The Story of Abraham and Family Trauma Part 2

Photo by Susan Wilkinson on Unsplash

The older woman was frail; months of cancer treatment had taken their toll. But she was undeterred as she made her way to a microphone, before more than two hundred family members, representing four generations. She began feebly, but her voice grew stronger with the recounting of her story. She spoke of a day –when she was no older than fifteen years of age – on which her father had taken her to a man on a nearby farm. She’d not understood that her father was selling her body for sexual favors to the man – until the man had done his deed and her father was pocketing the money the man had paid as he walked away. Violated, confused and physically hurt, she walked home with her father. But she knew that day that she would leave, and he would not continue to hurt her that way.  

Her story was met with silence and tears. A sister, two years younger, stood at her seat, and with a tear-streamed face told the gathered family members that the same thing had happened to her. A child resulted from her encounters with the man. Her stepmother threw her out of the family home, and another family member took her child and refused to return him. He grew up in another household, without his mother, the man she later married, and his eight siblings. 

So many lives had been affected.  

This family story isn’t just any family story: It is my family’s story – the story of two of my Aunts and potentially others – perhaps even my own mother. It is a story that caused our family to reflect on all of the stories we’d heard from older family members about my grandfather. We’d all heard older relatives describe him as “evil,” “brutal,” “cruel” and “mean”; we’d heard that he’d physically harmed my grandmother, and two of my uncles told their own stories about how he’d beaten them, thrown axes at them. 

What we saw that day was incomprehensible pain and suffering. As a priest and pastor who walks journeys with families who are broken, scarred, grieving, and fractured, I realize that stories of family trauma are as old as time itself – and that our scriptures tell us much about the ways in which we have struggled with one another, in the presence of a faithful God.  

I wonder how the Church can be more supportive – and preach and teach the scriptural texts that have been given to us with more honesty and transparency.  

 7 This is the length of Abraham’s life, one hundred and seventy-five years. 8 Abraham breathed his last and died in a good old age, an old man and full of years, and was gathered to his people. 9 His sons Isaac and Ishmael buried him in the cave of Machpelah, in the field of Ephron son of Zohar the Hittite, east of Mamre, 10 the field that Abraham purchased from the Hittites. There Abraham was buried, with his wife Sarah. (Genesis 25:7-10, NRSV) 

A short text from the Book of Genesis appears to wrap the story of Abraham and his family in a lovely package with a bow on top: He lived a long life, was gathered to his people, and was buried with his wife, Sarah, by his sons, Ishmael and Isaac. 

If only Genesis didn’t offer painstaking detail about the rest of Abraham’s life, this would seem to be a lovely epitaph. But Genesis does offer painstaking detail about Abraham’s life – from the time that God calls him to leave his father’s house and go to an unknown land that God would show him, until he had become an old man full of years. 

The Book of Genesis reveals much more to us about Abraham’s family. Struggles with infertility plague at least three generations of the family – and Abraham’s firstborn son, Ishmael, is the product of his relationship with a slavewoman named Hagar, who with her child become expendable – and are left to die – after Sarah bears a child of her own. Abraham’s second son, Isaac, is left to bear the scars of nearly being sacrificed by his father. After the attempted sacrifice, Sarah leaves to find a home of her own, away from Abraham. When she dies, Abraham remarries and begins a new family – at well past 100 years of age (Genesis 25). 

So after his wife has died, after his relationships with Ishmael and Isaac have been fractured, after he has started another family, Abraham dies, and Ishmael and Isaac – after more than 70 years apart – come together, in spite of the scars they both bore, to bury their father in the place where Sarah had been buried. 

I want to believe that these sons could, when they are reunited, share their experience of their father, learn from one another how both had suffered, find some bond in their suffering, find some way forward together. That would make for a neater and tidier ending to Abraham’s story. 

Genesis doesn’t tell us that any healing takes place when these two estranged sons meet again to perform the duty of burying their father. 

