Daily word, 04 Jul 19

13^th Thursday of the Year (04 Jul 2019)

Gn 22. 1b-19; Ps 115; Mt 9. 1-8

Homily of Fr. Paul Panaretos, S.J., Spiritual Directors Workshop

Faith First Lets Go

I realized something: the binding of Isaac points to God’s risk. I didn’t begin there; inhabiting the narrative led me there. End spoiler alert.

The binding of Isaac to be a burnt offering is a troubling text. A Jewish commentary wisely urged: “…renounce any attempt to discover one basic idea as the meaning of the whole. There are many levels of meaning.”¹ Far more than ideas and meaning are at stake. Confronted with a hard passage rabbis sought others ones to shed light on it. I did so, and I trusted the wisdom of the lectionary to lead me.

• I will walk in the presence of the Eternal One, in the land of the living
• God was reconciling the world to God in Christ and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation
• Rise…walk and go home

My pause with the lectionary helped me appreciate anew the binding of Isaac belongs to a larger story, God’s ongoing story revealing what is most real. Moderns are less attuned to it; we don’t inhabit the world of scripture as did earlier folks. We question it: Did it happen? and, What meaning can I find? Our default questions foment their tension that captures us.

We are distracted from the inexorable moving after hearing God to reaching Mt. Moriah. We don’t hear the deafening silence in the narrative: not only are Abraham and Isaac silent until the end of their three-day journey; we get no inkling of Abraham’s thoughts during it. Surely his impending choice and its results made an eternity of three days: not to heed God; or to abort the people of God’s promise. His interior journey was more perilous than the trek to Mt. Moriah. We know because we all have experienced letting go and being let go. Faith first lets go.

Abraham behaved from his faith. His faith upheld later generations of Israelites who inherited it.² An ancient liturgy conserved this tradition: Abraham prayed for the benefit of Israel.

I have done Thy word with joy and have effected Thy decree. And now, when [Isaac’s] children come into a time of distress…remember the binding...of Isaac, their father, and listen to their prayer, and answer them and deliver them from all distress.³

The prayer alerts us: people participate in Abraham’s faith by insisting God remember the binding of Isaac. What does God recall? God remembers God rejected Isaac as a sacrifice unto death and remembered God’s covenant with Abraham. The words, answer…and deliver them, call our attention to God’s other choice.

Letting go our default queries—ethical, moral, historical, meaning—frees us to recall God rejected Isaac as sacrifice and did not reject giving over to humans God’s son.⁴ God was reconciling, re-covenanting, the world to God in Christ by entrusting Christ into human hands. The faith of Christ Jesus freed him to make his costly self-offering.

We have received Christ’s faith to offer ourselves as witnesses to Christ. Our choice is daily even hourly; at times it is as frightening a choice as scaling Mt. Moriah or walking falteringly with Jesus to Calvary. The Spiritual Exercises help people meet Christ anew and aided by divine courage to rise and walk more committed to join Christ.

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1. W. Gunther Plaut & David E. Stein, eds., The Torah: A Modern Commentary, Revised; Accordance electronic ed. (New York: Union for Reform Judaism, 2006), 122.
2. As do we and countless others. See Romans 4.16.
3. Targum Neofiti, Gen. 22:14, “the kernel of [this] tradition” noted by Nils Dahl, “The Atonement: An Adequate Reward for the Akedah?” Jesus the Christ: The Historical Origins of Christological Doctrine (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1991), p. 141.
4. Romans 8.32.

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