FAITH OR CULT?

"Ram in Thicket" (Royal Death Pit, Ur of Chaldees) British Museum

This week we look at one of the most complex and loaded texts of the Jewish scriptures: The binding of Isaac in Genesis 22:1-14. Many interpretations have been postured by our Jewish, Christian, Muslim and Biblical critical traditions. Is it a test for Isaac, Abraham, or God himself?

I believe it may be the test of a new faith in its early stages of development and that just might have implications for our journey of faith today. How do we commit to leave behind what has become an impediment to our lives and our communities' future?

We'll begin looking at some oral tradition regarding Abraham's background and an integral symbol in the narrative text, the Ram caught in the thicket.

Biblical Archaeolgy:
The Ram in a Thicket is one of a pair of figures excavated in Ur, in southern Iraq, and which date from about 2600-2400 BC. One is currently exhibited in the British Museum in London.  the other is in the University of Pennsylvania Museum in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. .
The pair of rams were discovered lying close together in the 'Great Death Pit', one of the graves in the Royal Cemetery at Ur, by archaeologist Leonard Woolley during the 1928-9 season. He named the figure the 'Ram in a Thicket' after the passage in Genesis 22 v.13, where God orders the Biblical Patriarch Abraham  to sacrifice his son Isaac.(from Wikipedia, Ram in the Thicket)

Biblical Literary Criticism:
 In Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature, the literary critic Erich Auerbach considers the Hebrew narrative of the Binding of Isaac, along with Homer's description of Odysseus's scar, as the two paradigmatic models for the representation of reality in literature. Auerbach contrasts Homer's attention to detail and foregrounding of the spatial, historical, as well as personal contexts for events to the Bible's sparse account, in which virtually all context is kept in the background or left outside of the narrative. As Auerbach observes, this narrative strategy virtually compels readers to add their own interpretations to the text. (from Wikipedia, Binding of Isaac)

Genesis 22:1-14
22:1 After these things God tested Abraham. He said to him, "Abraham!" And he said, "Here I am."

22:2 He said, "Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains that I shall show you."

22:3 So Abraham rose early in the morning, saddled his donkey, and took two of his young men with him, and his son Isaac; he cut the wood for the burnt offering, and set out and went to the place in the distance that God had shown him.

22:4 On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place far away.

22:5 Then Abraham said to his young men, "Stay here with the donkey; the boy and I will go over there; we will worship, and then we will come back to you."

22:6 Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on his son Isaac, and he himself carried the fire and the knife. So the two of them walked on together.

22:7 Isaac said to his father Abraham, "Father!" And he said, "Here I am, my son." He said, "The fire and the wood are here, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?"

22:8 Abraham said, "God himself will provide the lamb for a burnt offering, my son." So the two of them walked on together.

22:9 When they came to the place that God had shown him, Abraham built an altar there and laid the wood in order. He bound his son Isaac, and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood.

22:10 Then Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to kill his son.

22:11 But the angel of the LORD called to him from heaven, and said, "Abraham, Abraham!" And he said, "Here I am."

22:12 He said, "Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him; for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me."

22:13 And Abraham looked up and saw a ram, caught in a thicket by its horns. Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son.

22:14 So Abraham called that place "The LORD will provide"; as it is said to this day, "On the mount of the LORD it shall be provided."

CREATION AND RECREATION

From Summer 2009

It's that time again. Time for re-creation in our lives. It's our celebration of the Sabbath, Father's Day, Trinity Sunday and, as well, Summer officially starts this week. Two Summers ago the Journey class spent time on the pond at the Dortch's (as the pictures attest)  and we're doing it again this Sunday 19 June, Lord permitting.

For our study, we will be looking at Psalm 8, that glorious passage that refers to God's majesty, creation, and our place and responsibility as part in it. What does it mean that God is mindful of us? And what does that say about our mindfulness of others? What role does the act of recreation play in these issues? 

Psalm 8
8:1 O LORD, our Sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens.

8:2 Out of the mouths of babes and infants you have founded a bulwark because of your foes, to silence the enemy and the avenger.

8:3 When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established;

8:4 what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them?

8:5 Yet you have made them a little lower than God, and crowned them with glory and honor.

8:6 You have given them dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under their feet,

8:7 all sheep and oxen, and also the beasts of the field,

8:8 the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea, whatever passes along the paths of the seas.

8:9 O LORD, our Sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth!

Walter Morton for Journey Across the Line

THE DNA OF OUR LIVES

An artist's rendition of a DNA strand

Just as our DNA has four elements, Guanine, Cytosine, Adenine and Thyamine, that determine being biologically human, our story for Pentecost today covers four elements, A little research on Prophecy, Pentecost, Shavuot and Grain Harvests from Wikipedia:

Prophecy is a process in which one or more messages that have been communicated to a true prophet are then communicated to others by this true prophet. Such messages typically involve divine inspiration, interpretation, or revelation of conditioned events to come as well as testimonies or repeated revelations that the world is divine. The process of prophecy especially involves reciprocal communication of the true prophet with the (divine) source of the messages. Mere claimants of foreknowledge of future events, like fortunetellers, oracles, seers, diviners or apocalyptic authors, are not considered true prophets


Pentecost (Ancient Greek) Πεντηκοστή [ἡμέρα], Pentēkostē [hēmera], "the Fiftieth [day]") is one of the prominent feasts in the Christian Liturgical Year commemorating the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the disciples of Christ after the Resurrection as described in the New Testament Acts of the Apostles :2:1-31. For this reason, Pentecost is sometimes described as the "Birthday of the Church". Pentecost is celebrated seven weeks (50 days) after Easter Sunday, hence its name. Pentecost falls ten days after Ascension Thursday. Pentecost is historically and symbolically related to the Jewish harvest festival of  Shavuot which commemorates God giving the Ten Commandments at Mount Sinai fifty days after the Exodus.

