The scene is a very busy bookshop. A bepigtailed elderwoman protagonist approaches the information desk. She pauses for a moment and then asks…
“Excuse me, Religion is…?”
Her bearded interlocutor pauses for a moment and then replies….
“Religion is in the gold room, just up the stairs.”
He pauses once again, and then asks, “Or were you looking for a more esoteric answer?”
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.
Can Tony Blair survive attacks such as the letter from former diplomats which he received today? It is hard to imagine anyone governing Britain without even the grudging support of the Establishment.
Last week, I telephoned the Royal Mail Customer Care line to ask them to deliver my post to the right house and everyone else's post to their own houses rather than mine.They have written this morning apologising and enclosing a book of twelve first class stamps in compensation for my troubles. This is was good wheeze…
Today, we celebrate a Feast Day. Today we remember one of the younger followers of the Lord. One of the witnesses of the first days of the church. Someone who himself wrote down stories and sayings and passed them on to us so that we could find faith in the risen Lord. Today is St…
The link referred to in this week's sermon is http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/judaism/features/jewish_eyes/It is a rather interesting account of someone looking at Jesus through Jewish Eyes.
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