Dear Reader,
The following is part 2 of this series, God Was Not In the Lesson Plans.
Part 1, the introduction, can be found here.
For this installment, I will be using She/Her pronouns for God as an exercise in challenging how we think about the divine. While I usually don’t use pronouns at all, but rather just the names God or HaShem or The Infinite Creative Energy, I recognize that a masculinized sense of God remains ingrained in me on some level. So, I wanted to use She/Her pronouns today to shake things up.
Another note. The following deals with stories about Sarah and Abraham. If you are not familiar with them, you might want to go back to Genesis and doing some reading (start at the end of Genesis 11). You also might not want to. What do I know about what you do or do not want to do? I’m done. Here we go.
Love, Meg
Sarah didn’t believe in God. Well, she didn’t believe God could do what God said she would do. Or, maybe Sarah did, but God seemed to think she didn’t. After learning that she would become pregnant in her old age, the Torah says that Sarah laughed. And God said to Abraham:
Why is it that Sarah laughed, saying, “Can I really give birth when I am so old?” Is anything too difficult for Adonai? At the appointed time I will return to you—in about a year—and Sarah will have a son. Sarah denied it saying, “I didn’t laugh!”For she was afraid. But He said, “No—for you did laugh” (Genesis 18:13-15).
Sarah is our first matriarch. The mother of the Hebrews. She is foretold to bear the child that was promised in the covenant God made with Abraham. At first glance, we might consider that Sarah laughs at God because she can’t fathom God’s infinite capacity. But Karl-Josef Kushel importantly points out in his Theology of Laughter, that “[Sarah] does not yet know at whom she is laughing. So, Sarah is not really laughing at God, but at men, guests in her husband’s tent.” She overhears the news of her future pregnancy. Sure, Sarah’s laughter is directed at news from God, but in this moment we might say that she is more accurately doubting herself. She laughs at the idea that everything she thinks she knows about age and childbirth will be undone. Little does she know, God hears her laughter and asks, “Why is it that Sarah laughed?” Yeah, why did she?
Was Sarah’s laughter her instinctual expression of doubt? She asks, “Can I really give birth when I am so old?” (Genesis 18:13). Kuschel thinks so: “[her laughter is] not one of perplexity or despair, but one of doubt.”
Let’s explore other options. Maybe she laughed out of fear. Don’t we laugh when we are afraid? Perhaps she does not want to get her hopes up and fears that even suggesting a pregnancy might result in too much hope. A hope that scares her.
Or, Sarah could have laughed because she thought the suggestion was flat out ridiculously funny. How could she give birth? At her age?! Hilarious! Hahaha. Good one, God.
Most likely, Sarah’s laugh had all of these dimensions, for what thing is ever purely one thing? And fittingly, just as I’m wondering the motivation for Sarah’s laughter, so too, is God: “Why is it that Sarah laughed?” (Genesis 18:13).
So, God investigates. Sarah denies. Perhaps she fears that God will punish her, maybe even by rescinding this future miracle child. But, if Sarah fears this, then doesn’t part of Sarah believe she can have a baby? Alas, we will never know. What we read is that God notices and questions. But in doing so, God creates a space for dialogue with Sarah – it is through Sarah’s laughter and all it represents that they draw closer. “You did laugh,” God says. Now God is directly addressing Sarah – they have entered into relationship.
Sure enough, Sarah bears Isaac and proclaims:
God has made laughter for me! Everyone who hears will laugh with me…Who would have said to Abraham, ‘Sarah has nursed children’? For I have given birth to a son in his old age!(Genesis 21:6-7).
That symbol of doubt and disbelief – laughter – has now become the name of the future of the Hebrews. Isaac. Her doubt did not deter God’s blessing after all. It named him. Sarah says, “God has made laughter for me!” This means that God has simultaneously provided this season of joy and this season of disbelief.
Laughter, Sarah envisions, will spread as people hear of her sacred occasion, the improbable birth of her son. Now, I don’t think the point is that with Isaac’s birth all disbelief is replaced with joy. In fact, Kuschel writes, “a literal translation of [Isaac] is ‘God laughs,’” for it is God who names Isaac when She says, “Sarah your wife will bear you a son and you must name him Isaac” (Genesis 17:19).
God has joined Sarah in laughing and chooses to enshrine Sarah’s doubt with her joy in the miracle of Isaac. Sarah’s doubt is memorialized in Isaac and yet also redeemed in Isaac.