Shavuot is a Jewish holiday that occurs on the sixth day of the Hebrew month of Sivan (late May or early June). Shavuot commemorates the anniversary of the day God gave the Torah to the entire Israelite nation assembled at Mount Sinai, although the association between the giving of the Torah (Matan Torah) and Shavuot is not explicit in the Biblical text. The holiday is one of the Shalosh Regalim, the three Biblical pilgrimage festivals. It marks the conclusion of the Counting of the Omer. The Torah mandates the seven-week Counting of the Omer, beginning on the second day of Passover and immediately followed by Shavuot. This counting of days and weeks is understood to express anticipation and desire for the Giving of the Torah. On Passover, the Jewish people were freed from their enslavement to Pharaoh, on Shavuot they were given the Torah and became a nation committed to serving God.  Since Shavuot occurs 50 days after Passover, Hellenistic Jews gave it the name Pentecost (πεντηκοστή, "fiftieth day").


Harvests: Besides its significance as the day on which the Torah was revealed by God to the Jewish nation at Mount Sinai (which includes the Ten Commandments), Shavuot is also connected to the season of the grain harvest in Israel. In ancient times, the grain harvest lasted seven weeks and was a season of gladness (Jer. 5:24, Deut. 16:9-11, Isa. 9:2). It began with the harvesting of the barley during Passover and ended with the harvesting of the wheat at Shavuot. Shavuot was thus the concluding festival of the grain harvest, just as the eighth day of Sukkot (Tabernacles) was the concluding festival of the fruit harvest. During the existence of the Temple in Jerusalem an offering of two loaves of bread from the wheat harvest was made on Shavuot.

Just as our DNA holds elements that are prophetic in the outcome of our being human, a lot of elements went into the building of Pentecost, all of them, in some sense, prophetic. In the stories presented in Numbers and in Acts, how does God speak to us through bread, law, spirit and prophecy? How do we fulfill the prophecy of our lives and maintain the presence of His abiding Spirit amongst us?.

Numbers 11:24-30
11:24 So Moses went out and told the people the words of the LORD; and he gathered seventy elders of the people, and placed them all around the tent.

11:25 Then the LORD came down in the cloud and spoke to him, and took some of the spirit that was on him and put it on the seventy elders; and when the spirit rested upon them, they prophesied. But they did not do so again.

11:26 Two men remained in the camp, one named Eldad, and the other named Medad, and the spirit rested on them; they were among those registered, but they had not gone out to the tent, and so they prophesied in the camp.

11:27 And a young man ran and told Moses, "Eldad and Medad are prophesying in the camp."

11:28 And Joshua son of Nun, the assistant of Moses, one of his chosen men, said, "My lord Moses, stop them!"

11:29 But Moses said to him, "Are you jealous for my sake? Would that all the Lord's people were prophets, and that the LORD would put his spirit on them!"

11:30 And Moses and the elders of Israel returned to the camp


Acts 2:1-21
2:1 When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place.

2:2 And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting.

2:3 Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them.

2:4 All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.

2:5 Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem.

2:6 And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each.

2:7 Amazed and astonished, they asked, "Are not all these who are speaking Galileans?

2:8 And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language?

2:9 Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia,

2:10 Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes,

2:11 Cretans and Arabs--in our own languages we hear them speaking about God's deeds of power."

2:12 All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, "What does this mean?"

2:13 But others sneered and said, "They are filled with new wine."

2:14 But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them, "Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say.

2:15 Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o'clock in the morning.

2:16 No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel:

2:17 'In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams.

2:18 Even upon my slaves, both men and women, in those days I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall prophesy.

2:19 And I will show portents in the heaven above and signs on the earth below, blood, and fire, and smoky mist.

2:20 The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood, before the coming of the Lord's great and glorious day.

2:21 Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.'


Walter Morton  for Journey Across the Line

THE LAST FOOTPRINT

Dome of the Ascension in Jerusalem

On the Mount of Olives, Muslims, who recognize much of the Old Testament as holy scripture and venerate Jesus as a prophet, control a mosque marking the spot of his ascension; there’s even a footprint in stone said to be Jesus’ last. Nearby, Carmelite nuns operate a beautiful church dedicated to the teaching of the Lord’s Prayer, even though Jesus almost certainly taught this simple means of communicating with God up in Galilee.

 

Many of the faithful have yielded to the understandable human desire to apply Bible stories, events, and personalities at a next level, attempting to link their faith to a specific physical spot that can be experienced with the senses. This drive to connect to a place, to deepen faith by finding and venerating a specific piece of the planet where supernatural Biblical events occurred has produced some perplexing results. (Walking in the Footsteps of Jesus, wwwTravelpod.com)

 

How do we testify to the footprint or steps of Jesus in our lives today?

Acts 1:6-14
1:6 So when they had come together, they asked him, "Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?"

1:7 He replied, "It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority.

1:8 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth."

1:9 When he had said this, as they were watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight.

1:10 While he was going and they were gazing up toward heaven, suddenly two men in white robes stood by them.

1:11 They said, "Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven."

1:12 Then they returned to Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet, which is near Jerusalem, a sabbath day's journey away.

1:13 When they had entered the city, they went to the room upstairs where they were staying, Peter, and John, and James, and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James son of Alphaeus, and Simon the Zealot, and Judas son of James.

1:14 All these were constantly devoting themselves to prayer, together with certain women, including Mary the mother of Jesus, as well as his brothers.

Walter Morton for Journey Across the Line