Vulnerable or Victim?

Vulnerable or Victim?
Genesis 22

Genesis 22 feels like it’s too much. Can’t go there. Can’t read about a father being asked to sacrifice his own son.

Yet barely into the biblical record and God commands Abraham to sacrifice his only son, Isaac on a fiery altar. Why put this in the Bible?

I agree with Old Testament professor Ellen Davis, that vulnerability opens our eyes to the meaning of this passage. Ellen Davis says, “The capacity to be wounded even unto death, wounded precisely for the sake of being in intimate relationship with the other – that is what binds Israel to God and God to Israel, to us.”

In our country today, we are much more adept at playing the victim. If Christianity has a future in America, we will have to stop pretending we are victims and become vulnerable servants of a cross-bearing suffering, sacrificing, loving Savior. The road to Mt. Moriah, in Christian retrospect, is the road to Mt. Calvary. Abraham paved the way, but it makes us nervous and uneasy.

Sacrifice doesn’t much interest us even though we are less than a century removed from 405,000 Americans dying in WWII. 1.4 million Americans died in our wars. 58,000 in Vietnam. But sacrifice, even for the nation, makes us squeamish.

When people refuse vulnerability, they usually become defensive and paranoid. They long for the good old days. Church people become overwhelmed with feelings of being ignored, feeling tired, feeling conflicted, feeling trapped, and feeling besieged (See R. Hart, Trump and Us). These emotions feed the victim trap. Victimization floats through our land suggesting that people should be perceived as victims of the culture, the government, the system, or unseen powerful enemies.

Vulnerability has been replaced by victimization. Victimization thrives on the idea of scarcity. People fight over the pie as if they can’t trust the generosity of God. Have we so soon forgotten that God provides manna in the wilderness. Life does not revolve around scarcity; life produces generosity.

Commanded to choose vulnerability, I fear we have chosen victimization and self-preservation. I am not sure that we still take God seriously. We take talking about God and theology seriously. We are always discussing something. Soren Kierkegaard claimed that all our discussions do immeasurable harm. We concoct a fortification of excuses and escapes; “for there is always something one has to look into first of all, and it always seems to know one had first of all to have the doctrine in perfect form before one can begin to live – that is to say, one never lives.”

People believe they have been disenfranchised by a social order that strips economic and political power from one group to give unfair advantages to women and minorities.

“[W]hen one lives a life of entitlement, even the most modest demands for equality can be perceived as an assault.” People believe they have been left behind and left out of everyone else’s rights movement. This leads to people thinking they are persecuted and wounded but proud. It produces a melancholia that has nothing in common with Christianity (See Evin Groundwater, QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF SPEECH2021, VOL. 107, NO. 3, 365-368 for review of Apocalypse Man: The Death Drive and the Rhetoric of White Masculine Victimhood: by Casey Ryan Kelly).

This inclination to be a victim, to feel left out, defines too many Americans. During the Civil Rights movement, when Dr. King was leading the way, a fellow African American pastor said, “He’s got everything, on the cover page of Time magazine. Every time I open the newspaper he’s in it. Every time I turn on the television he’s on it. Give us something.” (Gilbert, Kenyatta R. A Pursued Justice).

It’s not about what you get but about what you are willing to give. Life doesn’t consist of our gains, but our losses. Power corrupts; suffering love saves. Instead of toying around with the idea that we are somehow victims, let’s see if we can wrap our minds around the Christian notion of vulnerability.

Who are the people on whose behalf we will make sacrifices? Make a list.

Jesus has a list: The hungry, the thirsty, the strangers, the naked, the sick, and the prisoners. The Bible has a list: widows, orphans, and immigrants. Isaiah has a list for the people of God. “Surely he has borne our infirmities
and carried our diseases;
yet we accounted him stricken,
struck down by God, and afflicted.
But he was wounded for our transgressions,
crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the punishment that made us whole,
and by his bruises we are healed.”

