What
is your favorite board game? Is it Monopoly? Are you a Cranium Fan? What about
Trivial Pursuit? For a period of my youth my favorite board game was Clue.
If
you are unfamiliar with the concept of Clue—a board game that even spawned a
movie based on it—you can check out this website with full rules on how to play.
Briefly though, one moves around his or her character into different rooms on
the board, then makes suggestions about who committed a murder in that
particular room and with what weapon—gory I know! As the suggestions are disproven, the players
mark off these options on their detective notebook. A player after gathering
sufficient clues, then can make an accusation of who committed the murder,
where, and by what method. If the accusation is correct the player wins, but if
not the player is finished. Wow, those are some high stakes! This final element
of Clue always provided the most enjoyable element of the game.
Strangely
though, to me there never seemed that much of a difference between a suggestion
and an accusation. However, as I have gotten older I see this distinction more
clearly. If someone suggested that I might be somewhere at a particular time
and had a particular weapon on me that would be one offensive thing, but to
accuse me of actually going through with a crime seems like a much more sad and
sadistic story. When I read the Old Testament lesson for this coming Sunday in
which Abraham nearly kills Isaac at God’s command I get this same odd feeling,
as many strange suggestions can easily be made about the main characters.
When
reading Genesis 22:1-14 many of us have a hard time not hurling accusations at
both Abraham and God. First, the passage begins with an unflattering depiction
of God testing faithful Abraham. What kind of God does that? Then, the faithful
servant actually begins to go through with the gruesome act of sacrificing his
only son. Isaac the observant child that he was noticed something was off, but
his father cryptically pointed to God providing the animal for sacrifice when
they got to the burning site. While the story ends well with only a ram being
sacrificed—maybe PETA would not think so—it always leaves me feeling like I
need to take a shower or at least wash my hands. How does this story speak to
who God truly is?
One
of the most intriguing parts of the game Clue was the fact that the answer to
all the questions surrounding the murder were hidden right within an envelope
at the center of the board. In that envelope were three cards: one telling the
murderer, one telling the place, and one telling the weapon. The answers were tantalizingly
close! At the same time in the hands of all the players are the rest of the clues,
which combined also tell the details of the crime by providing all the facts
that are not in the envelope. Often when I talk about God—especially in light
of this passage from Genesis—all I want is to know what lies within God’s
envelope, but all I get is what is on the outside. In other words, God alone
knows what truly happened between God and Abraham and Isaac. What we must do is
learn about God from all the outside details.
Through
Holy Scripture we maintain that Abraham was a faithful servant and God remains
faithful always, but how do we rectify a God who made his servant prove
devotion through a near murder? One way that Christians often move around this
passage is by pointing to God not withholding Jesus, God’s only Son, when he
died on the Cross. While I maintain this is a profoundly valid point, I feel it
sidesteps this passage from Genesis cutting the theological meaning from
underneath it. If we are to be faithful readers of this text what is God hiding
in the proverbial envelope? What does this story tell us about God and us?
While
we may not know the mind of God, we do know what the Scripture itself says in
this passage. Abraham and the community of faith believed that God was testing
the father of Isaac in that moment. We know that Abraham did not revel in that
moment. We know that he sheepishly led his son who sheepishly questioned where
the animal was for the sacrifice. We know that the angel stepped in to stop
this homicide from taking place. We know finally that Abraham was willing to be
faithful to God even if it meant giving up the one person he had hoped for and
God had promised him. So is that it? Just be faithful—even if it means
attempting murder? Simply put, no!
This
story of being faithful was helpful to a people and it remains a source of energy
and conversation for faithful people to this day. Still, we are called to be
people who do not tolerate violence of any kind. We must be people who point to
the figure on the Cross and say this is the terrible place where violence leads
us. While we remain faithful people like Abraham, we must also be people like
Isaac who willingly take on self-sacrifice in our lives. The Northern Irish
author and theologian Peter Rollins once said, “Violence is the end of
dialogue.”[1]
When we enact any sort of violence whether physical, spiritual, or otherwise
upon one another we no longer are able to share God’s peace which passes all
understanding. God still gives it, but we are no longer sharing in it.
We
might not know what lies within the enveloping Spirit of God. We might have no
clue what happened to faithful Abraham when he was tested by God—save for what
Scripture tells us. We may not know precisely how God will test us. However, we
who follow the Risen Christ cannot be people who turn to violence in any form.
If our Savior willingly accepted the violence perpetrated against him we too
must learn to willingly take on the violence of this world. The way we confront
this force is not with retaliation, but with the greatest strength this world
has ever seen: self-emptying love!
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[1]Rollins, Peter. "Festival of Homiletics:
Preaching to Violence." Speech, Minneapolis, MN, 2014.
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