Indeed, the suffering in Isaac’s family doesn’t end with his near-death experience. Isaac’s own family would be torn apart when the younger of his twin sons, Jacob, would trick his infirm father and cheat his older brother, Esau, of his blessing and birthright. Jacob’s family would be torn apart with the story of Joseph (Genesis 37-50). 

The suffering continued through at least three generations. 

But, whatever Ishmael and Isaac believe that they have learned of Abraham, and whatever perceptions they have taken from their own final encounters with their father, they have seen something very powerful about Abraham’s God: They have seen that Abraham’s God is unquestionably faithful. Abraham’s God keeps God’s promises – showing up in the desert to renew the covenant with Ishmael, showing up at the altar to provide a sacrifice in place of Isaac. Abraham’s God is faithful – even if it might appear to his sons that Abraham has not been faithful to them. Ishmael and Isaac would go on, in their own way, to embrace the story of a faithful God and pass that story along to their offspring – a faith story that has lived on, in the faith traditions of Jews, Muslims and Christians. 

More than 50 years after a father who had sold his daughters’ bodies had died, a dying daughter came to a family reunion to tell her heartbreaking story of how she had been violated and harmed. A sister was empowered to speak and tell her truth, as well. They told a story of family trauma that has no neat, tidy wrapping, a story that has affected multiple generations. They came with scars – theirs, ours, those of our ancestors – and unspeakable heartache, pain, and grieving, the reality of our humanity etched into our souls. Our family came together with great need to see those scars, and to hear and bear witness to each other’s stories. 

Our hopes and expectations for neat, tidy epitaphs may be unrealistic. But in the moments that we are brought together, there is opportunity for healing: for engaging in hard dialogue, for respectfully and lovingly hearing one another’s stories, in diligently working to see the image and likeness of God in one another and in those who came before us. For indeed, it seems that it is only in coming together to share the painful truths that we can find our way forward in healing and love.  

The Story of Abraham and Family Trauma Part 1

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

Year “A” of the Revised Common Lectionary offers worshippers the chance to re-visit the stories of Abraham and the next three generations of his descendants These texts from the Book of Genesis are shared with our Jewish friends, as well, and some people – Christians and Jews alike, find these texts traumatizing. To some extent, they are. However, the stories, like that of Abraham and his descendants, enable us in our modern times to understand that stories of family dysfunction are not at all new. These stories give us much with which to wrestle with as we learn and ponder them anew. 

When Abraham settled in Canaan, God entered into a covenant with Abraham and promised him more descendants than the stars in the sky and the sands on the shore (Genesis 15). There was just one problem: Abraham’s wife, Sarah, appeared to be barren. They were advancing in years, and Sarah had not conceived and borne a child. 

It was probably good that Sarah didn’t conceive early in their marriage: Twice (Genesis 12 and Genesis 20), Abraham passed Sarah off to foreign kings as his sister, so that Abraham would not be harmed because he was traveling with his beautiful wife. Twice, these foreign kings took the beautiful Sarah, whom they believed to be Abraham’s sister, for themselves – for a time, that is, until their households were punished because of their relationships with Sarah. Genesis reveals quite a bit about Sarah and her opinions (She is far from silent!), but readers are not told how Sarah reacted to having been placed in the hands of Pharaoh and King Abimelech. Maybe she expected to have to commit herself to whatever she needed to do to keep Abraham safe. Maybe she felt betrayed, violated, and ashamed. Maybe she wondered if her inability to conceive might have resulted from her having been taken as the “wife” of other men. 

