by Fr. Edward Foley, Capuchin<\/em><\/p>\n It is not unusual to have the Sunday lectionary provide us What is less common, however, For two weeks in a row, however, Last week that came to us as the closing segment This week, we are again immersed in Genesis In all honesty, I find these stories Last week, scripture recounted how For me, this is not a comforting image of a benevolent God How do we love a God who not only has the capacity Then there is this week\u2019s heartrending story Earlier in Genesis, when God first called Abraham When Sarah eventually did conceive Isaac But Sarah was jealous of Ishmael So as we approach today\u2019s story, The ordinary approach for preaching on this distressing text The exact nature of Abraham\u2019s faith is unclear. And what about Isaac? While it might seem a little odd, maybe even self-serving, No, he didn\u2019t send me an email approving my homily, Well, what troubles me is an apparent definition of faith One way out of this dilemma is by reimaging this Genesis tale, This so-called sacrifice of Abraham Yet, ironically, it is a sacrifice without destruction. One could even suggest that this tale But maybe there is even more in this perplexing text Scapegoating is a practice employed by folk In the Bible, a scapegoat was literally a young goat More generally, in contemporary theory By banishing or socially erasing, Our criminal justice system regularly scapegoats the innocent More generally, scapegoating is a common political tactic, Now you might be asking yourself For me, the connections are clear and multiple. But even more, in his willingness to take on the sin – The crucifixion, in all of its ghastly horror, In the process, disciples are called to a similar transformation Rather, in the image of the paschal lamb, There are no more Isaacs in our midst, There is a striking memorial in Haman-gun in South Korea An apostle of reconciliation, The most amazing story about him, however, concerns Instead, he adopted the murderer of his children, In 1950, in the midst of the Korean war, A few weeks later, a procession took his body Leading the procession, as oldest son and chief mourner, The voice from the skies in today\u2019s gospel But as Pastor Son made clear, We pray that in this holy season In this transfiguring journey, we pray [1] Joy of the Gospel, no. 153 Transforming duty to care, obligation to commitment, legal requirements to love.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":54765,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[3119,3294],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-54764","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-plaza-new-ws","category-ars-praedicandi"],"yoast_head":"\n
\nwith some gospel story about Jesus in action,
\nbe that moving into the desert
\nto struggle with his own demons,
\nor ascending a mountain
\nto commune with the prophets.<\/p>\n
\nis an accompanying first reading
\nthat also relates some notable tale.
\nMore often than not, the first reading
\noffers a prophetic text or ancient wisdom
\nbolstering some key point in the Gospel.<\/p>\n
\nwe are treated to compelling stories
\nfrom the Old Testament.<\/p>\n
\nof the story of the great deluge
\nwith God establishing a new covenant
\nwith Noah and his descendants.<\/p>\n
\nand offered another covenant story
\nin which God reconfirms his promises to Abraham
\nto bless him abundantly
\nand raise up from him innumerable descendants.<\/p>\n
\nquite disturbing.<\/p>\n
\nthe creator who breathed his own life into Adam and Eve
\nchose to erase virtually all evidence
\nof his first attempt to shape a human race
\nin the divine image.<\/p>\n
\nwho in next week\u2019s first reading
\nwill command all to worship and love him
\nwhile threatening those who do not appease
\nhis admitted divine jealousy.<\/p>\n
\nto eradicate the human race at will,
\nbut according to sacred revelation
\nhas actually almost done the deed?<\/p>\n
\nthat comes to us in a highly edited version.<\/p>\n
\nand promised to raise his descendants into a great nation,
\nthe patriarch was already 75 years old and childless.
\nAs was the custom in those days
\nhis barren wife gave her slave-girl, Hagar, to Abraham,
\nand Hagar conceived his first son, Ismael.<\/p>\n
\nshe was very old and Abraham was already 100 years old.<\/p>\n
\nand Abraham eventually dispatches his first born
\nwith his slave-girl mother
\ninto the wilderness.<\/p>\n
\nit comes with the weight of Abraham\u2019s & Sarah\u2019s age.
\nAbraham has already pushed out his first born
\nand now God wants him to sacrifice Isaac –
\nthe lynchpin of the promised innumerable descendants.<\/p>\n
\nis to focus on the amazing faith and steadfastness of Abraham,
\nwhom God keeps promising a glorious future,
\na nation rising from his offspring,
\nwhile the same God appears to keep jeopardizing that promise
\nwith the dismissal of Ishmael
\nand the impending sacrifice of Isaac.<\/p>\n
\nAt one point in the story
\nhe tells the servants who accompanied him and the boy
\nto stay while he and his son go off to sacrifice,
\nnoting that \u201cwe will worship and come back to you.\u201d
\nDid he expect God to resurrect the child after his death?<\/p>\n
\nHe is no infant here, for he carries the wood up the mountain.
\nHe was old enough to resist, but why didn\u2019t he?
\nIs this really a story about his faith as well?<\/p>\n
\nfor me to use this preaching moment
\nto try to make sense of this reading
\nfor my own sanity and spirituality,
\nPope Francis seems to suggest that this is okay.<\/p>\n
\nbut in his first great instruction about preaching
\nthe Pope actually encourages homilists to ask questions like:
\nWhat does this text say to me?
\nWhat is it about this word that moves me? and
\nWhat troubles me about this text? [1]<\/p>\n
\nas blind obedience
\nto what could appear to be a jealous even vengeful God.
