THE RAM IN THE THICKET

Abraham's sacrifice, Rembrandt van Rijn, 1655 

https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/search/objects?q=sacrifice+of+isaac&p=1&ps=12&st=Objects&ii=5#/RP-P-1962-14,5

God put Abraham to the test, saying to him, “Abraham.” He answered, “Here I am.” “Take your son, your favored one, the one whom you love, Isaac, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the heights that I will point out to you.” (Genesis 22:1-2)

As it happens, God acknowledges Abraham’s faithful obedience, and an angel stays his hand before he can slay his son. He spots a ram in a thicket, and offers that instead. 

Listening to the story from Genesis (22:1-19), of the Binding of Isaac, we may wonder: what was Abraham thinking? Where did he get the idea that he should sacrifice his son? That God would want that? What kind of a god would ask this? What kind of a father would think to do it? Does the last-minute substitution of a ram make it OK?

The surrounding cultures, as I understand it, worshiped gods who did indeed require human sacrifice – just as much as the god of the Aztecs did. The cult of Moloch demanded the burnt offering of the firstborn son. Somehow Abraham got into his head the idea that this may be required even of him – that the God who has led him to the promised land, has given him his son, has promised him uncounted progeny – that somehow this is the same god.

All the way up the mountain, Abraham kept faith with God. Believing in the promise he somehow continued to expect the impossible. He laid the firewood on Isaac’s back – like requiring a man to carry his own cross – saying, “God himself will provide the lamb.”

Not knowing what would happen, in the fear of God he bound his son, and took up the knife. The angel stayed Abraham’s hand, and showed him the ram in the thicket. I think there is more going on here than the substitution of a sheep for a man.

God did not require the death of Isaac. He required his life – that is, that Isaac and all the future and the hope that he represents, belongs to God, not Abraham. This life is not a life to be grasped onto but to be freely accepted as a gift from the willing hand of God.

Abraham responds to God’s call in faith, in obedience, yielding all claim to ownership to what is most precious to him – the promise, the future and the hope embodied in Isaac – and he dedicates that beloved Child to God, to God’s purpose, not his own. 

And it is through the efficacy of this obedience, this act of faith, that Abraham becomes the father of nations – not through heredity but through faith in the love of God. 

And it is this faith that gives him descendants innumerable. “I will shower blessings on you, I will make your descendants as many as the stars of heaven and the grains of sand on the seashore.” (Genesis 22.17)

Abraham chose obedience. Through his radical obedience, Abraham became the father of our faith, the exemplar of total trust in God.

What he was required to yield up, that which was most precious to him, what had to be relinquished to God when God required it, was Isaac’s life – not his death, but his life. The future and the hope that Isaac represented were not for Abraham to own and to master, but for him to trust in God to provide, just as he provided the ram in the thicket on the mount that came to be called, “God provides”.

When he set his face toward Jerusalem, Jesus began to teach his disciples that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, be rejected, and be killed, and after three days rise again. Jesus chose obedience – he lay his own life down, that very life that was to become the first fruits of the resurrection. Life is not to be grasped to oneself, but to be freely offered in obedience to God. Jesus did not give just his death to God; he gave his life – a life of integrity, of witness, of proclamation. He took up his cross rather than live a life of self-protection.

Jesus kept faith with God, proclaiming in word and deed the reign of God’s love, of justice, peace, and forgiveness. He embodied the fullness and image of God’s compassion and love for humankind. Just as Abraham traveled to a distant land ready to sacrifice his beloved son, so Jesus, knowing full well that it might cost his life, traveled up to Jerusalem to give witness to the reign of God.

He took up his cross rather than living a life of self-protection. We participate in the life of Christ, in the proclamation of the kingdom. We receive the life he continues to give to us. By his life we live. His life makes it possible for us to live faithfully, in radical obedience to God, with a future and a hope. 

To live in faith is costly; God asks a lot of us. Life is full of frightening and painful and hard things. We have this consolation, that Jesus went through this already and goes through this with us –we are not alone, and death is not the end of the story. 

