Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] I've got a long, troubled history with this strange little story from Genesis.
[00:00:10] Let me say right off the bat that I love Genesis.
[00:00:15] Not because it offers neat, easy answers to theological questions, or because it's a perfect guide for living in the 21st century, or because it is comforting, but for precisely the opposite reasons.
[00:00:34] Almost everything about the text that we call the Book of Genesis is troubling to me. And that's why I love it.
[00:00:44] This is the story of a three day journey to a mountain.
[00:00:48] It's a troubling story and one that's been nagging at me ever since the first time I heard it in Sunday school a long, long time ago.
[00:01:03] It scared the living daylights out of me then. And to be honest, I grew up in a very different tradition than the Episcopal Church that we find ourselves in today.
[00:01:17] And frankly, most everything I heard in that little church in Iowa scared me.
[00:01:25] Oh, there was comfort offered too. But the comfort that was offered by the promise that I was somehow saved, wretched sinner that I am, did not offset the fear that I was instilled with there.
[00:01:44] So after I was confirmed and given the option by my parents to either go to church or not, I chose not.
[00:01:56] For about three decades, except for weddings and funerals, I never set foot inside of a church again for fear of being re. Traumatized. I mean, I don't know. But then after another couple of decades, I find myself here today, ordained priest, wearing a collar, and given the opportunity to talk to you all about this terrible story of Abraham and Isaac and God.
[00:02:33] And this is still surprising to me, almost a decade in my life seems to run in decades. I don't quite know what that's all about, but I do want you to know that I'm grateful. Grateful to be a priest. Grateful for all of you and for this church, St. John's Church, which I love in this town that I love to call my home.
[00:02:58] And one thing I especially love about working here at St. John's is that every Tuesday morning we have a staff meeting.
[00:03:07] I've mentioned this before in sermons, I think.
[00:03:10] And to open the meeting, Jimmy always brings in a text and for us to read together and reflect upon as the way of starting the meeting.
[00:03:24] And last week he asked me if I wanted him to bring in this text, this binding of Isaac text. And I said, sure, because, you know, thinking, yeah, I might need some help here.
[00:03:42] So we read it and then Jimmy said what he always says after we've read it. How does this make you feel?
[00:03:51] A long silence, which turned into an even longer, more awkward silence.
[00:04:00] And not surprisingly, when somebody spoke up, nobody said, this story makes me feel good or happy or comforted or at peace.
[00:04:14] Everyone had a fairly negative reaction.
[00:04:20] Well, one person said that it evoked a feeling of awe in them, but I don't think that that was that light, joyful, playful awe that we all hope for.
[00:04:33] It was an awe that included some terror.
[00:04:39] And I don't know how any feeling person cannot be terrified by this story.
[00:04:47] Maybe that's part at least of the point of this story.
[00:04:52] And it was a lively conversation that we had, to say the least. And to wrap it up, Jimmy asked everyone to go around the room. We sit in a circle in these staff meetings and say the one thing that you would like to say to Brian, knowing that he was going to preach on this today.
[00:05:09] I was given some good feedback, some good advice, some not so good advice, some very helpful, lots of encouragement, some good luck.
[00:05:27] Jimmy simply said, I trust you.
[00:05:31] Which was comforting and a little bit challenging too.
[00:05:39] But the one comment, the one that intrigued me the most, was one sentence.
[00:05:46] Walk in their shoes.
[00:05:50] Whose shoes?
[00:05:53] Your shoes?
[00:05:54] The people that are receiving this today.
[00:05:58] Was it Abraham and Isaac's shoes that I should walk in?
[00:06:06] Well, thinking about walking in others shoes opened some space for me in this story, which was just what I needed because it's such a dense little conflicting story.
[00:06:20] And writing a sermon often feels like a solitary act, right? One person with one keyboard or legal pad in front of them working from within, trying to figure this out. But, you know, it's not really a solitary act.
[00:06:43] The writer, the preacher is always in conversation internally, an internal conversation with the tradition, with the culture, with their own education, with whatever resources they turn to, with the experiences that life has thrown them.
[00:07:04] And for some these days, a conversation with AI for me, every sermon I write, every poem that I write, and even every email that I write is a collaboration.
[00:07:19] It doesn't all just come from me.
[00:07:23] And it's good when the inspiration comes from another human being.
[00:07:28] Even better when it comes in a little cryptic or sideways.
[00:07:33] Because walk in their shoes reminded me of a day, a three day journey to a mountain that I took with my son Jack a few summers ago.
[00:07:49] Don't worry, I don't want to assure. I want to assure you that I had no intention of offering Jack up as a burnt offering to God on top of Gannett Peak.
[00:08:03] God had not told me to perform a horrific sacrifice of my son, my only son, the one whom I love.
[00:08:16] And had I thought that God had Told me that I would have said thanks, but no thanks.
[00:08:24] And I would have used much stronger language than that.
[00:08:29] And then I would have consulted a psychiatrist.
[00:08:35] But there were no psychiatrists in Abraham's day. And throughout the story, God spoke directly to Abraham, over and over and over again.
[00:08:47] And so if we're going to take this story seriously, which I should, which I think we should, we have to trust that God actually gave him this terrible directive.
[00:09:02] Jack and I were simply going to climb Gannett Peak.
[00:09:07] It's not an overly technical mountain, there's some glacier travel and it is the highest point in Wyoming. But the real challenge in climbing it, except for the mosquitoes who weren't terribly bad that year.
[00:09:22] The most challenging part of it is the approach.
[00:09:26] There's a long, long approach and the route that we took and given my abilities, it was a three day tre from the trailhead to the top of the mountain.
[00:09:45] So we, it started off with a bumpy pickup truck ride on a terrible dirt road across a portion of the Wind River Indian Reservation to the Cold Springs trailhead.
[00:10:01] And from there we hiked through a deep, dense lodge pole forest out into these open meadows which were just full of springs and water and greenery and flowers. We got to a point where a grizzly bear had rooted up these rocks looking for insects to eat this huge pile of bear scat right there. And continued up and up and up past Dinwiddie Peak where somewhat oddly in the middle of the day, there was a herd of cow elk feeding up there.
[00:10:40] Up and up and up to Scenic Pass where we caught the first glimpse of Gannett.
[00:10:50] And Gannett is a very imposing mountain. And from there we're still about a day and a half away from the summit.
[00:11:03] And I'll never forget seeing Gannett and thinking, oh my God, am I going to make it to the top of that mountain?
[00:11:15] And the closer we got, and the closer we got, the smaller and smaller my own confidence became.
[00:11:25] And the story of Abraham and Isaac and this memory of a three day journey to a mountain with my son, my only son, the one whom I love.
[00:11:41] And I'm going to pause the story for a moment here because I want to point out that Isaac was not Abraham's only son.
[00:11:52] Ishmael was also his son.
[00:11:55] And I also want to tell you that I have another son too who was not with me there, not with us there that day. His name's Adam.
[00:12:07] There are two sons missing from these two stories and that adds an element of awe and some sorrow.
[00:12:32] Abe and Isaac's journey and the memory of Jack's and my journey wove themselves together for me in some strange, mystical way.
[00:12:46] So I was imagining how Abraham must have felt trudging those miles for three days.
[00:12:56] I imagine that he wished the journey was taking him farther away from Mount Moriah rather than nearer.
[00:13:08] Imagine the gymnastics going on in Abraham's head that day.
[00:13:15] Was it really the voice of God?
[00:13:19] Why, oh, why did God demand this of me?
[00:13:25] Can I do this?
[00:13:27] Should I do this?
[00:13:29] What in God's name is going on here?
[00:13:34] Imagine the feeling in his gut as they grew nearer to the terrible mountain.
[00:13:40] Imagine telling the lads, his servants, the lie.
[00:13:46] Or was it a lie that we'll be right back?
[00:13:58] Imagine loading the wood for the pyre onto his son's back, taking into his own hands the cleaver and the fire contained in a clay jar and trudging to the summit.
[00:14:13] You can tell I have compassion for Abraham in this story, but only if I will it.
[00:14:22] I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt because the story doesn't really warranted. It doesn't tell us what's going on inside Abraham as he climbs the mountain with his son.
[00:14:35] And Abraham, who was kind of a trickster in the rest of his life and who argued with God at times, for instance, about the fate of Sodom, strangely never raised a question about killing his own son.
[00:14:56] The character that I have real compassion for in this story, Isaac, he's just a lad.
[00:15:08] What a beautiful, heartbreaking way to describe him by this translator.
[00:15:15] A lad.
[00:15:17] He's innocent.
[00:15:19] He's lied to by his father, his only father, the one whom he loves.
[00:15:26] In his innocence, he carries the wood up the mountain.
[00:15:31] Does he sense that something is very wrong when he questions, here is the fire and the wood, but where is the sheep for the offering?
[00:15:44] If he doubts his father's reply that God will provide the sheep, he can have no doubt as he watches Abraham build an altar out of stone.
[00:15:57] And that probably took a little while, his terror increasing as the wood is placed and he is bound by his father, laid upon the wood that he has carried and watches his father reach for the cleaver.
[00:16:16] My heart breaks for him every time I hear this story.
[00:16:22] And somehow I cannot find much solace in what happens next.
[00:16:32] It's a story that contains what we would rightly call today child abuse.
[00:16:40] And the abusers are the characters that we don't want to denigrate and we don't even want to question.
[00:16:51] Abraham, the father of the Jewish people.
[00:16:56] And most troublingly, God, whom We know to be loved.
[00:17:06] A helpless, innocent child is a pawn in a game.
[00:17:11] His parent, Abraham, Seems as much of a pawn in God's cosmic chess game.
[00:17:22] He is asked no, he is ordered to do the unimaginable, to kill his son, whom he loves, to offer him up as a burnt offering on a mountain.
[00:17:39] And Abraham, without question, puts God's plan into action.
[00:17:48] Of course, everything turns out all right at the end.
[00:17:54] God pulls a rabbit out of a hat, or rather places a sheep in a thicket, and Abraham is left off the hook.
[00:18:03] And Isaac, life is spared and a mountain is named Hallelujah.
[00:18:16] As far as I can tell, for me, anyway, there's no satisfactory resolution here.
[00:18:22] I'm left more disturbed than I was during all of that. Tension built in the calling, the journey, the building of the altar, the binding of Isaac, Abraham reaching for the cleaver.
[00:18:38] The only character I can find any compassion for in this story is Isaac.
[00:18:43] And my heart breaks for him every time I hear this.
[00:18:47] Imagine what his life must have been from that point on.
[00:18:54] Well, we know what his life was according to the story in Genesis anyway, he marries Rebecca.
[00:19:02] Their twin sons, Esau and Jacob, cause him heartache and trouble his whole life.
[00:19:11] In an ironic reversal in his old age, he is lied to and and duped by his son Jacob, as he had been lied to and traumatized by his father.
[00:19:26] Isaac is truly a tragic character.
[00:19:32] The third character in the story is God.
[00:19:36] Now, what are we to make of the God described in this story?
[00:19:44] I'll be honest with you.
[00:19:46] I don't know, and I'm not ashamed to say that. So I'm going to say it again.
[00:19:52] I don't know what to make of the God described in this story, and I'm okay with that.
[00:20:02] I come into this story with a Christian predisposition, and I'm certain, I am certain that God is love.
[00:20:13] I am also certain that sometimes God's love is hard for me to see in these stories.
[00:20:23] And I don't only mean in the stories from the Old Testament.
[00:20:28] Remember that God ultimately allows his own son to be sacrificed and did not lift a finger to stop that.
[00:20:40] Sometimes it's hard for me to see God's love in the world, and I have faith that it is here, in spite of evidence to the contrary.
[00:20:54] Somehow God's love is included in the story that we're reading and hearing in our hearts today.
[00:21:08] This is an ancient story passed down to us by scribes drawing on an oral tradition.
[00:21:19] And here we sit today with it.
[00:21:22] I imagine a group of Nomadic people sitting around a campfire at night in the desert, and their elder is telling them this story.
[00:21:36] They're leaning in, they're wrapped, fully invested in the story. And when the story ends, I imagine at least one of them turning to the other and whispering, what the heck?
[00:21:57] In closing, I went to a performance of the Contemporary Dance Wyoming's performance at the center on Friday night, and it was beautiful. I saw some of you there.
[00:22:12] As always, when I watch a modern dance production, I'm always a little confused, puzzled.
[00:22:24] What's going on here, right? And just before the final dance, which was called Protocols for a Beginning, Fran Romo, the director of Contemporary Dance Wyoming and the creator of the dance, came out to offer expressions of gratitude for her collaborators, the people who had designed the sets, the dancers. And then at the end, she thanked us, the audience, for being collaborators with all of them in this moment in time.
[00:23:07] And then she said something that made me go, aha.
[00:23:14] Abraham and Isaac.
[00:23:16] She said, as you're watching the performance of a modern dance, you're probably thinking, what does this mean?
[00:23:26] And if you can't come up with an answer, you're getting it right.
[00:23:33] So beloved, walk in their shoes, if you can, up that mountain with Abraham and Isaac, maybe even carry the fire in a clay jar and dance back down with them as they trudged together, just as Jack and I trudged back down from Gannett Peak together.
[00:24:01] We never once asked, what does this mean?
[00:24:06] Amen.
