This is only a test

I had promised this post last week, and here it is.  I have been sidetracked by graduation, mother's day, baseball games and I could write a novel about the current personal conflict I am engaged in...it is truly novel worthy.  One day, one day.

The lectionary readings contained some good stuff today.  I can't always say that I could write, think or even comment on all of the readings.  But, I could today.  The Old Testament reading is from Genesis.  It is the story of the Abraham and Isaac.  One thing, I think everyday Christians like me tend to forget is to read the stories fromt the Hebrew bible with a different lens than we use for the Gospel narratives and the Epistles.   We tend, (I think), to interepert everything we read in the Old Testament from a post Easter perspective.  Sometimes it is helpful to look through other lenses.

 I would assume that the only text we ever read that is translated and older than a millenia, is the Bible.  And I wonder, do we ever stop and think about the otherness of that?  Unless you read Beauwolf or Homer's the Odyessy on a regular basis, we just don't read stuff that ancient, that has been translated a million times by people who are not indigenous to the original lanuguae. I think I was about sixteen or seventeen when it dawned on me that not one word of the Bible was written in English, much less the King's English.  Of course I knew the Hebrew Bible was written in Hebrew and the New Testament was written in Greek, but it never occured to me the otherness of the language of the Bible. The writers were in no way similair to me.  And given that I did not grow up in Judea, I did not even understand the geography and the culture was foreign. I have never touched a sheep much less tended to one.  I really do not understand tribal psychology and the only desert I have been to besides a spritual one is the beach.  I don't think that qualifies.  I do like pottery, and took a class once, but really don't understand the life of a potter.  I have never known a king and have only been in a synagogue about 12 times and then not on high holy days.  I grew up in the buckle of the bible belt south and sometimes I think Chrisitianity is so embedded in our culture, we find it difficult to imagine someone elses. 

Midrash invites us to search the Bible for what is unfamilair and unclear, and to wrestle with text, trusting that the God of the Bible will show up.  No one has read the Bible longer than our Jewish brothers and sisters.  It was their Bible before it was ours.  Judaism teaches that scripture is not a map pointing to to truth but a portion of truth itself.  It is to be tasted, digested into the mind, body and soul.  Judiasm believes that the world rests on three pillars:  worship, deeds and study.  Because study leads to the first two, study is most important.  The foundation of Judiasm is Torah.  I think Christianity has lost the meaning of the sacredness of the physical text itself.  In Judiasm, the physical text is sacred.  When small children are learning Torah, the verses are written in chalk covered with honey on a chalkboard and the children lick the words off.  It is not uncommon to see women lean in and kiss the scrolls in the synagogue.  The book itself can not be destroyed, even when it is worn out beyond repair, it is buried in a sacred cementary.  Christians may love their Bibles, but I find it regretable we have lost that sense of sacredness.  Just because Torah is the foundation does not make it dogma.  Torah is a story of relationship with God and it is dynamic.

Reading the story of Abraham and Isaac has always disturbed me before I discovered the power of midrash.  In this story, God tells Abraham to sacrifice Isaac.  Abraham does not question God, and when Isaac asks where is the lamb, Abraham puts the resposibilty squarely on God's shoulders.  He tells Isaac that God will provide.  Obviously, Abraham believed God could change his mind.  Obviously, Abraham was familair enough with God to converse.  My tradition did not allow for the possibilty that a relationship with God not only can be a struggle, but it also can leave me wounded.  God speaks, we speak and we hope God speaks again and provides a ram hidden in the bushes.  At the end of the story, God rewards Abraham for his obedience and I wonder how often are we willing to struggle with God and to test the limits.  God praises Abraham's obedience and as a result promises him a nation. 

God was testing Abraham and Abraham was testing God.  As I have grown older, I like the idea.  Life does not always provide answers and so it is with God.  Sometimes it is only test and perhaps the point is not whether or not we will pass the test, but will we even take it to begin with, not worrying about the outcome.  Perhaps what God really desires is for us never to cease conversation and to always ask the hard questions.  After all, it is only a test.