God has a list: The oppressed, the enslaved, the downtrodden. Do we have a list?

I watched a video of a leopard attempting to kill a pair of baby porcupines. The mama and daddy worked together like a well-drilled defense team to protect their babies from the leopard. They moved when the leopard moved. Footwork is so important for defenders in sports; well in life and death situations, it’s everything. The leopard received a nose full of quills for his trouble and finally gave up the fight. Mama and Papa porcupine were prepared to die for their babies. They didn’t have time to feel like victims.

Let’s consider the Christian alternative: Vulnerability. If we no longer recognize the cross as the symbol of how we are to live, the Christianity we claim is not in fact Christian. Let’s join Abraham, God, and Isaac on the Mount Moriah Road. Abraham becomes vulnerable.

The Orthodox Jewish theologian, Eliezer Berkovits, With God in Hell, imagines Abraham talking to God about the command to sacrifice Isaac:

“In this situation I do not understand you. Your behavior violates our covenant; still, I trust you because it is you, because it is you and me, because it is us. I have known you, my God. You have loved me and I love you. My God, you are breaking your word to me. What is one to think of you! Yet, I trust you; I trust you.”

God and Abraham are intimates. They know each other. They have chosen to make life together, for better for worse.

“Here I am!” That sums up the vulnerability of Abraham.

Here I am
Here I am, with you still;
Here I am, trusting you.
“O Lord, in you I have trusted;
Let me never be confounded.” (From the Suffrages for Morning Prayer, The Book of Common Prayer, 55; c.f., Psalm 25:2).

Then there’s God’s vulnerability. Our images of God often don’t make enough room for God’s vulnerable status in the relationship.  Go back to Genesis 6:6 – “And the Lord was sorry that he had made humans on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart.” God has been wounded, over and over again, by acts of unfaithfulness, disobedience, and idolatry. God is hurt by our inattentiveness, our heedlessness, our unfaithfulness.

God needs to have faith in Abraham as much as Abraham needs to have faith in God. Only a wounded God, badly burned by humankind and desperate to trust again, would ask of Abraham the life of his son.

Abraham, like us, was not above looking out for his own interests. Remember that time when Abraham lied and said Sarah was his sister, and Sarah ended up in royal harems. Abraham did it because he didn’t trust God enough. He wasn’t sure God would pull them through.

God has staked everything on his relationship with Abraham and on his child of promise. Rowan Williams reminds us that God is so trustworthy that God, stuck with sinful, stupid people time after time, demonstrates steadfast mercy and love.

An American playwright tells of how his Jewish parents scrimped and saved to give him everything. They bought him new clothes three times a year, bundled him off to private schools, paid for his college education. “Everything we got’s wrapped up in you, boy!” his mother used to say. “Everything we got’s wrapped up in you.” How easy it is to focus our hopes. God gives us a land to live in and, before you know it, we’re chanting, “Everything we’ve got is wrapped up in you, America!” Or a church to belong to: “Everything we’ve got is wrapped up in you, Presbyterian Church!” Listen, Isaac was more than an only child. Isaac embodied the promises of God. “Everything we got’s wrapped up in you, boy.” Isaac was hope, all the hope in the world. (David Buttrick. Homiletic Moves and Structures). Everything, for God, is riding on the faithfulness of Abraham.

If Abraham holds back anything at all from God, if he is less than wholehearted toward God, it’s all over. This is what the horrible test is about. The rabbis say that God didn’t command Abraham to kill Isaac. Instead, they translate the Hebrew as “Please, Abraham, take please, take, I beg you, your son.” It’s an invitation to a life of complete trust. And when God stops the killing of Isaac, God’s gratitude is unmistakable. “Now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.”

“Now I know.” God had to know about Abraham and could not know for sure any other way. God always needs to know about us and our wholeheartedness, our willingness to be vulnerable, our willingness to trust with all our heart and mind. Will God find us trustworthy? That is the story for today.