Lenten Reading
Some weeks ago a dear and deeply respected friend of whom I am somewhat in awe, emailed me a Lenten meditation series preached by Ellen F. Davis, scholar, professor and author. The piece was photocopied out of a book and emailed to me. But with the right margin cropped and my having to stand my MacBook on end to read it, I read a few pages then stopped to find the book online. Expensive but not quite costly enough to qualify for free shipping, I laid it aside for a while, then went back online and found a cheap “very good” used copy. It arrived in yesterday’s mail. Very good as promised, and a perfect afternoon to sit by my window as the weather grew wintry over St. Andrews Bay, and read.
I wish I’d bothered to think of and take Davis' simple and obvious but theologically startling viewpoint all those Good Fridays I preached on Genesis 22. In the three meditations she presents a theology of Abraham. A somewhat unorthodox theology of God that her scholar colleagues sharply challenged later, when the piece was being considered for publication in the book, a collection of writings. No, it wasn’t “somewhat unorthodox,” to them it was heresy, borderline blasphemy, countered the very characteristic of God; but which she defended in retrospect fairly well. My own theologies are suspect, even to myself, and so I enjoy strange theologies from others.
Anyway, and thirdly a theology of Isaac, the innocuous patriarch of whom the Bible story tells us almost nothing impressive. Abraham and Jacob are the delightful scoundrels. Isaac’s place in Heilsgeschichte seems like a thin layer of butter spread on to hold together two thick slices of bread. But Davis sees far more, the beloved child of both Abraham and God as Isaac is bound and laid on the altar, for whatever God says or does not say.
Isaac was a mama's boy. However, Davis does not present Sarah who, some scholars like to point out, never speaks to Abraham again after his complicity in God's treachery.
A startling in Davis' presentation is of Jesus as a perfect union of Abraham and God.
There is more in the book by Davis and others. My lenten reading.
Thos+