In discussing Sarah’s laughter, we quickly forget that in fact it was Abraham that laughed first. Earlier in the text, after God says to Abraham that She will give him a son, the text reads: “Then Abraham fell on his face and laughed, and said to his heart, “Will a son be born to a 100-year-old man? Or will Sarah—who is 90 years old—give birth?” (Genesis 17:17).
To this God calmly continues that, yes, this will happen, despite Abraham’s laughter. But God does not engage with Abraham’s laughter as She does with Sarah’s. Maybe only after being laughed at for a second time does God feel it necessarily to intervene: maybe the first instance of laughter caught God by surprise and only upon the second instance does She say, wait a minute, what is all this laughter about? Or, maybe because Abraham fell on his face God did not take the laughter to be a sign of doubt or challenge but as overflowing joy or hope, making his following questions less inquisitive and more a way of saying, please let it be so. Regardless of the precise interpretation, by both prostrating himself and laughing, in this moment, Kuschel writes: “‘faith’ manifestly presents itself in the garb of laughing doubt of God.”
Faith manifested in doubt. Now that’ll make your head spin.
Finally, the Torah tells us that Abraham also names Isaac. In doing so, he marries his and Sarah’s doubt and faith in the symbol of their future. It is with a multidimensional laughter from our first father, mother, and God that the family of the covenant takes form.
But wait, there’s more.
Shortly after Abraham laughs (as mentioned above) he notoriously questions God’s judgement in dealing with Sodom and Gomorrah (you know, the raining fire and brimstone upon a lot of people even though some of them are innocent of evil). He says, “Here I venture to speak to my Lord, I who am but dust and ashes” (Genesis 18:27).
Here Abraham intentionally enters into a conflict with God, prefacing it by acknowledging his smallness. Abraham is asking permission to question God’s judgement by showing his humility – confessing his smallness. Whereas Sarah has to retract and deny her doubt, Abraham asserts it.
In fact, this whole scenario may have been set up so that Abraham would intercede and thus question God’s will. Tower of Torah, Nehama Leibowitz z”l, identifies this as “[A] divine intention to put Abraham to the test to see whether he would beseech mercy for [the people of Sodom].” Maybe God wanted to see if Abraham would doubt Her judgement.
But what can we say about the motivation of Abraham’s protest? On the one hand, we might say Abraham was trying to coerce God into saving the people of the cities. When Abraham asks, “Will You sweep away the innocent along with the guilty?” (Genesis 18:23) does he mean this rhetorically or literally? In other words, is Abraham questioning God’s decree in order to change it? Or, is Abraham earnestly investigating for the sake of it? Although I am tempted to read this text as Abraham going to bat for the people, especially when he says to God, “Far be it from You! Shall the Judge of all the earth deal justly?”(Genesis 18:25) it is possible that Abraham is simply curious about God’s ways. After all, he does end with a question which asks us to consider: what exactly is the nature of God’s justice?
But even God is questioning how this scenario will play out, saying: “Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do?” (Genesis 18:17). God also says She needs to investigate the situation in Sodom and Gomorrah. Is She hiding that She does need to evaluate the sins of the people before bringing justice, or is She hiding that She has already decided to rain down burning sulfur on the cities? Does God actually need Abraham’s help in deciding the fate of the people, or does She just create a space to welcome debate and push-back from Abraham? Does God want to be challenged? Even doubted? What kind of theology is this?!
As God declares Her plan to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah , Abraham draws near. Before he asks or says anything, we read, “and Abraham drew near” (Genesis 18:23). He draws near in order to protest. He stays close to stay in conversation with God. Maybe it is this coming closer that God desires – a strengthened connection born from questioning or curiosity or doubt.
Here’s the kicker. Abraham does not question God’s command to sacrifice Isaac. And so, in that moment, on Mount Moriah, with a knife in Abraham’s hand, God draws away from Abraham. It is an angel who appears to stop Isaac’s slaughter. God has left.
Might the haunting test of the Akedah have been two-fold? Abraham passed the humility part and as such his decedents are blessed. But maybe he failed the challenge part. And maybe and in his failing he was deprived of proximity to the divine – deprived of a direct relationship.
After this moment, Abraham and God never speak again. Maybe he followed too much.
Maybe what is sacred is the room left to draw near.
Sources:
Kuschel, Karl-Josef. Laughter: A Theological Reflection, trans. John Bowden (London: SCM Press, 1994).
Leibowitz, Nehama. New Studies in Bereshit: In the Context of Ancient and Modern Jewish Bible Commentary, trans. Aryeh Newman (Israel: Major Wallach Press, 2010), 182.