When Sarah and Abraham continued on their way, and still no children had been born to them despite God’s promise of descendants, Sarah took matters into her own hands, offering up her Egyptian slave woman, Hagar, to Abraham so that he might have children through her. Hagar conceived and bore Abraham a son, named Ishmael (Genesis 16). But as Genesis also teaches us, humankind really hasn’t changed much over the ages, and as we might imagine, conflict quickly arises between Sarah and Hagar. Ultimately, Sarah – at age 90 – does indeed bear a child of her own, who is named Isaac. With Hagar and Ishmael’s “usefulness” having ended, Sarah demands that Abraham remove them from the encampment (Genesis 21). And, so, the last encounter recorded in Genesis between Abraham and his firstborn son, Ishmael, takes place on the fateful day that Abraham takes Ishmael and Hagar and leaves them in the desert, with a single skin of water, ostensibly to die. Ishmael is a young teen by this point – old enough to understand, and certainly to be scarred by, the fate to which his father is leaving him and his mother.  

All won’t go smoothly for Isaac, either: We are told in Genesis 22 that God tested Abraham in asking that Isaac be sacrificed. The last encounter between Abraham and Isaac recorded in Genesis takes place when Abraham bound Isaac on the altar, preparing to sacrifice him to God. For all of the arguments that Abraham had previously given God for sparing the towns of Sodom and Gomorrah when God is preparing to destroy them, Abraham met God’s request to sacrifice Isaac with seemingly little to no resistance.  

Hebrews 11:17-19 extols Abraham for having trusted in God when he prepared to sacrifice Isaac. Perhaps that is true. Perhaps a broken Abraham wonders the price that he must pay for what he has done to Ishmael and Hagar. However Abraham has received this request from God, we fail to ask how Isaac has been scarred and traumatized by this episode. Isaac is old enough to understand that there is to be a sacrifice – and even asks Abraham about the lamb for the sacrifice. Does he truly understand when he is bound and tied that he is the intended sacrifice – until, that is, God steps in and provides a ram? What does Isaac tell Sarah when they return home? How does a mother begin to understand a husband’s need to follow a command from God to sacrifice a child for whom she’d waited 90 years? 

There are no further scenes of Abraham together with his family after the sacrifice. Sarah leaves Abraham’s encampment, and dies in another land, where Abraham purchases land for a burial place. Isaac settles in another land, as well. 

The suffering doesn’t end with Isaac’s near-death experience; it continues through at least three generations. 

Isaac married his kinswoman, Rebekah, who also struggled to conceive. When she finally became pregnant, she gave birth to twins who emerged from her womb embroiled in their own battle. The older twin, Esau, grew up to be an outdoorsy hunter and gatherer. The younger twin, Jacob, received his name because he literally was born holding on to Esau’s heel. Jacob’s envy of his brother as heir would ultimately tear apart their family, when Jacob (at his mother’s urging) tricked a then-infirm Isaac and cheated his older brother, Esau, of his blessing and birthright.  

Jacob made a life for himself apart from Esau, and settled with his mother’s brother, Laban. Believing that he had married his true love, Laban’s younger daughter, Rachel, he had been tricked by his uncle, and had married older sister, Leah, instead (“This is not done in our country – giving the younger before the firstborn.” Genesis 29:26). Although Leah bore several sons for Jacob, his favorite son was Rachel’s firstborn, a son named Joseph. Joseph became the target of his older brothers’ jealousy and rage – and while the older brothers plotted to kill Joseph, they ultimately chose to sell him into slavery, pocketing twenty silver coins for him, and representing to their father that he had been killed by wild animals (Genesis 37:22-34). Jacob, too, would know separation from the son he loved. 

All was not peaceful or happy among Abraham and his descendants. All is not happy in many families. If we tend to feel alone in family dysfunction, we remember that even the family of our ancestor most chosen and loved by God, Abraham, struggled. Faith persisted, even amid that struggle.  

Jan. 6 Was the Whitest Epiphany: White Christians, Where Do We Go from Here?

It feels like an eon ago. I awoke ebullient to learn that, on Epiphany — the day that three wise nobles outwitted a desperate, murderous despot — that the Rev. Dr. Warnock had been elected to the U.S. Senate. My spirits did an abrupt 180 and my stomach churned as I witnessed (from my couch) the violent insurrection on the U.S. Capitol orchestrated by white people. No one should have been surprised. Black and Brown people certainly were not. Many (predominately white) journalists and pundits lamented the "dark day." Womanist biblical scholar and Episcopal priest Wil Gafney aptly corrected them on Facebook:

"Today was not a 'dark day.' Today was a white day. One of the whitest days in American history."  

