What is in Kelvin's Head?

Eid, Pride and Abraham’s Sacrifice

06/07/2023

The first thing that I tend to notice is that there seems to be more sweet things in the shops in Great Western Road than usual.

And then on the day itself it is obvious that there’s more people going about their business all dressed up for an occasion. Some of them are carrying food. A swish of coloured fabric or a brilliantly white robe. And then I see people going visiting family in the local tenements. It is obvious that there’s a celebration going on.

This week the Islamic festival of Eid al-Adha was going on. The Islamic calendar doesn’t keep time with the Gregorian Calendar that most of us use most of the time to organise our time.

The Feast arrives about 11 days earlier each year. And living here, I can always tell when the feasting is about to break out. You can feel it in the street.

Now it will be a very long time before we get this happening again, but the feast that is being celebrated by our Muslim friends is directly related to the worship of much of the Christian church today. Because the feast that was celebrated this week is based on one of the stories that comes up in the Lectionary today. And it will be another 33 years or so until these two things happen in the same week.

So, I’m paying attention to Abraham this morning. And to his son. In our tradition we remember him taking Isaac in response to believing that he heard a call to sacrifice his son.

The tradition in the Qur’an doesn’t mention the name of the son and Muslims generally presume the son to be Ishmael – the son of Abraham and Hagar the maidservant, whose birth we heard of just a few weeks ago.

But it is in essence the same story.

Abraham hears a call from God to sacrifice his son and sets off to do just that. And then just in time, God intervenes and calls off the sacrifice.

The straight-forward interpretation of the story that is found in Christian, Jewish and Islamic traditions is that Abraham’s willingness to perform the sacrifice was enough. The son’s blood didn’t need to be spilt after all. Abraham’s willing submission to the will of God was enough.

Various retellings of the story have different details – particularly in the acquiescence or not of the son in the sacrifice scheme.

But none of those three traditions has been entirely content to leave this text to speak for itself. This is a story that has been argued and puzzled over for centuries. Indeed, perhaps that is its major purpose.

I knew a priest some years ago who had a painting of Abraham and Isaac in his study looking down at him as he prepared every sermon. It was a fine picture. An beautiful picture.

Until you noticed the glint of a knife in the father’s hand.

For me, I’m not convinced that simple and straightforward tellings of this story are enough. It is complex and disturbing and very puzzling indeed.

At first glance, it seems to be a very long way from our experience.

We have no contact with those who sacrifice their children at the whim of a capricious God, do we?

And yet, immediately I start to think of stories I’ve heard as a priest from troubled children about troubled parents.

On several occasions when I’ve been at Pride marches I’ve had people come up to me terribly upset at the violent sentiments that parents have expressed towards them in the name of religion.

“I told my dad last night. He told me to get out the house. He told me I was an abomination before the Lord. He told me he wanted me dead”.

People are prepared to sacrifice all the love in the world on the altar of misguided beliefs about what God wants in this world.

People sometimes think I go to Pride to have fun. Actually I go so that people have someone to tell those stories to. And I go to bear witness to a God who turns out not to want such sacrifices at all.

And therein lies my interpretation of this story.

I’m suspicious of the text and I’m deeply suspicious of the interpretation that the God I know would ever be the instigator of this violent psychodrama.

I’m suspicious of the text because people have tried to sanitise Abraham’s saga ever since it was written and passed on. Although the readings that we get about Abraham on Sundays present someone who is far from straightforward, they miss out stories that are even more problematic.

If we are all children of Abraham, we are all children of someone who twice passed his wife off as his sister and offered her to powerful men to save his own skin, someone who slept with the maid and then disposed of her when it didn’t suit him and someone who begins the very biblical tradition of fathers who have trouble dealing fairly with their sons.

And I am suspicious of the traditional supposedly straightforward interpretation of this story because it just doesn’t make any sense to me.

No God worth believing in wants children to be sacrificed and killed.

So for me, I think this story is worth telling and retelling through the ages as a paradigm for the idea that religion can change and bad practices that can only lead to death, destruction and loss should themselves be sacrificed.

For me this story stands out as marking a moment when the idea of God wanting a child sacrifice was seen for what it was – nonsense and violent nonsense at that.

