Holy Chutzpa

Genesis 22: 1-14
St. Stephen Presbyterian Church
Fort Worth, TX
Rev. Dr. Fritz Ritsch, Preacher

The Tuesday Bible Study has focused on Genesis and just recently we did the story of Abraham taking Isaac to be sacrificed. One of the participants said, “Why all of a sudden is Abraham so docile, so unquestioning? What happened to the guy who negotiated with God over whether to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah? If Abraham was willing to negotiate with God to save such wicked cities, why wouldn’t he negotiate with God for his own son?”

It’s a good question.

Then of course there’s the other question this story raises, the one that bothers us all: Why would God ask Abraham to sacrifice his own son? No matter how we pretty up or demythologize or attempt to explain it away, we can’t escape this story’s deeply emotional and powerful effect on us, or the questions it raises.

Biblical scholar Bart Ehrman, who teaches at UNC Chapel Hill, says that in his Bible classes he makes his students wrestle with the problem of suffering as it was put 2500 years ago by the philosopher Epicurus:

Is God willing to prevent evil but unable? Then he is impotent.
Is he able but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing? Whence, then, evil?[1]

He believes that if you don’t wrestle with these questions, then you will never develop real-world, honest faith. I agree with him. It’s spiritually dishonest for us to pretend that the problem of evil doesn’t sorely test our faith that God is good.

Jewish rabbis who have interpreted this story down through the ages have pointed out that really the questions it raises are not just about God. They are also about humanity. How are we to react when God calls upon us to deal with the unthinkable?

When we read the stories of the “heroes” of the Bible, we forget that they aren’t necessarily always meant to be role models for us. I don’t think Abraham’s faith was as great as was needed when he conceded with such docility to the demand to sacrifice his son. I think it actually showed a lack of faith. He should have argued with God, exactly as he did over Sodom and Gomorrah, exactly as Moses later does in the book of Exodus. He should have said exactly what he said when he was defending those cities: “Far be it from you! Shall not the judge of all the earth do what is just?” (Gen. 18: 25).

This kind of questioning of God actually often happens in the OT and is celebrated in Judaism. It’s called chutzpa kelapei Shmaya, which means “spiritual audacity.” As Rabbi David Nekrutman puts it, it “is challenging God in the name of God. It is a chutzpa that appeals to an authority within authority, to the conscience that is shared by divine believers and the Supreme Commander, and to the godliness within God.”[1] Not only that, this kind of chutzpa—this spiritual audacity—is exactly what God expects from God’s people.

One of the great problems—maybe the great problem of human existence—is the problem of suffering. Ehrman tells the story of his own struggle with the problem of suffering in his book, God’s Problem. He candidly admits that his faith went shipwreck on the question of suffering. He can no longer believe in a Good God’s activity in the world. He demanded an accounting, and God fell short, at least in his estimation.

And it may indeed be that we will never find satisfactory answers. It’s certainly true that the suffering of the world tests the faith of the most faithful of believers. But I don’t think giving up on God is the answer. What I’ve found amazing is the chutzpa kelapei Shmaya that one sees on display every time believers act in the name of the God who is good and loving and kind. It’s the chutzpa of acknowledging the terrible problems that beset the world as it is, recognizing them for what they are, yet refusing to let that destroy our faith that God is good.

I’m thinking of the chutzpa on display the many, many times that people right here at St. Stephen have rallied to support those in need. I’m thinking of the teams of volunteers who turned out to help out after Katrina. Remember all the hurricane refugees coming into town, staying at the Will Rogers Center? We had hoped to accommodate people, but we didn’t have the right kind of facilities. But that setback didn’t stop us. We partnered with Presbyterian Children’s Homes and Services to set up a clothes and supply closet right here in our Parish Hall. We provided for the needs of literally hundreds of families. Dozens of volunteers turned out to sort supplies, to provide customer service, or simply to provide moral support to families who’d lost everything to the worst kind of natural disaster. And most of you did it because you meant it from the bottom of your heart, but also because you didn’t doubt that God wanted you to do it.

I’m thinking of the crowd of folks at our dear friend Dick Spencer’s side as he lay dying a few years ago, people for whom Dick had been a friend and support and Christian brother, and now it was their turn. You sang and laughed and told stories and held his hand and you loved him. And you did it from the bottom of your heart, but you didn’t doubt for a minute that God wanted you to do it.

I’m thinking about the many church folks I’ve seen here and other places who have been through a terrible ordeal, may even be in the middle of it right now, but who will drop everything to help someone else who is in need. I’m thinking of the many people here who have had some terrible tragedy in their lives, and because of it have even more sympathy and empathy for the tragedy in other people’s lives. And you do it sincerely, from the bottom of your hearts, but also you don’t doubt for a minute that’s what God wants you to do.

I’m thinking about countless people who knew that they were at death’s door, and at whose bedside I stood, who said to me, “I’m ready.” They said it because their faith in God gave them hope that there is a Promised Land beyond death, the Kingdom of God, and that they were going to spend eternity in the arms of the God who loved them and of Christ who died and rose for them. Their faith didn’t make their pain and suffering and even uncertainties go away, but it assured them that God was with them. They had the chutzpa to believe, in spite of their own suffering, that God is good, and to believe, even as they face death, that life always wins.

One of the key points of the story of the near-sacrifice of Isaac is that God doesn’t require that kind of sacrifice. God didn’t want the victims of Katrina to suffer, but God does require that God’s people show compassion to them in their suffering. We don’t know the causes and reasons for suffering, but we know what God expects of us when confronted by suffering—not to cause suffering, or to ignore, but to show God’s love and compassion. And when it’s our turn to suffer, to trust in God’s goodness. The sacrifice that God requires is not human suffering. It isn’t Isaac on an altar. It is, as the Prophet Micah says: “god has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with the Lord your God.”

Albert Camus, the French existentialist, told the story of the myth of Sisyphus. Sisyphus, in Greek mythology, was condemned to spend eternity pushing a gigantic rock up a steep hill in hopes of pushing it over the edge. But just when he’d get to the edge, the rock would roll right back down to the base of the hill, and Sisyphus would have to start all over again. Camus asks, why would Sisyphus keep doing this when he always knows what the result will be? Why not give up? Camus answers his own question by celebrating the defiant boldness of the human condition, that we would push a rock up a hill only to watch it roll down again simply so that we could spit in the eye of destiny and the Fates.

For Christians, I would perhaps frame that differently. We push against the overwhelming rock of evil and suffering with the power of God’s love, over and over again, despite the fact that often it seems like the rock just rolls right down the hill again. We do it because we’re infused with God’s holy chutzpa kelapei Shmaya—the defiant belief that despite all evidence to the contrary, God is good, God is merciful, God is just, and God is love.

And we believe that one day God will finally push the rock over the edge, never to be seen again.

Thanks be to God.