No place we are ever asked to go – no height nor depth, no hardship or distress, no persecution or famine, no epidemic, no war - can take us away from the love of God. He has been there already. He is there with us. And he will bring us through to the other side. No other thing is required. God’s mercy is full and complete. He takes us from the broken places to wholeness, from the darkness into light; we were lost and are found.

Genesis 22:1-14

A version of this meditation appeared in the Arizona Daily Star, July 2, 2023, under the heading “God will bring you through" and online as "God will bring you through to wholeness." https://tucson.com/life-entertainment/local/faith-values/god-will-bring-you-through-to-wholeness/article_6c0ee3c4-1438-11ee-87ab-9fbfdae51b50.html

The Sacrifice of Isaac, anonymous. c. 1540 - c. 1550

https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/search/objects?q=sacrifice+of+isaac&p=1&ps=12&st=Objects&ii=0#/BK-1953-18,0

beloved

 If you are the Son of God…

How does Jesus deal with this challenge to his identity, security, faith? his place in the Father’s heart? By recalling the words of God by which he lives. 

 “You are my beloved Son.” You are God’s beloved child. 

Nothing can break that bond. 

And from that bond comes the good news for all of us. For we are God’s beloved children too.

There are lots of good commentaries that talk about the temptations: to satisfy immediate self-interest, to display power, to sell out for the illusion of power over others. 

There are fewer that focus on what Jesus said. But after all, all those Bibles with the Words of Christ in Red feature what Jesus said. And what Jesus said is what turns this around, night into day, and transforms, potentially, us. 

One does not live by bread alone,

  but by every word that comes from the mouth of God. (Matthew 4:4)

Jesus reminds us that we are dependent on God, not our own merits or powers. We are not dependent on material things. Difficult as it may be to live without our daily ration of what we daily need, someday we will not have that ration, maybe for a day, a fast day or a day without, but the day will also come when we will not have it forever. Ash Wednesday, and Lent, are about more than temporary deprivation, hard as that may be, or voluntary abstinence. The fast of Lent is about more than that. It is about the inevitability of death.

And it is about Life. The fast of Lent does not end on Good Friday, with Jesus’ death. It does not end on Holy Saturday, with his body entombed below a stone. It ends with Easter. It ends in life. It ends in the resurrection, the hope of resurrection for all people, that began on the third day after Jesus’ execution.

Death is not the winner. But we need to take account of what happens before eternal life begins. 

In this world, in this life, there is plenty of death and pain to go around. We do not need much reminding of that. But we do need to remember that we are not dependent on this world’s bounty, this life’s abundance; we are dependent on God alone, and his Word, his Word who is Jesus.

***

When he spoke at a preaching conference in San Francisco, Desmond Tutu said that a preacher has one sermon. His was: God loves you. But the implications were tremendous.

One sermon. And I recall the words of Jesus, in response to the first temptation:

One does not live by bread alone,

  but by every word that comes from the mouth of God. (Matthew 4:4)

And then I recall the context. Jesus had been fasting, in the desert, for forty days. 

What do we live by? Bread certainly. But much more so the words that come from God.

And I recall what Jesus heard, ringing in his ears, just before the Spirit led him on that forty-day fast. 

“This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”

These were the words that came from the mouth of God, the words that Jesus had forefront in his mind.

God loves you. Loves you like his own beloved child.

Sometimes in the past I’ve given my own one sermon: You are the beloved child of God.

And the implications are tremendous.

If you are God’s beloved child, and I am, and all of us are, even people we haven’t met, then how we treat each other - even people far away whom we’ve never met and never will - is of paramount importance. 

Everything we do comes after God’s loving action in making us, redeeming us, making us his own delight, his own joy. 

The Rev. Dr. John Leech is a priest associate at the Episcopal Church of Saint Matthew, Tucson.

