This morning, as I have already begun doing, I am going to be reflecting on this season of Lent, and in part, this does lead on from some of my thoughts from last week on the ‘Binding of Isaac’. Last week we thought about the episode in Genesis in which Abraham takes his child Isaac, at God’s bidding, and leads him to a mountain to be sacrificed, and God, at the last moment, steps in and stops it from happening. We went through a few different ways we might parse out that troubling event, none of which, however, I think are ultimately adequate. I suppose the world does not always offer us adequate explanations, we’re sometimes left in the dark, in an uneasy space unable to reconcile things. We’re left with no other choice but to sit with and inhabit that uncomfortable space, or alternatively (as many people do) deny it, and pretend it’s not there. And I have a strong bias towards the former. Allowing ourselves to sit with the paradox, to live with our sense of unease, and not run away from it – that is to be more authentic to reality. And ultimately, I suppose, striving to be an awakened sort of person is about a greater awareness of reality, as it plays out in its kaleidoscopic fashion upon that multitude of planes. When our eyes are open, paradoxes become the norm, not the exception.

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The scene is an Anglican or Catholic Sunday school (or some other kind of RE program), and the child, which could be you, or some abstracted metaphorical child, sits at the teacher’s feet. And the teacher reads out a story. The story is the one about Abraham sacrificing, or nearly sacrificing, his son Isaac. It's probably not the text as it appears in Genesis being read out, but some other more child-friendly version, which is less wordy. And then after the child has heard the story, he or she will, at the teacher’s behest, do some cutting out of a prophet, or glue some cotton wool to a sheep, or colour in a picture, something like that, before the class ends. But the idea sticks with the child, that idea that Abraham could come so close to killing his own son, that God would ask something so awful, no less. He or she would probably have lacked the words then to express what disquieted them so much, but that image, the resonance of that whole story, will stick with the child. And when that child has grown up, they’ll remember that lesson, the dispassionate way that story was handled…

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I think the only Anglican habit that I’m still stuck with is that before embarking upon writing my address for the week, I read the lectionary – the set Bible verses for the Sunday ahead. I only occasionally like them enough, or find them challenging enough, that I run with them, but this week was such a week. I think the story of the Transfiguration of Jesus would probably be a story that most progressive preachers would try and avoid, it’s got a lot of fantastical hallmarks, but where would be the fun in that?

I think it’s a curious event in the Jesus narrative. One moment it seems like he is engaged in the normal course of his ministry, teaching and healing others, then a period of time passes and then they go up this mountain to pray…

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