not found it again; it is still pinned to that
pile of wood and bones, free neither to live or die, but bound eternally to my
father’s vow of obedience to his God. As much as I loved him, I could not follow him down that
mountain. It turned out that my
mother also could not bear the sight of him after hearing what had happened.
When I married my wife Rebekah, it was to my mother’s tent that we
returned. My father we knew again
only in death—when he buried my mother, and when I buried him.
In life, he was dead to me already.”
And
so, Isaac speaks, shattering millennia of silence, cover-up and
rationalizations, and tells this story in his own words.
It is a very different story, isn’t it?
You see, it is dangerous to let victims speak, because when they open
their mouths, they turn the world upside down.
What seemed right now appears horribly wrong, heroes fall, traditions
crumble, and virtues crack open and reveal a rotten core.
It takes courage to listen to the Isaacs of this world, when we have been
taught only to hear the Abrahams. Some
of us have a lot to lose, and others a lot to gain, but the one sure thing is,
we’ll never be the same.
So
what can we learn from Isaac’s story, and what on earth does it have to do
with Gay Pride? First of all, we
learn that Abraham’s actions came at a terrible price, to himself and to his
family. You have to read between
the lines of the biblical text a little, but if you look carefully, you find
that the real conclusion to this story is not with God’s blessing and promise
of descendants in verses 15-18. No,
the real conclusion comes in verse 19, almost as an afterthought.
The text says, “So Abraham returned to his young men, and they arose
and went together to Beersheba; and Abraham lived at Beersheba.”
Something,
or rather someone, is missing from this supposedly happy ending.
Where is Isaac? His life had been spared, but when Abraham comes down off the
mountain and returns home, he is accompanied only by his servants.
Isaac is nowhere to be found. In
fact, reading carefully the next few chapters of Genesis, it becomes clear that
Abraham and Isaac never see each other again, until Isaac buries Abraham in
Genesis 25. Even more startling
perhaps, when Abraham returns from the mountain of sacrifice, Sarah has moved to
Hebron. Abraham continues to live
in Beersheba, and only goes to Hebron to bury Sarah after her death. God’s first family, the family of the promise, is shattered
by the events that took place on the mountain of Moriah. Abraham has his blessing, but all of the joy has been drained
out of I, and it must ring hollow in his ears.
Who
is the family? Who are the Abrahams
and Isaacs and Sarahs of our world? Once
you know what to look for, they are everywhere. Mostly, you find them in families that have been ripped apart
by allegiance to false gods. Perhaps
you saw the article in last Sunday’s New York Times about honor killings in
Arab countries. So-called honor
killings claim the lives of hundreds of women and girls each year in Arab
countries, where some fathers, brothers and husbands feel honor-bound to hunt
down and kill female family members suspected of premarital sex or adultery.
These modern Abrahams feel commanded by their culture and their god to
uphold an ancient tribal code that stained honor can only be cleansed through
blood. Since according to this
code, honor resides in female sexual organs and behavior, it is women’s blood
that must be spilled when honor is tarnished.
As Egyptian novelist Salwa Bakr explains, “Women are largely looked
upon as bodies owned and protected by the husband, father, brother or even other
relatives…And these crimes are committed under the pretext that these men are
defending not only their honor, but society’s morality.”
The irony of course, is that Islam itself does not require or even
sanction these honor killings. They
are justified by twisted interpretations of Islam rooted in ancient tribal
beliefs that the Prophet Mohammed condemned.
And yet generation after generation of Abraham continue to sacrifice
their wives and daughters out of obedience to this moral code.
Of
course it’s easier to point the finger at other cultures than to look at our
own. Surely we don’t have
anything resembling honor killings or child sacrifice in this nation.
We are a Judeo-Christian nation of enlightened people, who love and
protect our families, right? Tell
that to the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered children who account for
half of the youth living in homeless shelters and foster homes in this city.
Tell that to the 65% of
those same youth who have attempted suicide at least once. A newly released Harvard study reveals that gay, lesbian and
bisexual youth are three and a half times more likely than heterosexual youth to
attempt suicide. They describe this
as (quote) “a stunning societal failure to protect thousands of young people
who need more—not less—support in every aspect of their lives.” (End
quote) Queer youth are much more likely to run away, end up as teen prostitutes,
attempt suicide and suffer beatings and abuse inside and outside of their homes
than heterosexual youth. Gay,
lesbian, bisexual and transgendered children and youth are the Isaacs of our
day. They are the sacrificial lambs
on the altar of our society’s morality. Whether
they are explicitly targeted by the religious right, shamed by mainstream
religion or merely neglected by liberal Christianity, they get the message.
Inside, they feel that they are better off dead than alive.