A version of this essay appeared in the Arizona Daily Star, March 12th 2023, under the title,
“Treat each other as children of God.” https://tucson.com/lifestyles/faith-and-values/treat-each-other-as-children-of-god/article_1a53b1ba-bc3e-11ed-b858-f71d6358bd36.html

Ahaz

Isaiah 7:10-16 (Common English Bible)

Again the Lord spoke to Ahaz: “Ask a sign from the Lord your God. Make it as deep as the grave or as high as heaven.” But Ahaz said, “I won’t ask; I won’t test the Lord.” Then Isaiah said, “Listen, house of David! Isn’t it enough for you to be tiresome for people that you are also tiresome before my God? Therefore, the Lord will give you a sign. The young woman is pregnant and is about to give birth to a son, and she will name him Immanuel. He will eat butter and honey, and learn to reject evil and choose good. Before the boy learns to reject evil and choose good, the land of the two kings you dread will be abandoned.

These days if you are out in a boat on the sea of Galilee you may be buzzed by a C-130, (“reminding you who’s boss”, as one of my fellow pilgrims said in January 2015), or if you are in the small hill town of Nazareth by an F-16. Back in Joseph’s day when Zebedee was out on the lake with his two small boys, James and John, teaching them to mind the nets and watch the currents, and when Joseph was using his hands to hew a piece of furniture for a neighbor or build a wall for the nearby new town of Caesarea Philippi, there were no airplanes. There were, however, powerful forces that you could not ignore. 

And that had been true before, and Joseph knew it. In the time of Isaiah the prophet, when Ahaz was king in Jerusalem, the powerful forces that threatened were from the north, the then kingdom of Assyria, and trouble was brewing. Joseph would have known about this, perhaps, and then he would have known about the prophecy that Isaiah gave to his king. Ahaz was probably trembling in his boots - or sandals - knowing much larger kingdoms were arrayed against him, threatening his little hilltop capital. And he would have hoped, as Will Willimon puts it, for an army. But that is not what the Lord sent him. 

And that is not what the Lord sent Joseph, in his day. Joseph lived in the time of Roman occupation and Roman overlordship. Sure, there might have been a king in Jerusalem - but he was Caesar’s buddy Herod. And Caesar had troops handy, as close as Damascus, or closer, to back up Herod. 

So what did the Lord send Ahaz, trembling in his boots, looking to the hills, wondering from whence his help would come? No army. No present help at all, but a promise: a hope. A baby. For behold, a virgin shall bear a child. And that child shall be called “God with us”. 

Linger on that for a moment. Take a break from the threat, the lowering clouds. God with us. That is a promise. That is what the people of God always looked for, always look for: the presence of God among us. That is where salvation lies.

And that is what Isaiah the prophet promised his king. God is with us. And in yet a little while, the threat you fear shall be gone, as certain as the summer sun melts the snow. “Before the child shall know to refuse the evil, and choose the good,” the threat you worry about will be past.

Joseph may have known this. Of course he knew the rest of history and he knew that history was not over. There was a more modern threat in his time, one more systematic, organized. It was the hegemony of an empire that lasted a thousand years. Rome. (Add another thousand, if you count Constantinople.)

And it was not to be turned over lightly. (Indeed, it was to be changed.) 

But there was that promise again. A young woman, a girl, shall conceive and bear a child.

It sounds so passive. All Joseph had to do was wait, right? The summer sun would melt the snow, the oppressive occupiers would fade away, and all would be well.

Not so fast.

And not so easy.

The kingdoms that Isaiah faced, and the empire that Joseph faced, did not disappear with only a promise. Joseph had a hand in what happened next. He took on the challenge. He was not passive, but powerful, with the power only a pair of hands that shaped a future could hold. 

He did not merely accept a promise, and an unwanted challenge, he rose to take them in those work-worn hands of his, and made a future, and made a family. With the family God gave him, he made a future. A future not only for them but for Israel, for the whole people of God.