There has been much change even in my lifetime in how decent religious people behave. This text is a blessing to those who embrace that journey.

Bad religion can be sacrificed.

Bad religion should be sacrificed.

Violence begets violence – it does not beget holiness.

The God whom I believe in loves us and bears us no ill will, wants no violence, demands no pain.

Live on earth is evolving.

Human life is evolving.

The life of the spirit – religious life on earth is also evolving. I’ve seen it change. We’ve been part of it changing.

And I believe that God is with us as we question these texts and worry over them and puzzle our way through them.

This text teaches me that God has only good things in store for us.

And that idea is well worth an annual party, in any street on this earth.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

AMEN

41 responses to “The Columba Declaration”

Edward Andrews

11/02/2016

As Anglicans get down to the important issue of the niceties of Theology, lets get into the broad brush situation.
The relationships between the Churches of the Celtic tradition and the Southern tradition have been fraught since the 7th Century (Whitby). Part of the whole question surrounding the war of Independence (and before with King David was teh independence of the Scottish Church.
The irony is that the present attempt is to bring the Churches of the united Kingdom together may well blow back on them. While the Kirk today doesn’t mean much in Scotland the most secular part of the UK I’m not convinsed that playing footise over Bishops is going to impress the older members – the ones who voted No.
The fact is that the Scottish Episcopal Church has the Anglican franchise in Scotland. It is an authentic Scottish Church (especially if you ignore the instances when it has gone to England for Episcopal ordination.) and to negotiate over its head about something so sensitive it at the best discourteous.
Those of the reformed tradition don’t get wound up by the antics of a few Episcopalians. We seek whatever degree of true unity is available to us, but do not see the need for uniformity. I spent some very pleasant years as a guest of the Scottish Episcopal Church when the climate of the Kirk became unattractive to me, and am grateful for the table fellowship which I received.
The site of two big boys presuming to set things up is not pleasing. For the information of those who want to get up tight about the real presence, that is what the reformed tradition believes, we are Calvinists not followers of Zwingli. I am not going to seek to discuss which Greer philosopher we get our understanding of existence from.

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Father David

12/02/2016

Father Ron: let us not forget that the great Arthur Michael Ramsey was born an ecumenical baby. His maternal Grandfather was Vicar of Horbling in Lincolnshire and his paternal Grandfather was a Congregationalist Minister. His Anglican Grandfather baptised him and when in adult years he visited Horbling parish church he was deeply moved when standing by the font – the place where this great man of God began his Christian pilgrim journey. However, as a child he worshipped with his family at the Congregationalist church in Cambridge. To the great benefit of the Church of England and the Anglican Communion – the kind of High Jinks that took place next door at Little St. Mary’s proved to be an attractive magnet and so the pull of Anglo-Catholicism brought to us a spiritual giant and a contender (in company with William Temple) for the title of the greatest Archbishop of Canterbury of the 20th century and a man who yearned and longed for Christian Unity.
Edward Andrews: Even as we all long and hope for the unity of all Christians your words are wise when you point to unity not uniformity.

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Keith Barber

12/02/2016

Cynic I may be, but my first response is to ask what is the hidden agenda. For I’m pretty certain there will be one, whether it’s about trying to create an ecclesiastical bulwark against disintegration of the UK or get ++Welby an ally or two in the aftermath of the huge and hostile reaction to the Anglican Primates’ decision to punish TEC (sorry Kelvin) for its moves towards inclusion of LGBT people.

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1. Jeremy Bates
  
  13/02/2016
  
  Or perhaps it’s like the Easter-calendar announcement–a convenient way of changing the subject, at Synod and elsewhere.
  
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Father Ron Smith

12/02/2016

Whatever the motivation for this ‘secret’ accord with the Church of Scotland; simple courtesy would require that the Church of England promoters consult with their Episcopally governed equivalent in Scotia.

Another point is this; do the Presbyerians realise that they may have signed up to the catholic premise of recognition of the Real Presence of Christ in the Sacrament of the Holy Communion? Are they happy with that?

