Lent 3, Year A
February 24, 2008
G. Hendree Harrison, Jr.
St. Paul's Episcopal Church
God as Pet and Bully?
We have an abstract painting at my house. It was painted for Kristin and me by a friend and given to us as a wedding present. The painting is not of anything in particular, but to my eyes, there are a couple of discernible scenes emerging from the canvas.
On the right hand side of the painting, in heavy oil brush strokes, I see a bride in curves of white standing clutching a bouquet of flowers at the head of a gathered wedding congregation.
I also see in the painting, above the bride and a bit to the left, a group of tall and elegant buildings rising out of a tangle of brush strokes and color.
These two images, which are clear at least to my eyes, are relatively small as they are set against the large and stormy chaos of the rest of the painting.
This abstract painting, in which I see two discernible images in the midst of a colorful and confusing mess of oil on canvas, seems to me a good analogy for us on our journey to discern images of God.
Today is the third Sunday of this deep purple season of Lent, so we are about halfway to the festival surprise of Easter.
We have been plodding through Genesis as a Lenten discipline, and we have been looking for images of God along the way.
You remember that the first Sunday in Lent we looked at the Genesis garden scene, and we found an image of God who provides. Remember the wonderful scene in which God put clothes on Adam and Eve and covered over their shame and nakedness?
Last week, we turned our attention to Abraham who, in spite of his missteps and many mistakes, was chosen by God to father the faith family.
Those two stories and their attendant images are relatively easy to see and to wrap our minds around – like the bride and the buildings in my abstract painting. Those two stories picture God as gracious and faithful.
The God who clothes Adam and Eve and who is unconditionally faithful towards Abraham is a welcoming God, the sort of God whose arms you might want to climb into for comfort and security.
But this morning our focus shifts to the outer edges of the canvas into the more abstract portion of our portrait of God.
The image of God in today’s sacrifice scene is painted in heavy, hard to read strokes and God comes off looking stormy and chaotic.
God first called out Abraham’s name a while back in the twelfth chapter of Genesis. God told Abraham that he was going to change him into something altogether new.
He said, “Abraham, I intend to turn you into a blessing. In you all the families of the earth will be blessed.”
Abraham thought that sounded great so he went and he did what God called him to do.
Over the course of many chapters Abraham and God continued to talk. God called out Abraham’s name over and over again.
Abraham answered, “Here I am.”
And the two of them, Abraham and God, they had their ups and their downs but they made their way.
As you know, Abraham and his wife Sarah could not conceive a child, but God called out to them and promised them a son.
Sure enough, they had a son when they were very old and they gave him the name Isaac.
When Isaac was a boy, God called out to Abraham again.
He said, “Abraham!”
And Abraham answered back, “Here I am.”
That answer, “Here I am,” started Abraham down a dark, dark passageway. I wonder if he ever regretted saying, “Yes God, Here I am.”
You know the story.
God said, “Take your beloved son Isaac, bind him up and set him upon the altar. And then sacrifice the boy, take his life by the slicing blow of your knife and offer him up to me.”
At the last possible moment, as the knife is poised on the precipice of the downward death stroke, the angel of the Lord stays Father Abraham’s hand and the angel points to a ram caught by its horns in a briar bush.
And the angel said: “there now, well done, it was only a test. Look! God has provided a ram for the sacrifice. Untie the boy and take him down from the altar.”
And we, along with Abraham, are left breathless and with the bitter taste of adrenaline and bile in our mouths. And we wonder- who is this God? Who is this God who asks a parent to place a child upon the sacrificial altar?
This scene is markedly different from the clothing scene in the garden. This image of God looks different when held up against the image of the unconditionally faithful God.
So, what is the true image of God?
Is the true image of God the portrait of the stormy brooding God who tests Abraham’s faith with Isaac’s life? Or, is the true image of God the portrait of the tender Creator, who tailors clothes for his own first born son and daughter – Adam and Eve.
To put too much stock in either image is dangerous. If we spend too much time on the image we see of God tending to Adam and Eve– then God begins to look like a pet. He begins to look like my golden retriever, who at eighty pounds and with a mouth full of sharp canine teeth is potentially a dangerous beast to be around, but not to worry because in truth, he is harmless and he just wants to nuzzle his head into your lap.
God is not a pet.
On the other hand, if we spend too much time focused on the image we can see of God destroying Sodom and Gomorrah or testing Abraham in the sacrifice scene, then God begins to look like a punishing bully who tests and teases just because he can.
God is not a bully.
So, where does that leave us and what are we to make of the sacrifice scene?
To be honest, I don’t particularily like the story of Abraham putting the knife to Isaac. That story looks to me like a marred reflection of the God I know in Jesus Christ.
I guess I can stomach the story if I can take it on a very surface level, just as a dramatic Sunday school story of a superhero of faith, Father Abraham, acing an incredibly hard test and, therefore, becoming an iconic example for future generations. If that’s the point, then it becomes a kind of fairytale and I can handle fairytales.
But I don’t believe Abraham was a superhero and I don’t believe the story is a fairytale. I believe that the Abraham/Isaac story actually has roots that run deep into the stormy mystery of God and frankly, I don’t really understand it.
But I think it is an important story because it reminds me that God is not just a comfortable, comforting pet, tame like the family dog. And God is not just a justice-seeking parent who tests and taxes the faith of his children.
God is not just anything. (like the abstract painting, right?)
God is certainly not contained within the images we can discern and pull out of the abstract tapestry of this tumultuous life. God is enormous beyond imagining, and there are a lot of things about God that are unseen, unthinkable, and well out of our reach.
There are some things to learn and gain from the Abraham/Isaac story, but perhaps, the most important thing is to know is that this difficult story is not the last story.
Indeed, this Genesis tale is just the beginning of the story of God and the world he created.
We are near the half way mark in Lent. With this sacrifice story we are in sort of a low spot or a trough on our winding journey to Easter. We are in a low spot but the journey is not complete.
From this Lenten valley we will begin to climb towards another story about a Father and a Son, and death on a high place.
And like the Abraham/Isaac story, which does end with the son standing up and alive, the Easter scene we are headed towards has clear and discernible images of the God of life, and confounding, wonderfully abstract images too of the God of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.
As we move along our faith walk, a test for us lies in what we will do with our pictures of God. Will we snatch and grab the first image we can make out? So that we can cuddle up with a picture of God our gentle pet, or so that we can huddle up with the vengeful God who’s going to punish the people who disagree with us.
Or can we bear to hold all the images up to the light - each one reflecting off of the other ones - and then, take in the full picture that emerges of our life-giving and utterly mysterious God?