Gafney is right 100 percent. The problem is that we white Christians still don't get it — even after witnessing the damning footage of white hoards, both gleeful and angry, as they deployed numerous assault tactics — flex cuffs, radios, earpieces, an array of weapons. They prepared for months in plain sight. Republican elected officials and off-duty police officers and fire fighters were among their ranks. After delaying the DHS report, the Department of Homeland Security Acting Director Chad Wolf (picked by the 45th President) warned us on Oct. 6 that domestic white supremacist groups "remain the most persistent and lethal threat" to our nation. Mere seconds, along with the courage and quick-thinking of Capitol Police officer Eugene Goodman, kept them from U.S. senators.  

To be sure, notable officials, many of whom identify as white, have called out the egregious, racist desecration and insurrection for what it was. Yet, the troubling and troubled silence of far too many white Christians reverberates far and wide across digital and other platforms.  

It is tempting for me and others who identify as white progressive Christians to distance ourselves from the ugliness of Epiphany 2021.

We blame the exceptional "extremists" — card-carrying white supremacists and white nationalists; the radical right; neo-fascists; Q-anon disciples; Proud Boys. To do so irresponsibly ignores that among the mob (both those who stormed the Capitol and those who remained outside) were thousands of Christians. Their/our signs and symbols were everywhere. As of Dec. 20, 2020 56 percent of white evangelical Protestants and 51 percent of white Catholics hold favorable views of the 45th President.  

I still clearly hear white folks defending the "good white" people who did not enter the Capitol who were merely exercising their rights to freedom of speech and assembly. As just one example, Chicago Police Union President John Catanzara:

"There was no arson, there was no burning of anything, there was no looting, there was very little destruction of property … It was a bunch of pissed-off people that feel an election was stolen … If the worst crime here is trespassing, so be it. But to call these people treasonous is beyond ridiculous and ignorant … They're individuals … They get to do what they want … They're entitled to voice their frustration." 

His remarks remain revealing of predominant white mindsets: white people are "peaceful, patriots, law-abiding, Constitution-defending" — and we have a God-given right to voice our views and get angry. Implicitly, he is also saying that Black and Brown people do not. The ragged, racist litany is all-too familiar: Black and Brown people are "looters, dangerous, socialists, anarchists, criminals, welfare queens." In short, they are not Americans, not fully human. Dr. Brittney Cooper pointedly puts it this way:

"Our empathy meter is set to seeing white violence as protest and Black protest as violence." 

By now, you have no excuse for not seeing the photos contrasting the police responses of Jan. 6 to that of BLM protests and marches. 

Dr. Bryan Massingale makes plain what white Christians need to be able to see already for ourselves:

"What we witnessed in Washington is a direct consequence of four years of enabling complicity, cynical appeasement, and cowardly silence … It is also the consequence of the complicit silence and active support of religious leaders who refused to confront the cancer of white nationalism that this president endorses and who excused all manner of his wrongdoing, incompetence and brutality …"  

So, white Christians, what's next for us? Yes, we must hold elected officials — at all levels of government (the 45th President, the Sedition Caucus led by Senators Cruz and Hawley, Rep. Mary Miller who praised Hitler for what he "got right" and the 147 lawmakers who objected to the certification of electoral votes; the newly elected West Virginia delegate who recorded himself storming into the Capitol) — accountable for their complicity. Yes, we must denounce the Capitol police who posed for selfies with the rioters and call for a full investigation into the appalling, possibly complicit, disaster of the law enforcement response.  

Yet, we must do much more.

