And the expectation of blind faith
Proper 8A | Genesis 22:1-14, Matthew 10:40-42
There was an American rabbi in California who invited his students to go home and read this passage from Genesis, chapter 22. He said “Read it through. Sit with it. Then read it through again. Read it four times. Then come in tomorrow ready to talk about it.”
When the rabbi walked in the next day, he asked one of his students to read the story out loud to the class, so they all could hear it again. And he sat there, with his eyes closed for a minute. Sixty seconds of total silence. His students were just waiting for something to happen. For the rabbi to break the tension. And when he finally spoke he asked them if they had any questions.
The students were quiet, most of them looking down at their hands. They were good students—not one of them wanted to look stupid. Finally one screws up the courage to say something. He asks “Why would God ask this of Abraham?”
“Hmmm,” the rabbi intones. “Other questions?”
More silence before another student asks what Abraham must have been thinking. And a third asked about Isaac. Then silence. Waiting. And the rabbi, too, waited.
Then, after another minute, he burst into the biggest smile, and spread his arms out so wide and said to the class “Wow! I am in awe of you all. You have so much more faith than I do. You have so few questions of this story and I have so many.”
For a limited time, you may find the audio here.