Their parents, countless Abrahams and Sarahs, reinforce this feeling
whether it is through physical, verbal or emotional abuse, or through the shame
that they feel about their children. Bowing
to an internalized moral code steeped in centuries of homophobia, they sacrifice
their children to a false god. I
don’t mean to imply that all parents of gay and lesbian youth are guilty of
this, any more than that every Arab man is willing to kill his wife or daughter
to save his honor. But as long as
one parent can treat his or her child this way and be sanctioned by their church
for doing so, it is simply unacceptable.
And what about Isaac? What happens to the children caught in this tornado of
homophobia and violence? The
biblical Isaac gives us the clue. Most
people imagine Isaac to be a small child when this episode occurs.
But Jewish tradition, and a careful reading go of the text, indicates
that Isaac was not a boy but fully grown when this took place.
Isaac is referred to in the Hebrew text as a
young man, the same word used to describe the two servants who accompany
Abraham. And Abraham—remember that by this time he was over
100—was an old man. And as though
the writer of this story wanted to be clear on this point, Abraham and Isaac go
up the mountain also, without the servants.
Everything in the text suggests that Isaac must have gone along with his
father’s wish to sacrifice him on that mountain.
Old and unaided, Abraham could not have subdued and bound Isaac.
What happened up on the mountaintop?
Did they struggle at all? Was
there arguing, tear, or bitterness? Was
there a tender moment of saying goodbye? We
will never know. But as far as we
can tell, Isaac participated in the preparations for sacrifice.
He was complicit in his own victimization.
Shocking?
Of course. But surprising?
Not really. Not when you
think about how children who have experienced abuse of any kind react.
Mostly, they still love their parents.
Mostly, they just want to please them.
Mostly, they take all the blame upon themselves, because that is far
better than living with the possibility that their parents are wrong, or sick,
or unable to really love them. Children
need their parents more than anything else in the world, and will sacrifice
their hearts and souls to win their parents’ love.
Children who grow up and learn how to be healthy adults have to
reevaluate what happened to them, to question their internalized shame and
self-hate. People who have
experienced any kind of victimization or oppression, whether it is due to child
abuse, or racial discrimination, or sexism or homophobia, have to lean how to
resist their victimization. We have
to learn how to fight back and stand up and celebrate who we are.
That
is what this day is about. That’s
why every year, we dress up and have an outrageous parade and March down Fifth
Avenue and act like lunatics. That’s
why thirty years ago a bunch of drag queens at the Stonewall Inn got fed up and
started rioting when the police tried to arrest them for the umpteenth time.
We, and I mean all of us now, for different reasons, all of us have to
learn two things in this world. One
is how to love, and the other is how to resist, which is the same thing as
learning to love ourselves. Abraham’s
failure was a failure to love: Isaac’s was a failure to resist.
Both are equally destructive and abhorrent in the eyes of God.
Silence
equals death. That was the rallying
cry of the movement to fight AIDS in the 1980’s.
Silence is the failure to resist, it is the failure to love ourselves by
claiming who we are. Silence is
lethal, claiming the lives of gay teens whose shame devours their souls, or
whose bodies are brutalized while the rest of us say nothing.
The silence must be broken. W
must hear Isaac’s voice. We must
speak in our own voices, and be heard. And
the silence is being broken. It is
being broken in the Presbyterian Church, where gay, lesbian, bi and
transgendered folks are coming forward and claiming their place in the body of
Christ. We need a second
Reformation in this church, and I am asking you today, let it begin here.
I for one, will no longer be complicit in the sin of silence in this
Denomination.
I will no longer obey the taboos imposed by a false god.
And so I need to tell you today what I have not been able to say from the
pulpit for ten years, since I was ordained in 1989, that I am a self-affirming,
lesbian, Presbyterian minister. On
this day of gay pride, I want to celebrate that with you, my congregation, and I
truly feel that you are the church family that I never had.
I want to thank you for your ministry of justice, and inclusion, and More
Light that shines like a beacon in this Presbytery and throughout this
denomination. You hold out the
possibility that this church family might still be healed, and learn to live
together in a peace founded upon justice rather than silence.
In
closing, we must ask, where was God in the story of Abraham and Isaac?
If the god who commanded Abraham to sacrifice Isaac isn’t the god we
worship and serve, then what does God command us to do?
It’s really quite simple. A
later prophet, perhaps remembering the story of Abraham and Isaac, tells us all
we need to know about what it means to be faithful to God.
As Micah says.
“With
what shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before God on
high?
Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body
for
the sin of my soul? God has told
you, O mortal, what is good, and what
does
the Lord require of you, but to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk
humbly
with your God.?” Excerpted from
Micah 6:6-8.
Let
us pray.
God of justice, God of love, God of all who resist evil, help us to find our voices and to break the silence that smothers our souls. Give us the courage to claim our place as your children in the body of Christ, and open wide the doors of the church so that all of the excluded and abandoned can march through our doors and come home to You.
Amen.
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