To begin, we need to own our complicity. We — white people, especially white Christians, must actively resist and dismantle the white privilege and presumption that allows white people to enact such treasonous violence with such confidence and comfort. Now is the moment to do the bold, hard work of self-reflection, repair and repentance.

We must have honest, heart-felt conversations with our white neighbors, communities, and families. We must consistently stand and show up for racial justice — and for the long haul. All clergy may sign this public statement from the National Council of Churches calling for the removal of President Trump from office. Google has all the resources —  for reading, podcasts, and connecting with Christians and others doing substantive anti-racism work. Commit now and plug in — with humility and readiness to do much more listening than talking. 

Jesus and his family are still on the run fleeing those who plot their death. To live the Epiphany Gospel we proclaim, white Christians must do this work. 

Dr. Aana Marie Vigen

Aana Marie Vigen, Ph.D. is Associate Professor of Christian Ethics at Loyola University Chicago and is an active member of the Lutheran Church (ELCA).  

Church Anew is dedicated to igniting faithful imagination and sustaining inspired innovation by offering transformative learning opportunities for church leaders and faithful people.

As an ecumenical and inclusive ministry of St. Andrew Lutheran Church, the content of each Church Anew blog represents the voice of the individual writer and does not necessarily reflect the position of Church Anew or St. Andrew Lutheran Church on any specific topic.

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May You Be Brave

In December 2013, I wrote the blessing below and posted it on my social media. I don’t remember the context for this blessing, what made me write it at the time. But as I was reflecting on what I wanted to say to preachers who must stand and deliver this Sunday, the first Sunday after Epiphany, and the Sundays that follow, it seems especially appropriate:

May God Strengthen You for Adversity

A blessing for today: 

May God strengthen you for adversity
and companion you in joy.
May God give you the courage of your conviction
and the wisdom to know when to speak and act.
May you know peace.
May you be gifted with deep,
true friendship and love.
May every God-breathed thing you put
your hand to prosper and succeed.
May you have laughter to fortify you
against the disappointments.
May you be brave.

© Valerie Bridgeman
December 18, 2013

On Wednesday, I watched with sadness as the United States Capitol building was overrun by aggrieved citizens. I want to be clear to note that they were citizens. They’ve been called a number of things, including by me: rioters, insurrectionists, seditionists. But they were citizens who believe that the election was “stolen” from them, who believe that the votes of (mostly) black and brown people should be rejected, that there is “proof” that the current president has been wronged. And so, they were there for the revolution and to “take back their country.” For them, those of us who voted against their will are not true Americans. I was not surprised at all. I have found myself weary from all the handwringing and the “this is not who we are” posts from (mostly) white people. I have found myself weary from the “unbelievable” and “shock” from the media and others. Most of that weariness is because no one I know that is an activist/advocate for racial and social justice found it “unbelievable” or “shocking.” It was predictable. I’ve been saying for many years, “we are not safe,” because I have been in conversations with (white) people who have said directly that they can’t wait for a revolution to “take our country back.” It was as American as baseball and apple pie. White grievance and rage are baked into the DNA of this nation. I know what I just wrote is offensive to people whose mythmaking about this country deifies it and demonizes anyone who says such things. Right about now comes the “if you don’t love this country, leave” or “go back where you came from.” It’s all so very predictable.

I turned my television to a station that is consistently sympathetic to the current president and was reminded that there is no Venn diagram between the world I generally inhabit and the world of those who only dwell in that world. And, as I usually pray, I wondered how in the world will we ever know one another since we don’t live in the same universe. And that’s where the blessing I wrote in 2013 comes in. I don’t have anything deep to write in this moment. But I know that those who claim the gospel as our starting point will have to be brave. Bravery requires precision. It requires thinking clearly about what all the issues are. It requires using language carefully. It requires resisting pablum and platitudes. It requires resisting “what about-ism” when calling out wrong. It requires truth-telling, even in the face of rage and handwringing. It calls for wisdom. But it also calls for friendships, love, and laughter. It calls for strength and God-given companionship. And preachers must invoke all of that. So, friends, may you be brave as you prepare to preach in the breach of these difficult days.