\nFor my spiritual well-being, I need another message here.<\/p>\n
\nnot as an ancient commentary on faith
\nbut rather a wisdom teaching about sacrifice.<\/p>\n
\nis acknowledged by Jewish scholars as the most perfect sacrifice
\nin the Hebrew Scriptures.<\/p>\n
\nGod is not appeased by death,
\nbut as the Psalmist notes, by a contrite heart (51:17).<\/p>\n
\nis an anti-sacrificial one,
\na moral injunction against killing –
\nespecially against the killing of children,
\na practice the Hebrew scriptures themselves document. [2]<\/p>\n
\nthat can lead us to a deeper meaning of Lent
\nand shed light on Jesus\u2019 own transfiguration.<\/p>\n
\nas a strategy for addressing sin, rivalry and violence.<\/p>\n
\nupon whom the people symbolically cast their sins
\nand then dispatched the goat into the wilderness
\nto carry away the community\u2019s transgressions and guilt. [3]<\/p>\n
\nscapegoating is a social mechanism we employ
\nto deflect some blame,
\nespecially one that endangers the stability of a group
\nby placing it at the feet of some designated troublemaker.<\/p>\n
\nimprisoning or even executing that individual,
\nsocial order is restored
\nand a community settles back into contentment,
\nbelieving that they have eradicated the problem
\nby eliminating the offending individual,
\nregardless of whether they are actually guilty of anything.<\/p>\n
\nso that someone can be blamed and incarcerated
\nand the offended segments of society appeased.<\/p>\n
\nand whether it is the failure of the power grid in Texas
\nor a failure of the security at the Capitol building in DC,
\nfinding someone to blame,
\nrather than discovering and fixing the root cause,
\nis a favorite pastime.<\/p>\n
\nwhat this digression into sacrifice and scapegoating
\nhas to do with a gospel about Jesus\u2019 transfiguration,
\nor even the Lenten journey that lies before us?<\/p>\n
\nFirst, Jesus is not some unknowing or unwilling victim
\nduped into sacrifice.
\nRather, he is wise in the ways of God and the ways of the world.
\nHe knows that he is being set up as a scapegoat
\nto divert heat away from Jewish and Roman authorities.
\nHe even recognizes subversion among his closest followers
\nand yet willingly enters into the circle of death.<\/p>\n
\nto take on the prejudice and derision and animosity
\nordinarily heaped upon the outcasts and powerless –
\nJesus breaks the cycle of violence,
\nfor he chooses to pass it on to no one.<\/p>\n
\nwas God\u2019s rejection of sacrificing or scapegoating others.
\nJesus\u2019 transfiguring gift, therefore,
\nwas not simply a singular conversation
\nwith law Moses and Elijah.
\nRather, it was rather a prophetic transfiguring
\nof the commandments themselves,
\ntransforming duty to care,
\nobligation to commitment
\nand legal requirements to love.<\/p>\n
\nthat does not allow us to leverage privilege or piety
\nin order to sacrifice or scapegoat others.<\/p>\n
\nwe are commissioned
\nto absorb the violence and destruction and prejudice
\nwithout passing it on to others.<\/p>\n
\nno more unknowing victims to scapegoat,
\nbut only God\u2019s beloved to uphold and embrace.<\/p>\n
\ndedicated to the Protestant saint Son Yang-won. [4]
\nHe was a remarkable Christian in many ways:
\nministering to lepers,
\nrefusing to abandon his religion
\nduring the Japanese occupation,
\nand imprisoned as an enemy of the empire.<\/p>\n
\nhe led a movement to reconcile other pastors
\nwho had submitted to Shinto worship
\nduring that same occupation.<\/p>\n
\nthe killing of his own sons by communist sympathizers in 1948
\nfor defending each other and their Christian faith.
\nWhen the murderer of his sons came up for trial,
\nhe sent word through a surviving daughter
\nthat he did not want the boy, Chai-Sun,
\nto be prosecuted or punished.<\/p>\n
\ntaught him of Christ,
\nand this new son became a Christian minister.<\/p>\n
\nPastor Son refused to abandon his flock in the north
\nand was eventually arrested by the communist army.
\nOn September 27, 1950, he was executed for his faith.<\/p>\n
\nto its final resting place on a small island,
\nwhere he was buried next to his murdered children.<\/p>\n
\nwas Chai-son,
\natheist transfigured into Christian,
\nmurderer transfigured into minister,
\nand criminal transfigured into a beloved son.<\/p>\n
\nproclaims the belovedness of God\u2019s only son,
\na belovedness that may seem totally beyond our frail natures.<\/p>\n
\nthere is parental pride not only in children
\nwho sacrifice their own lives for Christ,
\nbut also pride in a son who turned from his own instincts
\nfor scapegoating and sacrificing others
\nto become a beloved child,
\nbirthed of reconciliation and love.<\/p>\n
\nwe too might be likewise transfigured
\nto a way of life
\nthat is only self-sacrificing,
\nnever scapegoating of any sister or brother
\nand so more clearly reveal our own belovedness.<\/p>\n
\nthat our Eternal parent might be even more
\nproud of those of us who profess to be
\nchildren of the font, children of the Light,
\neven more proud of these daughters
\nand proud of these sons,
\nthrough Christ our Lord.<\/p>\n
\n
\n[2] E.g., Judges 11:30-9, Leviticus 18:21
\n[3] Leviticus 16:21-22
\n[4] Park Hyun-jung, White Flame: The Story of Rev. son Yang-won, trans. Kim Myungjun. Kindle Edition.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"