the wages of sin

Sahara desert sand turning sky and sea gray lends not spectacular sunrise and sunset but a sense of gloom to the world. In spite of all the stiff-upper-lips of optimism, not totally unfitting for civilization's current place in history? In Cormac McCarthy's post apocalyptic The Road it must have looked like this when the man and the boy finally made it to the sea.

Seeing that I skipped any sort of Bible study yesterday, this morning I'll try something now in the way of holiness. First off I'm still, from last Monday, agonizing over the Genesis 22 story of Abraham and the Sacrifice of Isaac. Right now I have in mind the first few verses

God tested Abraham. He said to him, “Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” 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.” 

a concomitant rabbinical tradition, 

God said, "take your son, your only son"

Abraham corrects God, "I have TWO sons"

God continues, "Isaac, whom you love"

Correcting God again, Abraham says, "I love them BOTH".

For all his faults, and he had them, I like that Abraham loves both Ishmael and Isaac to the end of his days; and I like even more the thought of Abraham finally having the guts to stand up to God. Extra-scriptural though it be, and I doubt that Abraham ever saw Ishmael again, he never forgot his first and years long Only Son, and that he never stopped loving him.

Everyone who is shocked all over again with every reading of it knows that this horrendous story does not in any way commend a God who would ask such a thing; nor Abraham who would acquiesce, but Abraham, who is just a toady, is not the villain here. Still, it's a favorite of mine. Why? I don't know. Maybe because it's such a prominent outrage and puts God, not Abraham as God thinks, to the test. Maybe because it seems to make no sense and I like that, counter to standard American supposition, there are questions that have no answer and problems that have no solution. Maybe because it underscores that God certainly is beyond our comprehension. Maybe because it suggests we consider that God may not be just as we image God to be (well then, read the Book of Joshua). Maybe because it challenges me as priest, pastor, preacher to rationalize God, defend God, justify God, let God off the hook, and I refuse to do that: I generally have no use for or patience with Christian apologetics and God is big enough and old enough to defend himself. Maybe because, like the theodicy thing in which the problem is not God but us, there's no morality to this story, no apologetic that would not compromise common decency and leave me ashamed of myself.  

Some apologist suggested that Abraham lived in an age of child sacrifice, and God was telling Abraham to sacrifice his son, leading him along right up to the last instant, then emphatically, roundly and soundly forbidding Abraham ever to commit such an abomination? Maybe it's so to shock us that we know our God hates child sacrifice? If so, I wonder how God feels about cupcake football games? Which whether you like to hear it or not are child sacrifice, even a tentative form of slavery.

It comes down to this: you'll have to decide for yourself why this terrible story is in the Bible, and what lesson if any you can draw from it. In that regard, I can help myself and I'm perfectly content with my answer; but I can't help you.

For our second lesson, the Epistle reading, we are still in Romans, which Paul seems to have written preparatory to going to Rome to visit and preach and, hopefully, collect from Christians in Rome a monetary offering to help encourage the church in Jerusalem and also maybe to help underwrite his, Paul's, journey to Spain.

Paul did not found the church in Rome, has never been to Rome, and they don't know Paul. So he's writing ahead and (lucky for us I guess, if you like Romans, it's not my favorite, that this letter was saved and canonized into our New Testament) somewhat certifying Paul's own theology and Christology credentials to them so they'll know he's genuine and not some money-grubbing charlatan. 

Paul is still on his μὴ γένοιτο rant about By no means! God forbid! Heavens no! Certainly not! Let it not be so! Never happen! Absolutely not! Of course not! about whether we should keep on sinning just because, as baptized Christians now living under the grace of God, we are forgiven. Here's an extract from Sunday's reading

... present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life ... For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace. ... What then? Should we sin because we are not under law but under grace? μὴ γένοιτο By no means! ... thanks be to God that you, having once been slaves of sin, have become obedient from the heart to the form of teaching to which you were entrusted, ... But now that you have been freed from sin and enslaved to God, the advantage you get is sanctification. The end is eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

The theology continues to be that in baptism we die to our old life of sin just as Christ died, and we are raised to the new life of righteousness just as God raised Jesus from death and exalted him to eternal life in heaven, just so, we must live accordingly. Again, that with baptism we must give up our old sinful lives and try to live as Christ. Our Baptismal Covenant holds us to this, especially the ultimate vow, Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being? 

Even at this late point Paul still sees his mission as, and is still intent on, bringing gentile pagans under the umbrella of the God of Israel, to (genitive) the faith of Christ (not dative, faith in Christ) before Jesus the Son of God returns as the cosmic Son of Man to judge the living and the dead and to begin his reign of God's new kingdom of righteousness on earth. I think Paul was an apocalyptist to his end. I don't believe Paul ever held our current Christian notion of salvation into heaven (or purgatory) instantly upon our earthly death, which grew up in the Christian centuries. Paul's view was that once we die, we sleep in Jesus until the general resurrection at the end of Time, which Jesus' own resurrection signaled, when Jesus returns. Paul never owned a telescope, and his world view was so very different from ours.

Enough. Literally: sitting out here on 7H porch I'm getting very fine Sahara sand dust in my eyes.

Today is our daughter Malinda's 62nd birthday. Linda and I were married June 29, 1957 and Malinda was born June 25, 1958 to a couple, maybe me especially, who could not wait to have and hold and love and dote on a little girl, as I had doted on my Malone first cousins. 

I don't think Malinda thrived as Joe did, growing up in the Navy, constantly being moved from place to place, having to leave familiar faces, meet new people and start from scratch trying to make a new friend. That way of life was unkind and unfair to her. 

I wouldn't have liked it either. In fact, I well remember my sense of dread when our parents were contemplating moving from Massalina Drive to a bayshore house in StAndrews that I would be changing from Cove School to StAndrews School. Another time when they were considering relocating from Panama City to Apalachicola and I would have to transfer from Cove School to a school in Apalachicola. Robert Frost again, roads diverging in a yellow wood. 

As a child, Malinda was, like my sister Gina, always her own person, sassy, talk back, could be bullheaded. To me, she was "just like a girl", but there were times when she gave her mother fits as a little girl and all the more so as a teenager! But then, she did suffer all that goes along with being first child of loving but unexperienced parents.

Two years ago last month, Malinda suffered serious medical issues that involved two brain aneurysms, one that left her blind in her right eye, three brain surgeries, and a stroke that in truth has robbed her happiness with life. As parents, we are thankful that she made it and we still have her. 

We are grateful that she has son Ray & Britany & Lilly, and daughter Kristen to love and look after her as life goes on. But Malinda is not the happy person that she was before that May 2018 night when we chased her ambulance to Sacred Heart hospital in Pensacola, thinking she would die on the way. But here we are. 

Sheltering in place against covid19 as two highest risk people, Linda and I aren't going inside for this afternoon's birthday gathering at the Kelly household, but we are doing a birthday drive-by to wave and blow kisses, give her a gift bag, and bring home our share of birthday feast and birthday cake! 

That this is the way her life has turned out, her neurosurgeon places directly on her smoking unceasingly since she was a teenager, and even fighting son Ray for cigarettes after the aneurysms, blindness, surgeries and stroke. To be honest, all these years I felt sure it would end up lung cancer, but it's this. 

Maybe someone who's into tobacco smoking will notice and give it up? That's something I can think of that could make all this "not in vain".

Lovingly,

Dad