I is for Israel

In the Divine Alphabet, I is for Israel.
    The late Lutheran theologian Robert Jenson put Israel into his identification of God. Here’s the opening sentence of the heart of Jenson’s systematic theology: “God is whoever raised Jesus from the dead, having before raised Israel from Egypt.” God’s identity cannot be separated from his choice of Israel, and his action is rescuing Israel from her enslavement under Pharaoh.
    It’s like a marriage; it’s like the Song of Songs. “My beloved is mine and I am his” could be words sung in response by Israel to her God. Just as there’s no thinking of a husband apart from his wife, so there’s no thinking of God apart from Israel. God has created all the peoples of the earth, but this people, Israel, he has chosen to be his own.
    Why? We can get a sense of it from the purpose of Israel amongst the peoples of the earth. God calls Abraham and multiplies his descendants for the sake of all of humanity: “through you, all the nations of the world will be blessed” (Gen. 12). But we must also admit it does not make sense. Why Abraham? Why Israel? There is no answer other than that God chose him, chose them. The prophets will tell Israel as much later on, reminding Israel that she wasn’t better or wiser or smarter or more refined than anyone else. God just fell in love with her.
    The heart of it is this: “I will be your God and you will be my people.”
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    Although there is no necessity for anything God does, and in particular there is no necessity for God to create or to choose a people or indeed even to care about human beings, the fact is that God has voluntarily and without any necessity tied himself up with people. There is no way to understand God, the real God, the God who really exists—no way to understand him apart from Israel. God will not be an abstraction. God is not a universal principle; he is not even something great like Truth or Love or Beauty. God, as Jenson says, is the one who raised Israel from Egypt, who rescued his beloved from her oppression, who stuck with her and shaped her and gave her the Law and spoke to her prophets; who did these things and who keeps on doing them.
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    “Israel” was, first, a name given to Abraham’s grandson Jacob. In the midst of a lonely night, poised on the edge of danger, Jacob was met by an angel and had to wrestle with him. The angel was strong, but so was Jacob. Jacob also was shrewd, so he asked the angel’s name. However, the angel—who was really God—did not reveal his own name (only centuries later would he reveal his name, and that was to Moses). Instead, the wrestling angel gave Jacob a new name: Israel.
    Israel: do you see the “el” at the end of it? That means “God.” Is-ra-el means “He who wrestled (or wrestles) with God.” Jacob’s name reveals who he was wrestling with.
    It also reveals God’s character. God is one with whom we wrestle.
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    Remember in “Fiddler on the Roof,” how Tevye talks to God? At one point, having recounted all the bad things that have happened to the Jews, he asks God: Couldn’t you choose someone else for awhile? Do you always have to choose us?
    “Israel” indeed points to this second thing about God. Not only is he identified with the people he chose; but also, the relationship he has with people is not a simple one. It involves wrestling.
    It might be good to ponder how you have had to wrestle with God.
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    Out & About (virtually speaking). I preached on Ascension Day, May 21, at St. Matthew’s Cathedral; the sermon starts at about 12 minutes in and goes for about 8 minutes: https://www.facebook.com/StMatthewsCathedralDallas/videos/1280864825458018/ ... You’ll be able to see I really like the Ascension.

 

 

Safety Is (Also) Not Last

 A couple of decades ago, tragedy struck not a family in our parish but a family close to one of our families. A teenager and a few of his friends were on the roof of an empty parking garage, racing their cars and, it seems, daring each other to go faster and faster. One of them hit the edge guard and, I think, his car lofted over it into the air, crashing to the ground. However it happened, the driver was dead on the spot.
    The lesson was plain, if hard. It is not a sign of bravery to be foolish. Aristotle says true courage is somewhere between timidity and recklessness. We can be too careful, and as a result fail to act when we should. At the other extreme, we can be too careless, and act when we should hold back.
    T. S. Eliot writes: “Teach us to care and not to care / Teach us to sit still.” Learning to wait is an important part of life. Yet the Christian end is not a Buddhist stillness: the end is to act when the time is right.
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    A standard example for students of morality runs like this. It is wrong to cut off someone else’s leg. But it is not wrong for a surgeon to remove a gangrenous leg. What’s the difference? From a bare description, they look the same: a torturer and a doctor each perform the same action. Indeed, in an isolated place—a desert, a battlefield—the two actions could bring equal pain to the person whose leg is being cut off. The difference, of course, is not only in the intention (the doctor intends to save a life, the torturer to inflict pain) but also in the presence of the gangrene.
    Surgeons impress me. They care about their patients’ well being. They have love, empathy, and in general the good of their patients in mind. But when the time comes, they do not hesitate to act decisively, with knives and saws and the other proper tools of their craft.
    It is wrong to operate needlessly, and wrong to hesitate to cut when it is time to cut. Surgeons learn to care and not to care.
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    I am impressed also by people who have been trained in the military. Soldiers learn to acknowledge fear and to bracket it. They are taught to manage risk. You can’t be a soldier and not take on risk, all the way to the risk of death to yourselves and others. But risk needs management. It can be managed, in the best circumstances, in a layered, intelligent manner. An order is handed down. The officer transmits the order to his or her people. It is not negotiable, but in carrying it out they have a measure of discretion. “We have to do this, but what is the best way for us to do this?” Time permitting, there may be discussion. Decisions are made, then it goes on down to the next level, and so forth.
    What one sees in this training is a general outlook to do things in the smartest way they can—and an important part of “smartest” involves safety—without being held back by the risks to safety. Risk is a given; how will we manage risk?
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    God clearly wants us to learn (through this Virus, as always) that love of one another is different from sentimental care. Love learns when to care and when not to care. Love takes on risks, but does so without being reckless. When the Word of God took on our humanity, he knew it would kill him. But there was nothing reckless about it.
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    But just for fun: The film “Safety Last” is hilarious. From 1923, starring Harold Lloyd (who is worthy of the fame of Charlie Chaplin) and Mildred Davis, it will give you 70 minutes of fun.
    My local newspaper once reported, with regard to a minor accident, that the driver was charged with “wreckless driving.” I sent it to the New Yorker and got a polite note of thanks, saying this is a common error.

 

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The Rev. Canon Victor Lee Austin. Ph.D., is the Theologian-in-Residence for the diocese and is the author of several books including, "Friendship: The Heart of Being Human" and "A Post-Covid Catechesis.: