Following the readings assigned in the BCP during Epiphany involves
a descent into the subterranean depths of our religious tradition. For me, the
stories around Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar inhabit the same psychic territory as do
the most deeply embedded memories of early childhood, and the most recurrent
nightmares and paradigmatic dreams.
The vindictive and impulsive God who appears in these
stories does, nonetheless, prove to be a promise-keeper and loyal companion,
and does show signs of affinity for the underdog, the hospitable, the
compassionate, and the homeless. I don’t see how anyone can read these stories
and not see how our concept of “God” has evolved and developed, even if the One
who is the target of all our conceptualizing were to stay the same.
Abraham, however, comes across as a passive-aggressive wimp,
saved for posterity by his stubborn loyalty to his experience of God. Sarah’s
treatment of her maid, Hagar, and Hagar’s son Ishmael, is unpardonably cruel,
but at least Sarah had a sense of humor. Her name, we are told, means “she
laughed.” She seems to assert a more forceful presence in the stories than any
of the male figures, and Abraham and God both seemed scared of attracting her disapproval.
God’s agenda, it seems to me, is most clearly revealed in Ishmael’s
deliverance from dehydration in the desert, and also Isaac’s last-minute
reprieve from becoming a human sacrifice at Abraham’s hands. Abraham’s personal
issues do not disqualify him from serving as a patriarchal founder of God’s
holy people and role model for future generations of faithful screw-ups like
ourselves. Quite the opposite. A more consistently heroic figure would seem
less credible, and a lot more boring.
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