February 28, 2010

Glynn Cardy

Lent 2     Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18

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Abraham is moaning to God. In Genesis 15 he is lamenting the lack of a male heir. Culturally this lack was huge. Without a male heir his name and his memory would not live on and his possessions, including his wife and slaves, would become the property of another. Previously his God [i] had promised Abraham progeny numerous as the stars of the sky and the sand of the sea. Yet now, chapters later, Abraham still sees no evidence that this will happen. 

The entire ancestral narrative from Genesis 12-25 is dominated by the question of an heir. Anxiety and doubt are frequently part of Abraham’s conversation with his God. Doubt and faith are not mutually exclusive but woven together. So too are failure and faith. Maybe that’s why this reading is set in Lent!?

To briefly summarize the succession saga in the forthcoming chapters: Abraham’s wife Sarah is past childbearing age. She therefore suggests, as was common in the Near East, Abraham has intercourse with her maid, the Egyptian slave-girl, Hagar. Hagar conceives and bears a son, Ishmael. Abraham is delighted. Sarah however is envious. ‘Hagar’, she moans to Abraham, ‘is treating me with contempt.’ Abraham tries to dodge the conflict: ‘She’s your slave!’ 

A number of years went by and then, according to the story, God decided to favour Sarah and she too conceived and bore a son. His name was Isaac. Sarah however was not content. She petitioned Abraham to cast out Hagar and his teenage son Ishmael into the desert, where they would surely perish. Abraham, though in grief at this situation, consults his God who seems to agree with Sarah – the child of the promise would be Isaac, not Ishmael. So Hagar and Ishmael are cast out, though later they are divinely rescued. This flip-flopping God who seems to want to ‘put a dollar each way’ saves them.

There are four interpretative keys we need to be aware of when reading this narrative. The first is ancient biology, the second patriarchal power, the third ‘texts of terror’, and the fourth are the fragments of God we find in Genesis.

In ancient times male sperm was considered to be ‘seed’ – namely what we would call a fertilised egg. The woman’s womb was merely a garden or incubator for the seed. All the chromosomes were thought to come from the male. So any child a man fathered, regardless of the status of the mother, was 100% genuine offspring. Abraham’s first-born son and heir therefore was Ishmael, not Isaac. To follow the directions of his God and his wife Sarah and to cast Ishmael out was to visit upon his rightful heir a huge injustice. No theological gloss by later editors can disguise this fact. Further, this injustice around inheritance would be perpetuated in generations to come causing huge distress and enmity. 

The second thing to understand is patriarchal power. Abraham and Sarah did not have a 21st century relationship of mutuality and equality. The patriarch ruled the clan. All slaves ultimately belonged to him. He had the power and responsibility.

So when Sarah moaned to him about Hagar’s behaviour Abraham had the authority to mediate a just solution, which he fails to do. Hagar is punished and Sarah’s envy is not bridled. Similarly after Isaac is born, when Sarah outrageously requests him to not only elevate her son to be heir but to cast out Ishmael into the desert Abraham needs to use his patriarchal authority to mediate what is best and uphold what is right. Again Abraham fails. He seems to emotionally freeze up and become incapable of exercising leadership. In a patriarchal world it is not fair to blame Sarah for what happened to Ishmael and Hagar. It was not Sarah’s decision. Her power, compared with the patriarch, was minimal. It was Abraham who failed. In casting out Ishmael he grievously wounded his heart, and his heart never recovered.

The phrase ‘texts of terror’ was coined by Phyllis Trible [ii] to describe the stories in the Bible that were thoroughly bad news for women. Not only were the women in these stories – and she uses four examples – victims of cruelty, but the text portrays God as either silent, absent, or assenting to the cruelty. In a similar way Philip Culbertson [iii] has written about texts of terror for men, including this example of Abraham, in response to the petitions of Sarah and apparent will of God, abandoning his firstborn son to a desert death. Abraham has argued with God before, arguing for compassion rather than punishment, [iv] yet here, when it is his son’s life at stake Abraham loses his steely backbone and succumbs to the pressures upon him.