****

A version of this article, entitled "Look for the presence of God", was published in the Keeping the Faith feature of the Arizona Daily Star, Sunday, December 25, 2022.

https://tucson.com/lifestyles/faith-and-values/look-for-the-presence-of-god/article_5d25ab5c-8079-11ed-8162-bfebc05400f5.html

_______

1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Caesarea Philippi: CAESAREA PHILIPPI, the name of a town 95 miles N. of Jerusalem, 35 miles S.W. from Damascus, 1150 ft. above the sea, on the south base of Hermon, and at an important source of the Jordan. It does not certainly appear in the Old Testament history, though identifications with Baal-Gad and (less certainly) with Laish (Dan) have been proposed. It was certainly a place of great sanctity from very early times, and when foreign religious influences intruded upon Palestine, the cult of its local numen gave place to the worship of Pan, to whom was dedicated the cave in which the copious spring feeding the Jordan arises. It was long known as Panium or Panias, a name that has survived in the modern Banias. When Herod the Great received the territory from Augustus, 20 B.C., he erected here a temple in honor of his patron; but the re-foundation of the town is due to his son, Philip the Tetrarch, who here erected a city which he named Caesarea in honor of Tiberius, adding Philippi to immortalize his own name and to distinguish his city from the similarly-named city founded by his father on the sea-coast. Here Christ gave His charge to Peter (Matt. xvi. 13). Many Greek inscriptions have been found here, some referring to the shrine. Agrippa II. changed the name to Neronias, but this name endured but a short while. Titus here exhibited gladiatorial shows to celebrate the capture of Jerusalem. The Crusaders took the city in 1130, and lost it to the Moslems in 1165. Banias is a poor village inhabited by about 350 Moslems; all round it are gardens of fruit-trees. It is well watered and fertile. There are not many remains of the Roman city above ground. The Crusaders’ castle of Subeibeh, one of the finest in Palestine, occupies the summit of a conical hill above the village.

PEOPLE NEED WATER

Arizona legislators did a good and notable thing this summer. They passed a good water bill (HB2873) and a bi-partisan budget. The legislation includes substantial funding for conservation projects along with generous funding for long-term projects (desalinization, transporting water from water-rich areas, etc.). 

Looking at what legislators accomplished, sometimes working into late nights at the end of their session, one can be excused for expressing gratitude at the progress being made.

This is not a completely popular sentiment. It is easy to say “too little, too late,” or, conversely, “none at all is too much.” Progress comes like that; in small  pieces, easy to spit out or to digest. 

We can be grateful for what has been accomplished, not because it is enough, but because it is not nothing, is a step forward, and not a start down the road to cynicism or the peddling of desperation.

In the course of coming to terms with annual budget factors, the legislators negotiated $200 million from federal American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds for water conservation projects, including $20 million dedicated to Tribes; increased funding $3 million over last year’s budget for Arizona Department of Environmental Quality (ADEQ) to establish rules for drinking water quality; and allocated $30 million for state Department of Agriculture water-efficiency programs.

The $200m conservation fund can be used immediately, not only for education and research, but for rainwater harvesting, gray water systems, efficiency upgrades, and drought-resistant landscaping.

For those of us whose checklist includes clothes closet, food pantry, soup kitchen; compost heap and recycling bins; rain catchment basins and barrels; solar panels and storage batteries; xeriscaping and community gardens; heat respite shelters; and other mitigation and climate-responsible practices, this can only come as good news. 

Not great news, not everything any particular person or group wanted, but a lot nevertheless, and representing a practical agreement between people of different interests and backgrounds. 

Politics is the art of the possible, much as we hate to say it; politics involves listening to and working with people we might rather be shouting at, dissing from a distance, or simply ignoring. And that means the work of imaginative charity, of putting ourselves in the same room as people with different voices and concerns.

It’s a step forward and worth recognition. Hard work, under pressure, but with results. Bravo.

What next? We need to work together on protecting against over-pumping of groundwater in rural areas of the state, management throughout the state - perhaps including a new form of active management area for rural contexts, environment impact review of water projects, and rethinking ecosystem and water dependent crops (including thirsty alfalfa and other export crops).

As a local resident, I'm concerned with conservation and water resources. As an Episcopal priest, I serve on the creation care council of the diocese of Arizona.

John Leech

Foothills

9/5/22 submitted to the Arizona Daily Star as a guest opinion.

