#genesis | with backward mutters of dissevering power

Continuing in a series entitled, Where Are You?, another poem from Genesis 22 has come together. Genesis 22:2 reads, “He said, ‘Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you.’”

If we are familiar with this event and know the story of Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac, we interject what we know into the narrative without thinking about it. However, this interaction may be more dramatic and may read more ambiguously if we were reading it for the first time.

In this sonnet I try and capture the sense of a dialogue between the Lord and Abraham and also to flesh out the ambiguity about whom the Lord is speaking. [I believe it was from Dr. Timothy Keller that I first heard this; which is to say, he should get credit for the idea but not the blame of what I’ve made of it]. As the ambiguity unwinds the dramatic tension increases until the name of the son of whom the Lord is speaking is spoken.

If helpful, you may listen to me read the sonnet via the player below.

The Lord spoke and said to me, “Take your son.”
And not knowing which I said, “I have two.”

And the Lord replied, “Take your only son.”
Slowly, I considered, “El Shaddai, you
Know of all that there are two that are….
I have two sons who, the same as the other,
Are each the first of numberless of stars.
Both are my sons; each, the only son of their mother.”

Pressing, the Lord said, “The son whom you love.”
And with the press I started, protested,
“Two, my Lord; both, only sons whom I love;
Neither denied, nor your sign neglected.”

“Take your only son, whom you love as life,
Your laughter, Isaac, and him sacrifice.”

This weekend Grace Presbyterian Church is hosting an art exhibit for Advent which will feature portraiture, pyrography and music. If you’re in the area, please stop by to take it in. Pieces will be installed each week and will walk us towards, Bethlehem and the Nativity.

Here’s the flyer for the exhibit.

As the exhibit artists present their work, I will be preaching on each of the themes. This poem is based on the first subject of the Advent theme of “Hope”.

If helpful, you may listen to me read the poem via the player below.

Where are you,
My enfolding twin, one who for me
Fits in embrace, who entwined and enmeshed
Completes, in coupling makes he and she,
Who is bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh?

Where are you,
Who ever-present, hides, is unseen,
Who forbids one thing, though all things are good,
Gives all for food, yet forbids we glean
What delights our eyes, what we want, would?

Where are you?
We wait blushing, trying to hide
From seeing as is, not as we would be;
In enmity, driven, cast from your side,
Wrapped in self-making, clothed in your tree’s leaves?

Where are you,
My image: father-husband, mother-wife?
What bleak breeze blew, moved you to take
The forbidden fruit, eat, gamble your life,
And the lives of you children forsake?

Where are you?
Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?
My Father, I thirst, drink for her the cup,
For your love obey, for her take the tree
That my bride ‘neath my love may eat and sup.

Here we are Lord,
Taken by he who takes us in hand,
Whose hands hold all things, WHO IS, I AM.
We hold to nothing, make no demand.
We are here. Do your will. Work your plan.