of his son, calling the place where this all happened, “The LORD will provide,” as if to say, “The LORD, and not merely God, will provide.” At the peak of the story, at the watershed moment when Isaac’s life is spared and the LORD’s promise to Abraham moves evermore toward fulfillment, the deity’s referent changes from “God” to “the LORD.”
Why?
There are two ways in the Hebrew Bible by which the deity is named. El and its many variants (El Shaddai, Elohim, El Olam, etc.) is the more generic term, most often translated “God” and used in reference both to the God of the Israelites and the gods of other peoples. The other is an unpronounceable name referred to as the tetragrammaton, meaning a word having four letters, these being YHWH. This is the name that Moses heard uttered from the burning bush when he asked it, “Whom shall I say sent me?” It’s rendered in English, “I Am,” or alternatively, “I Am that I Am,” or, “I Am that I Shall Be,” or “I Am that Is.” It’s been turned into a name that can be pronounced, Yahweh, or this earlier version, Jehovah, or this most common among English Bibles, printed in capital letters, “the LORD.” But here’s the crucial point about “the LORD”—that the only god ever called the LORD is Israel’s God, which is to say Jesus’ God, which is to say our God. The only God ever called the LORD is the God known to us in the life, death, and resurrection of Christ.
This is a god who upsets social convention, preferring instead the freedom of eternal life.
This is a god who breaks down human culture, preferring instead the Kingdom of Heaven.
Standing in contrast to all those countless gods of human assuming and arranging—the primitive gods of human sacrifice and sacred violence, the political gods of imperialism and authoritarianism, the contemporary gods of capitalism and militarism and consumerism—the LORD is a God sovereign over all, casting in full relief the falseness of these functional gods and promising that, though what is will fall away, what abides is absolute blessing for all.
Calling to us from beyond the boundaries of the world as we know it—boundaries of what’s expected and appropriate, what’s customary and conventional, what’s a given and taken for granted and accepted as just the way things are—the LORD is a God who goes ever before us, leading us out of what we think we know is true and into the realm we know only in our hope and our imagination, where the rule is love, the dynamic is redemption that nothing is lost, the aim is reconciliation that all might be one, and the end is life free of death, life that has no end.
Much has been made of Abraham’s obedience—or rather much is made of it in certain circles. In other circles, though, obedience would be the last posture in life worthy of amazement and admiration. In some circles, obedience is considered worthy only of derision. Originality: this is what’s worthy of praise. Self-determined originality: this has value these days; this is a primary objective. Self-made men. Self-actualized women. Expressive teenagers. Children who’ve found their “passion.”
I was a teacher of high school English students for a short while. I remember writing assignments in which students struggled after originality. It was either the content of the papers, or their form. How to be original? Writing backwards, capitalizing only the improper nouns, appropriating punctuation (but hadn’t e. e. cummings already done that?). How to be original? It caused no small amount of angst. In fact, in a couple cases it caused a great deal of angst, troubling these two teenagers whom I have in mind, troubling these who were already quite troubled. Evidence of the struggle was indeed the last paper one girl handed in before committing suicide that weekend. And, though I doubt it was a straight line, though I doubt that her recognizing herself as at least somewhat derivative is what suddenly made life too difficult to take, I do think there’s something here to explore. I do think the pressure to be original is real.
Poet Mary Oliver is known in a most beloved poem, “Wild Geese,” for assuring people of our need not to be good, merely to be. She likely meant to comfort with this. If comforting, though, it would mostly be so to people raised on a steady diet of obedience. My offering for these latter days, for those brought up to find their passion, is this: “You don’t have to be original.” Indeed, I don’t think you can be. I think none of us can be wholly original (though each of us is certainly unique). And it’s this: it’s this that made me so very sad in the wake of the girl’s death. This is what had me so stricken—my own conviction that everyone obeys someone, everyone obeys something, that this isn’t some failure to be self-determined but is simply the way things are, the way we are. The questions, then, for us are: What do we obey? Whom do we obey?
This story of Abraham and Isaac in the land of Moriah seems difficult because of that first dreaded command (“Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love”). But what actually makes it difficult, challenging, urgently challenging, is the fact of the second command—for this would have us search ourselves as to whether we’re listening to the right voice in life and obeying the right commands.
There’s an irony here. The voice we’re to listen to, the commands we’re to obey, would have us question so many of our conventions, defy so many of our habits and ways of life. The voice we’re to listen to, the commands we’re to obey, would have us recognize our assumptions for what they are, and would have us bring them into the light so we can discern and decide whether they’re true and therefore worthy of our obedience, or not.
Obedience as defiance, obedience as pushing forward and outward, finding some new way—who knew church could invite such adventure? Why, even the kids might want to get with this.
Thanks be to the Lord.
Religious but Not Spiritual
Who is wise and understanding among you? Show by your good life that your works are done with gentleness born of wisdom. But if you have bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not be boastful and false to the truth. Such wisdom does not come down from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, devilish. For where there is envy and selfish ambition, there will also be disorder and wickedness of every kind. But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy. And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace for those who make peace. Those conflicts and disputes among you, where do they come from? Do they not come from your cravings that are at war within you? You want something and do not have it; so you commit murder. And you covet something and cannot obtain it; so you engage in disputes and conflicts. You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, in order to spend what you get on your pleasures. (James 3:13–4:3)
They went on from there and passed through Galilee. He did not want anyone to know it; for he was teaching his disciples, saying to them, “The Son of Man is to be betrayed into human hands, and they will kill him, and three days after being killed, he will rise again.” But they did not understand what he was saying and were afraid to ask him.
Then they came to Capernaum; and when he was in the house he asked them, “What were you arguing about on the way?” But they were silent, for on the way they had argued with one another about who was the greatest. (Mark 9:30–34)
I like the letter of James. It was Martin Luther who had a problem with it. He called it an “epistle of straw”—which I suppose is true enough. He claimed there was too little of Christ crucified in it—which I suppose is true enough. Words of wisdom, words of common sense: okay, it’s not profound, but it is useful. Placed more in the Old Testament tradition of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, the Letter of James meant to make clear the sort of attitudes and behavior entailed in living a Christian life, which it does quite well, beautifully, in fact. Preacher Will Willimon has said that reading the book of Proverbs is like taking a long road trip with your mother.11
