Father Tim Lemlin
Abraham is deemed by Jews, Muslims and Christians as the father of faith. He is a hero. Yet his story is something less than heroic. He doesn't slay any dragons. He doesn't win any wars. He doesn't rescue anyone from oppression. He even intends to kill Isaac as a sacrifice to God. We could say, then, that Abraham in many ways is an anti-hero. He seemingly is never in a position of power or control. He begins a journey into an unknown land trusting in a promise made to him by an unknown God. He has no guarantee, and no way to make this God keep the promise that has been made. This is the "deep, terrifying darkness" that "enveloped him." He is not in a position of power and control. He is in a position of weakness and dependency.
None of us can begin in this place. We first need to experience and know deeply within ourselves that our lives have meaning, that we are special, and that we are chosen. (Abraham also begins in this position.) This is the first function of religion. It gives us meaning, creates boundaries, and gives us our individual identity.
Those of you who were children before the late 1960's experienced this most prominently. The church as we knew it clearly defined who we were. It set the boundaries. It told us that we were set apart by telling us that we are the only true church and therefore the best church. This is an important step in our development. It is a necessary inflation of who we understand ourselves to be so that we can handle the equally necessary deflation that is meant to happen later in our lives which is always associated with some form of terror, darkness, or setting sun.
Unfortunately many of us never get beyond this necessary first step. We stay in this position of power, judgment, and isolation. We make sure that we continue to know that we are good in various and sundry ways. We continue to make sure that we remain in control by finding ways in which we believe that we can placate God. Usually, for me, this is achieved by my finding ways to prove that I am in the right and someone else is wrong. (We see this with Abraham when he gives Sarah to a local chieftain telling him that she is his sister, and then tries to justify himself to God by saying that he was afraid. If the chieftain, in other words, hadn't frightened him he would not have lied.)
The second function of religion is to bring us to a place in which we surrender our self-control, our need for exclusivity, and our need to win - to be right. It is a place in which the inflating exclusivity is slowly replaced with humiliating inclusivity. It is a place of complete dependency because we clearly can see that we are not good (only God is good), sacrifices that make us feel good about ourselves are ineffective and self-deflating mercy is required. Our identity becomes grounded in something bigger than ourselves that allows our boundaries to inexplicably expand. It is always a position of weakness filled with the power of surrender and never a position of power filled with the weakness of control.
The journey of Abraham is the journey of Jesus who always identifies himself with the weak and the poor, the sinners and the ostracized. It is the journey to which Jesus invites each of us to follow him. It is the journey of Lent in which we begin with the reminder that we are useless ash that only God can transform into resurrected sons and daughters of God, not because we have made ourselves good and acceptable to God but because God is good and merciful to us. This is our true identity. It is an identity gratuitously given to us. It is an identity that we only begin to see once we have built a tower of personal identity and then have leaped from it. This leap we call faith.
It is an identity that Abraham manifests near the end of his life when he offers hospitability to strangers by waiting upon them as they ate the food and drink that he provides, acts as their servant when they continue their journey, and intercedes for the people of Sodom pleading for mercy. Each of these is a position of weakness - powerlessness - that reveals a person who is free of the tyranny of self-preservation. We don't see a man who is afraid of hell - like many of us are - we see a man who has walked through hell and by the grace of God has been resurrected. He is, as St. Paul tells us, the father of faith. We are his children.
