Richard Rohr is an unlikely Christian superstar. He doesn’t have a megachurch or a private jet or thousand dollar suits. In fact, he has taken a vow of poverty as a Franciscan friar, so he is the opposite of all of those things, the bright lights and the glamor. Yet his dozens of books and daily mediations have a wide following, and while he has managed to stay inside of the Roman church since his ordination in 1970, no small feat for sure, he has also been an ally to the LGBTQ+ community and to ecumenical and progressive Christians of all stripes. I have several of his volumes on my study shelves, and some of you read his daily missives.
There is a quote attributed to him in Anthony B. Bartlett’s 2018 course book on a nonviolent reading of the Bible, though Bartlett doesn’t provide a citation, and a Google search fails to produce one either. Nonetheless, it sounds like Rohr, and even if it is not him, the words are wise and necessary.
Many Christians have to go through a time and experience of atheism, because the God we have been taught to believe in does not exist.
Now, some of you are part of the Hope family for precisely this reason, because the “god” you were taught to believe in as a child no longer made sense. Some of you have moved past that initial rejection, discovering new ways of encountering and understanding God, or better yet, of not understanding God and being okay with that. Some are still in that initial atheism, rejecting that traditional God and yet not quite willing to let go of that definition of what it is to be God. And some just like the music and the company, which is just fine too, though I do hope the wonder I have found in new ways of seeing the holy will rub off on you a bit.
If you have listened even this far into the sermon, then you have probably listened to other sermons as well, and already know that I like Rohr’s quote precisely because I had to live through that process myself, grieving even as I chose to break-up with the abusive God of my childhood, tip-toeing into new relationships, a few dates here, a few there, until I met the right God.
Today’s reading? As traditionally interpreted, that is the abusive God I had to leave behind. Reconfigure this tale ever so slightly, “if you love me you will do this thing that will destroy your soul,” and you have a textbook example of domestic abuse, domestic violence, Abraham with Stockholm Syndrome.
Therefore, preaching from within this story doesn’t work for me, and works even less if I take a serious textual approach, for as I mentioned last week, Genesis is the result of multiple traditions and editors, and there is a terrible truth in here if you are looking. For God speaks directly to Abraham, it is God who commands the blood sacrifice, it is God throughout the story, yet suddenly it is the angel of the Lord who spares Isaac. The great French thinker Rene Girard would claim that the message here is that the God of sacrifice is not the God who reveals the emptiness of sacrifice in the Cross, echoing an idea the ancients considered heretical, but I tend to be more concrete. The editors, probably during the reign of Hezekiah, did not like the story as written, the fact that we later read Abraham coming down from the mountain alone, which means exactly what you think it means, and so they inserted the text that saves Isaac. Besides, they had these other story traditions with Isaac they needed to stick in there somewhere, and that wouldn’t work if he was dead on a hastily constructed altar, the victim of a violent god.
It gets slightly better if you can widen the lens and see this story in the cultural context of the Ancient Near East and the construction of religion, especially those unique traits in the Hebrew matrix that had such sticking power and that eventually gave us Jesus, either another victim of that old violent god or the key to undermining the entire sacrificial system.
We know that one of the areas where the Hebrew tradition diverged from neighboring cults was the rejection of child sacrifice, though they were not quite as pure as they liked to pretend, for even after this text, as late as Jeremiah, they would fall back into the practice when things were hard and scary. The sacrificial frame would reappear as they tried to make sense of the Cross.
The only thing that needs to be dead on an altar are these images of God, violent and blood thirsty, co-dependent and terrible.
And if that is all there is to say, that that God, that horrible God, does not exist, then this is going to be a mighty short service, and you are going to have a long wait until coffee hour, assuming you are with me on Sunday morning.
There is more to say. But you already knew that.
There are many reasons Christianity is collapsing in Western industrialized countries, and it is not just the spiritual anesthesia of mass media, and our mountains of stuff. We are over scheduled and treat religion like a consumer product, changing brands whenever, and by and large, not doing the hard work of figuring out what we believe and why. So many get swept up in megachurch and televangelists, and there is no denying that there is something transcendent happening in those spaces. And maybe it is a good fit for some, comfort for those who feel powerless, justification for those with privilege, but it clearly doesn’t work for you, or you would not be here, wherever you are, listening to a sermon titled “God does not exist.”
Maybe it is just me, but I found no comfort in the abusive and violent images of God. Søren Kierkegaard may be able to make meaning with this story, but I cannot. Of course love is this whirling matrix of personal sacrifice and personal reward, we give and we receive, but in the balance, real love, for God, for lover, for neighbor, for self, nets a surplus. We are bigger for loving, not smaller, and this God is just too terrible for me. These ideas from twenty six centuries ago don’t work for me, and may not work for you. For the record, I don’t want the medical care of that time either. I am okay with new ideas and new technology. I’m okay with growing in how I understand God, even if it is hard work, for the God I have come to understand is not some monstrosity, static and terrible, but is living, creative, loving, and therefore changes too, for you cannot love and not be changed.
And finally, this warning: if the God you have discovered only tells you what you want to hear, never challenges you to grow and love, then maybe that isn’t really God at all. Maybe what God is calling you to sacrifice is your idea of God so you can make room for God.
The ancient stories are not shackles. Do not be tied down. The Disney movie “Up!” tells us adventure is out there. Adventure is out there. And so is God, in creation, in your neighbor, in the courage that risks it all to side with the oppressed, and with you, where you are, right now. May we be open to new experiences of the holy, this day and always.
Amen.