One response to “Eid, Pride and Abraham’s Sacrifice”
-
As one who grew up(?) in churches leaning toward the view “it’s a tough story for a tough world, how else would God be just?” in varying degrees, I agree the face-value-narrative understanding of the story is repellant.
One thing stood out for the first time during Sunday’s reading: the plurality in Abraham’s line – “…and we will return to you”. I’ve been idly wondering about that since.
It doesn’t make the story wholly acceptable as Abraham still ploughs on ever closer.
But if one’s goal is to find a “by faith, Abraham” in there, better to say it’s the prior confidence that things will somehow work out well (which I thought was how Hebrews was trying to define it), than to locate the commendable quality in violence (which, by rabbiting on about resurrection, Hebrews does).In the absence of other clear & wholly mitigating contexts in which to place the story, certainly it’s simplest, easiest and probably best to file it under “that’s how they saw God back then” and move swiftly on.
Oofft.
Previous Posts
-
Liturgy Instruction Video
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rh_nqtp3VrU] There is so much to say about this video. The scary oversize puppets around the altar and the white sixty-somethings jigging about to African drums are parts of the mass that you just don’t expect, do you? Don’t miss the asperges that you can see three minutes in. And the censing of the gospel…
-
Count yourself in
This Sunday is the Sunday on which the Scottish Episcopal Church counts whoever is in church. Each congregation is asked to give statistics each year which include the number of services you have through the year, the number of people on the roll and so on. One of the statistics is the number of people…
-
Busy weekend ahead
Its a busy weekend ahead. Its the Feast of Christ the King which we are keeping on Sunday morning and we are nodding in St Cecilia’s direction later in the day with an organ recital at 3 pm from Peter Yardley-Jones and a big glorious Evensong at night. Somewhere along the way we’ve an AGM…
-
Relics in Space
Following our discussion of relics the other week, it appears that we are being orbited by one. This pic comes from the blog of someone on the International Space Station. Apparently they have four icons, a big cross and a reliquary cross (containing yet another sliver of the true cross). Space people have often been…
Leave a Reply