“Far From Perfect, But Historic Bi-Partisan Budget Contains Significant Democratic Wins for Arizona”, Arizona House Democrats, press release July 1, 2022. www.azhousedemocrats.com

This opinion piece was published in the Arizona Daily Star on Wednesday September 7th 2022, A6, under the title, "Diligent legislators took good first step on water" and online as "Local Opinion: Legislators took good first step on water." 

https://tucson.com/opinion/local/local-opinion-legislators-took-good-first-step-on-water/article_41b46384-2dfb-11ed-8b13-ab476e634855.html

Kingdom in its Fullness

Peaceable Kingdom.

Edward Hicks, ca. 1834, public domain.

https://www.nga.gov/collection/art-object-page.59908.html

Keeping the Faith: Kingdom in its Fullness

Jesus’ disciple asked, “Teach us to pray.” He responded with the Lord’s Prayer.  

What does Jesus tell us to ask for first? What are we to ask for? “Thy kingdom come.” Ask with boldness and persistence for the arrival of the reign of God. This comes first. Then request what we need ourselves, personally and as God’s people. “Everything comes from you” David prays. (1 Chronicles 29:14) 

For us to take our part in establishing God’s kingdom on earth as in heaven, we need: daily sustenance, for which we are dependent on God; reconciliation, for which we are dependent on God; and to be saved from “the time of trial”, for which we are dependent on God.

Only then can we be built into the eternal temple of praise which is the kingdom of God. When David said, “of thine own have we given thee” (1 Chronicles 29:14) he was offering the first fruits of the harvest, as the people would in the Temple. So his prayer was one of thanksgiving, and one of celebration. 

Of course the “Temple not built with hands” – that is the eternal place of offering – is what Jesus is bringing into daily life. Incarnate in him is the word of God, and making real in the world the kingdom he proclaims is the duty and the invitation he gives his followers: us.

When we pray “thy kingdom come” we are participating in the coming of his kingdom. When we ask for what we need from the one on whom we are dependent for everything, we are saying he is Lord. And when we ask to be forgiven and freed from temptation, we are saying he is Savior.

And we are saying make us instruments of thy peace, thy salvation, thy shalom, thy reign of peace.

In a recent essay on the website of the Episcopal diocese of Arizona, Canon Pam Hyde invites us to rethink dominion - particularly our sense of “dominion over” the rest of creation. Of course this is part of our rethinking what “kingdom come” might look like. 

Maybe it really is like the “peaceable kingdom” depicted in 19th Century American art, where lion and lamb lie down together and human beings, explorers and indigenous people, alike, are able to find a place for all beings. (Isaiah 11:6-9) 

Don’t hold your breath, I hear you say. “What about–?” What about the travesty of settler lifestyles that tear apart the very fabric of the natural world, through mineral extraction and agricultural industrialization? What about the continuing and historic exploitation of one species by another, not to mention one set of people by another?

How are we to live without exerting our dominion, our “power over” others, as if it were by divine right, even divine mandate? Is not this our “manifest destiny” as Americans, indeed, as the human race?

What does it mean to have “dominion over” anything if God is really in charge? Ask Elizabeth II, queen of England: she has had 70 years to think this one over. She may be sovereign, in her realm, but it is only under God, under the blessing, under the mercy, and under obedience.

How do we play faithful to that mercy, how do we conform to that obedience, how do we share that blessing? The blessing that is the coming and immanent kingdom of God, the ‘dominion’ if you will, that is without end as it is indeed without beginning? The truth is, God reigns now. 

If we could only see it. Sometimes it is hard to see. A traffic accident on the freeway, a senseless act of destruction, an unkindness where a helping hand is called for. Cruelty, gratuitous and severe. Capricious catastrophe.

So we ask for the kingdom to come, to become real. In the meantime, the between-time, between the asking and the fulfillment of the prayer, we are the ones who begin to make it real.

We do this in us-sized ways. We do it in small kindnesses, large life choices, common acts in common life, and unseen acts of small mercies.

We ask for the kingdom to come, and then we pray for what we need to live into its reality.

In Paul’s letter to the church in Colossus, we get a picture of a cosmic Christ, one “in whom the fullness of God is pleased to dwell” and one from whom we receive our own “fullness” as his creatures and his people. “For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have come to fullness in him, who is the head of every ruler and authority.” (1:19, 2:9-10)

“Fullness” in Christ means a completion of being, a perfection in direction and in action. We sense moments of fullness already; in him our joy will be made complete. 