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1. Edward Andrews
  
  12/02/2016
  
  Well actually the Presbyterians believe “Worthy receivers, outwardly partaking of the visible elements, in this sacrament, do then also, inwardly by faith, really and indeed, yet not carnally and corporally but spiritually, receive and feed upon, Christ crucified, and all benefits of His death: the body and blood of Christ being then, not corporally or carnally, in, with, or under the bread and wine; yet, as really, but spiritually, present to the faith of believers in that ordinance, as the elements themselves are to their outward senses.” You will see the word real is there. Don’t know what the 39 articles say you believe.
  Those of us who are big on the real presence use the Platonic rather than the Aristotelian understanding of reality.
  
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  1. Father Ron Smith
    
    12/02/2016
    
    Not believers, then, in con-substantiation? Freely translated as bread and wine ‘together with’ the Body and Blood of Christ? Note, not the more literal trans-substantiation, which would nean the disappearance of the bread and wine. (although as some of my more scientific friends would say, this is a tautology.
    
    What all must agree on, though, is that some members of the Church of England, and many of its constituent partner Churches of the Anglican Communion, do have a problem with the ‘Real Presence’ – a reality that, for me, and I suspect most Anglican Catholics, means that the substance of the bread and wine consecrated at the Eucharist is truly “The Body and Blood of Christ” in accordance with the dominical instruction: “This IS my Body, my Blood” (Not, you will notice, “this REPRESENTS my Body, my Blood”). ‘A Sacrament is an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace’ – this saying sums it all up pretty well, I think
    
    Reply
    1. Kelvin
      
      12/02/2016
      
      I think it is time to draw the discussion about the real presence to a close on this comment thread. It is hardly the main point and I’ve never ever known a comment thread about transubstantiation to be constructive.
      
      Comments on the Columba Declaration welcome. Comments trying to explain what transubstantiation *really* means – not so much.
      
      Reply
      1. Edward Andrews
        
        12/02/2016
        
        Thank you Kelvin. As I see it the C of E has come poaching in your preserves. This is wrong and unhelpful. If there were going to be Anglican/Presbyterian dialogue the SEC should be the lead player. I have my own problems with the declaration as a Member of the Church of Scotland who seeks an end to the United Kingdom. However as a Catholic Christian I am in solidarity with my SEC brothers and sisters who have been left out of the loop. Both the Cof E synod and the Kirk’ General Assembly should reject the document, but I don’t suppose that they will.
Augur Pearce

16/02/2016

A contribution to the ‘establishment’ discussion: In my book the terms ‘establish’ and ‘Church of England’ both have more than one meaning. ‘Establish’, for example, can mean ‘set up, bring into existence’ (sense E1), or it can mean ‘endow, privilege’ (sense E2).

Most people who use it of the C of E use it in sense E2, and they understand the C of E (in what I might call sense C3) as an association with its own rules, distinct from the English nation but privileged by law in various ways (with some concomitant obligations).

In fact I think this describes the C of S position fairly well, but is quite wrong as regards the C of E. The C of E (I contend) is not distinct from the kingdom of England, it is that kingdom ‘wearing its spiritual hat’ (sense C1). England, as church, has various spiritual responsibilities to discharge, and in order to do so, it establishes (=creates; sense E1), by its law, a complex of specialist institutions, offices, rules, and assets which itself becomes known derivatively as the C of E (sense C2).

One clear example of how the C of E (in sense C1) and the C of S have been differently understood from very early times is found in comparing Richard Hooker’s well-known words ‘There is not any man of the Church of England, but the same man is also a member of the commonwealth, nor any man a member of the commonwealth which is not also of the Church of England…’ with the Church Act 1567, declaring those ‘quha outher gainsayis the word of the Evangell ressavit and apprevit as the heidis of the Confessioun of Faith professit in Parliament of befoir in the yeir of God 1560 … or that refusis the participatioun of the haly sacramentis as thay ar now ministrat, to be na memberis of the said Kirk within this realme now presently professit’.

The Church of England, in short, is simply England; the Church of Scotland is a privileged sectional group.

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1. Seph
  
  17/02/2016
  
  If this be so, it strikes me as uncomfortably caesaropapist. This may be one of the things that makes me uncomfortable when I am down south and find myself in a C of E church.
  
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