Not everything in the Bible is written for the purpose of emulating. Not everything is of the mode: ‘Abraham did that and we should also’, or ‘God said that and we should obey it’. Some parts of the Bible are written as history, some as poetry, some as fables, some as salutary stories, some as visions… And some parts of the Bible are written for us to recognise injustice, its origins, the connivance of the powerful, and the culpability of the God involved. These stories invite our participation in making sure they are never emulated. To mistake a text of terror for a ‘go and do likewise’ narrative is not only to misread the Bible it is to repeat again the injustices of old.

So what is God in the Bible? Divinity in Genesis can be friendly and benevolent, but also terrifying and cruel. The attributes of divinity seem unable to be held with integrity within the concept of one God. Simply God cannot be loving and cruel, for the love would undermine the cruelty and the cruelty would undermine the love. Hence some authors talk about Gods in Genesis, including those named Yhwh, Elohim, and Al Shaddah. 

Karen Armstrong talks about Genesis offering us “glimpses of the divine which can only be fragmentary, imperfect, and coloured by the cultures’ experience of life’s inherent tragedy.” [v] I think God is, and yet more than, a cultural construct. Each culture and historical period tries to name and describe its individual and collective experiences with the spiritual. Each tries to name and describe their transcendent yet immanent experiences of divinity. 

Early Hebrew culture was no different. Although primogeniture [the first born male inheriting the power of the patriarch] was the norm, time and again it didn’t happen. Stories evolved to explain why it didn’t, and why God didn’t intervene to prevent what was unjust and destructive of patriarchal normality. Stories evolved to explain why the eventual heir, the winner if you like, became the winner. In God’s mouth was put the rationale of the winner. 

Yet also in these stories are hints that winning isn’t everything. Isaac, though heir, would a big loser for he never gained his father’s unconditional love and never learnt how to show and teach his own children such love. In the next generation Jacob, who tricked his first born brother Esau out of his inheritance, lives a conflicted life in a conflicted family, and then bequeaths it.

What is so likeable about Abraham is that time and again he questions the reasoning and integrity of God. This is how the Bible understands faith – not parroting some credal formulas – but courageously risking to question and probe, and to engage with the expanse of God. Abraham pushes at the boundaries of his culture’s experiences of God, and often crosses them.

Philip Culbertson points out the contemporary relevance of the Abraham and Ishmael story. There are many men and women who have, due mostly to divorce, two families with two sets of children. Their current spouse or former spouse tries to influence the relationships with your children – like Sarah did. You feel pressured, caught between the demands of these spouses and your feelings for your children. To give one set of children all your attention, for example, is to cause grievance to the other set. As for wills, legacies, etc there is the potential for much bitterness. The man or woman in this predicament is conflicted by a desire to express their love for all their children, to express their love for their current spouse, to do what is right and just, and to feel loved and rewarded in turn. There is significant potential for getting it wrong.

What I like about the Abraham saga is that the authors do not shy away from revealing not only their hero’s faith but also his failures. Abraham, in abdicating his patriarchal power to Sarah, in listening to his God instead of his heart, in doing what was expedient rather than what was right, grievously wronged his first born son Ishmael and seeded an enmity between the ancestors of Ishmael and Isaac that continues today. Abraham screwed up. He failed as a family man. He failed as a patriarch. He didn’t question the motives of the God he was listening to. His faith froze and he became a servant of circumstance.

Yet there is something wonderful about the biblical editors leaving all this for us to learn from. There is a message here that the faithful do fail, often with irrevocable consequences. The faithful do screw up, and usually the screw ups can’t be put right. Spiritual growth is all about stepping out, risking uncertainty, putting a foot wrong in the attempt to put a foot forward. As Joy Cowley says “People who don’t make mistakes don’t make anything.” If Abraham had stayed safe at home in Ur, with the Gods he knew, none of this would have probably happened. But he didn’t. He took a risk. A series of risks, compelled by his understanding of God – fragmentary though that was. He risked being wounded, and he was wounded… in the heart. A life of faith and a wounded heart often companion each other on the spiritual quest.

[i] Genesis 12

[ii] Texts of Terror: Literary-Feminist Readings of Biblical Narratives, Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984.

[iii] New Adam: The future of male spirituality, Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1992.

[iv] Genesis 18:22-33

[v] Armstrong, K. In The Beginning: A new reading of the Book of Genesis, London : HarperCollins, 1998, p.68.