Notes from a Sojourn
June 28, 2020
The Courage of Faith Exploring the Otherness of God
A Sermon for the Fourth Sunday after Pentecost (Genesis 22.1-18)
The binding of Isaac by Abraham on Mt. Moriah at the command of God is a story that leaves no one unchanged. Not you, not me, not Abraham, certainly not Isaac, and not even…God?
I’ve placed a question mark at the end of that statement because I realize it may be an upsetting thought. Does God change God’s mind? Isn’t God the Unchanging God? Does God learn things God doesn’t yet know? Isn’t God all-knowing?
I realize that these are challenging questions for any of us to consider, and I have no easy answers to them myself, but I think that unless we’re willing to ask them, as sincere questions of our faith seeking an understanding of itself, there is a lot about this story – and all the stories in Genesis – that we will miss out on and not understand.
When you check your email inbox this morning, you’ll see that I’ve titled this sermon “The Courage of Faith Exploring the Otherness of God.” And here’s why:
Our Christian thinking about God’s Otherness – God’s transcendence (or God’s far-above-and-beyond-us-ness) and God’s immanence (or God’s closer-to-myself-than-I-am-to-myself-ness) – is deeply informed by our dual heritage of Hebrew and Greek thought.
Insofar as Christian thinking about God intersects with the traditions of classical thinkers like Plato, Socrates, and Aristotle, the most fruitful ways of exploring the mystery of God’s Otherness are found by pursuing ideas about divine perfection, unity, symmetry, and order.
In contrast to that, insofar as our Christian thinking about God intersects with the traditions of Hebrew thinkers over the centuries, the most fruitful ways of exploring the mystery of God’s Otherness are to be found in the experiences of personal encounters with the un-nameableness (ineffability) and un-graspableness (inscrutability) of God’s ways with humankind.
I am aware that this is oversimplifying things, but my purpose in sharing this is to point out that of these two very different yet legitimate ways of thinking and speaking about God’s Otherness, today’s Genesis story is, as all the stories of Genesis are, a Hebrew story.
The stories of Genesis are about the God who draws close to us – very close to us – who gets up to his elbows in grease promising, and covenanting, and wrestling with humans in a way that would make most classical thinkers very squeamish. In Hebrew scriptures (our Old Testament), God is a God of encounter. God is a God of relationship and commitment. And God, even in God’s unutterable and unsearchable nature, has a name. And it’s this name, and how it surfaces in today’s story about Abraham and God, that I want to draw our attention to.
//
The story of the Isaac’s binding begins and ends with two different Hebrew names for God: Elohim and Yahweh.
Elohim is a Hebrew word that describes deities and majestic beings in general and according to their Otherness from mere mortals like you and me: beings such as gods, angels, and kings. Using the word Elohim to address God is akin to addressing God with the words “Your Majesty.” It’s accurate, but it’s not at all personal.
Yahweh, on the other hand, is God’s personal name. It is the revealed name of God given by God to God’s People. Composed of four Hebrew consonants, this name is an enigmatic yet personal self-disclosure initiated by God. This name is a gift that gives to us a name for what is beyond our ability to name. This name a self-disclosure of God’s person that, like all self-disclosures, invites us into deeper relationship: mutual understanding, trust, friendship, and cooperation.
Knowing the difference between Elohim and Yahweh colours how we hear and understand this Genesis story.
In English, the story begins this way: “And after these things God tested Abraham.” Already, two things in this opening sentence are critical for understanding this story.
First, the word “God” here is Elohim. So it’s important to know that the original command to offer Isaac as a human sacrifice comes from the opaqueness of “Your Majesty,” Elohim. It doesn’t carry the mutuality of close relationship. It is not the personally revealed name of God, Yahweh.
Second, the Hebrew word we hear translated as “tested” (“God tested Abraham”) transliterated directly from Hebrew into English (without smoothing out the syntax) means “he probed.” In other words, Elohim is probing, searching, seeking to uncover something about Abraham that is not yet known for certain.
So, at the beginning of the story God is Elohim for Abraham and for God, something about Abraham remains unknown and is not fully understood yet. Since Genesis 12 these two have shared some ups and downs, but both are somewhat opaque to each other. This observation heightens the significance of the climax and resolution of the this incredible story.
Using the Hebrew names used for God, the climax of the story reads,
But the angel of [Yahweh] called to Abraham from heaven, “Abraham, Abraham!...do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him; for now I know that you fear [Elohim] since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.’”
The dramatic command from heaven to stop the violent sacrifice of Isaac comes by divine messenger not from Elohim but from Yahweh! What this means and why it is significant is open to interpretation, so let me offer my own suggestion.
The excruciating command of the dispassionate Elohim is dramatically interrupted and interceded for by the passionate Yahweh who shouts out in audible distress and compassion at what is happening: Abraham, stop! Stop what you are doing for me and in my name. This will not be the way. At that moment, the words spoken by Abraham to Isaac on the journey to Mt. Moriah are fulfilled: Yahweh himself provides a ram for a burnt offering and Abraham then names the place where this all happens The Lord Provides, to be even more literal with the Hebrew, Yahweh Sees.
In the midst of fulfilling a terrifyingly awful command to satisfy what he believes Elohim is capable of asking from him, Abraham is stopped by Yahweh who sees what Abraham’s faith is capable of doing – for good or for ill – and intervenes to stop him.
As the story is told in Hebrew, this intervention discloses the probing, searching Elohim to be, in fact, Yahweh. And something at once surprising and wonderful is revealed: “For now I know” says Yahweh, implying that God now knows something he did not know before – that he has probed, searched, and uncovered a fuller understanding of Abraham. To me it seems as though God is saying “I can work with faith like this!” AND “Rest assured, Abraham, this is not how I am going to use your faith in me.” When Yahweh realizes this, he is confident to reiterate the promise he gave Abraham at the beginning of their relationship:
“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 listen to my voice.”
I believe this Genesis story reveals a genuine development in the history of Abraham’s faith in God and, bold as it may sound, God’s faith in Abraham.
The event at Mt. Moriah – the place Abraham calls Yahweh Sees and Provides – is transformative in the history of God’s saving work in our world. Neither party walks away from that experience unchanged. God’s searching and Abraham’s listening give birth to a deeper mutual understanding, trust, friendship, and cooperation between Yahweh and Abraham that will channel the blessings of God throughout human history to Abraham’s descendants and to all the nations of the earth.
I can hear the Gospel of Christ in that. Can you?
The ministry of Jesus and the discipleship of we, his followers, depends on the courage of faith to explore the Otherness of God at work in the world, often through strangers and the strangeness of one another. Through our responsiveness, our willingness, to listen like Abraham for to the timely interruptions of God’s grace in the midst of our bewilderment, I believe the Living God who sees and provides will disclose himself to us – and we will be changed. In those encounters of grace we will be transformed by a mutual understanding, trust, friendship, and cooperation with God that will channel the blessings of Christ’s forgiveness and peace to all the world.
Colin+
Image Credit: Sacrifice of Isaac (1652-54) by Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669). Pen and ink on paper. Kupferstich-Kabinett, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden. Photo Herbert Boswank.