So dominion and fullness meet in the presence of the Lord. God is the source of all being, therefore the one in whom all authority finally resides; our ‘dominion’ is partial and contingent. And yet our completion, the fulfillment of our calling and our gift as creatures, is already at work through Christ in us. 

We have the challenge of living into that in-coming and already-here state of being.

How can we possibly do this by ourselves? As individuals, as a church, as a society, as the human race? 

We don’t have to do it alone: for the one who creates us is the one who redeems us is the one who inspires and empowers us. By our side, along with us, God is present in the Spirit, and in each other.

We are not there yet, not yet in the kingdom to come, but we work to make it so, and we long for its arrival. In the grace of God and under the mercy. Amen.

The Rev. Dr. John Leech studied history and religion at the University of California, Santa Cruz. His professional education was through the Graduate Theological Union and Seattle University. He serves as a priest associate at the Episcopal Church of Saint Matthew in Tucson. An edited version of this essay appears in the Keeping the Faith section of the Arizona Daily Star, Sunday July 24th 2022 page E3.

Charles Taylor, A Secular Age. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2007.

James K. A. Smith, How (Not) to be Secular: Reading Charles Taylor. Grand Rapids MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2014.

David L. Bartlett & Barbara Brown Taylor, eds. Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary. Year C, Volume 3. Louisville KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010.

Joseph A. Fitzmyer, S.J. The Gospel According to Luke X-XXIV. The Anchor Bible, v. 28-28A. New York: Doubleday, 1985.

https://azdiocese.org/2022/06/rethinking-dominion/

https://www.nga.gov/collection/art-object-page.59908.html

Charles Taylor, A Secular Age. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2007.

Defeating doubt with hope

 The Doubting Thomas of Climate Change

“Unless I see a mountainside burn from west to east and smolder for a month, unless I put my finger to the ashen ground where wildflowers once bloomed and put my hand into the dry hole where a spring once gushed forth, well, even then, I will not believe!”

I wonder. Do you think Thomas was a bit of an Eeyore? Bush pilot Dave Olesen, reminiscing on a 1977 conversation with climate activist Edward Abbey, wrote, "Big soft-spoken man--he seems almost depressed...." Then a quote from him to underscore this: "I'm an optimist. Things are a lot better now than they will be."

Ed, I don’t think that word means what you think it means.

If Thomas was at all like this, no wonder he was disbelieving of what the other disciples told him. 

And if we were the kind of “optimists” Edward Abbey claimed to be, we might decide the story ends right there. 

But we are children of the living God and so children of hope. 

As it says in the book of the prophet Jeremiah, "For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope."

Today’s Doubting Thomases close their minds to the actionable knowledge that forms the impetus for our response. And if we were the kind of “optimists” Edward Abbey claimed to be, we might decide the story ends right there. 

But the story of the Apostle Thomas does not end in desperation. It is a story of restoration. It is a story of renewal and, ultimately, it is a story of resurrection

Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you." Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see the blackened soil. Reach out your hand and touch the ground. Feel the smoldering heat. Smell the ash. Do not doubt but believe.” Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!”

We are not Ed’s optimists, we are Christ’s people - and we know, even after he ceased appearing to those first followers of the gospel, his story continues. His challenge, and his promise. 

And becomes our own.

Almighty and everlasting God, you made the universe with

all its marvelous order, its atoms, worlds, and galaxies, and

the infinite complexity of living creatures: Grant that, as we

probe the mysteries of your creation, we may come to know

you more truly, and more surely fulfill our role in your

eternal purpose; in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. (BCP page 827)

Written for Climate Change Forum V as closing meditation and prayer. 4/30/22 JRL+

Published in the Arizona Daily Star, Sunday May 15, 2o22, page E3, as "Defeating doubt with hope". 

"Rev. John Leech. The Rev. John Leech is ordained in the Episcopal branch of the Jesus movement and has served as a pastor in Northern California and western Washington, and now in Southern Arizona."