Dr. Valerie Bridgeman

Dr. Valerie Bridgeman
Dean and Vice President for Academic Affairs
Associate Professor of Homiletics and Hebrew Bible
Methodist Theological Seminary in Ohio

Facebook | @valerie.bridgeman.3

Church Anew is dedicated to igniting faithful imagination and sustaining inspired innovation by offering transformative learning opportunities for church leaders and faithful people.

As an ecumenical and inclusive ministry of St. Andrew Lutheran Church, the content of each Church Anew blog represents the voice of the individual writer and does not necessarily reflect the position of Church Anew or St. Andrew Lutheran Church on any specific topic.

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A Eulogy for John Robert Lewis, “The Boy from Troy”

I was six years old when the late Congressman John Robert Lewis was beaten to near death on the Edmund Pettus Bridge on what became known as Bloody Sunday, March 7, 1965. This weekend I searched for proof that I heard about the march and the violence from CBS’s Walter Cronkite, since that’s from where our family learned all our television news in those days. I could find no footage, but I can hear the story in his voice. I do sharply remember, as a young child, the intent look on my mother’s dignified face as she listened to either television or radio in those days. I could not possibly know the weight of the moments, young as I was, but thinking back, I remember how weighty our house felt in central Alabama with all the happenings around us.

I grew up two hours northeast of Troy, Alabama, in the rural farmlands between Childersburg, where we attended school after desegregation—a story for another time—and Sylacauga, our rural route address. In the summers, we spent plenty of weeks in the blackbelt further south in either Reeltown (sic), where my paternal grandmother lived in a sharecropper’s shack and worked in white people’s homes, or Opelika, where aunts, uncles, and cousins lived “in town.” In Opelika is where I met another boy from Troy, and there we shared, maybe lamented, the world as it was and how dangerous it was for us, even as it was in the 1970s by then. I share these memories only to say that John Lewis’ landscape is the one I know intimately, the memory of walking on hot dirt, picking cotton, drinking from cool creeks are deep in my veins, and being aware of the danger of running into violent white people. We weren’t even trying to “get in the way,” as Lewis would later admonish us. We were just trying to survive.

Over the years, I have been deeply affected by Lewis’ life and commitment, partly because he reminded me so much of my own father, who would be 95 were he alive today, who was also short with a hearty laugh and a twinkle in his eyes, and a fiery preacher. That’s the part about Lewis that I want people to remember. Though he lived his call out in public life, it was the call to the life of a public theologian whose life and legislation and commitments were his primary sermons. He became known as the “Conscience of Congress.” He had a fierce strength that came through, even when he was not speaking. He never lost that country southern lilt to his voice, so I’m sure there were times people thought of him as a “country bumpkin.” I know, because in the past few years I actually heard a much, much younger activist call him that. Hearing it enraged me, but as an Alabamian myself, I know how easy it is for people to dismiss the moral courage and strength of my people. Regionalism aside, Lewis’ dignity was my parents’ dignity; my grandparents’ dignity. I have seen it all my life from ordinary black people. Lewis’s life just called him to a bigger stage, a historic role, but he was of the waft and woof of his landscape.

When the word came that Lewis died, I was not surprised since news had come a few weeks earlier that he had decided to receive hospice care for stage IV pancreatic cancer.[1] As a former hospice chaplain, I read the news knowing that he had come to death’s door with the same dignity and clear-eyed thinking as he had lived his life. That he would teach us how to die as he taught us to live made sense to me. As Lewis lies in state today, only the second black legislator to do so,[2] I honor his life. He deserves whatever accolades come toward him today and in the future. He really was the best of us as a people and as a nation. An even more deserving tribute to him will be who we will decide to be in the light of his legacy, and whether we will commit ourselves to “getting in the way” (as he often said) of injustice and instead get in “good trouble.” It will be whether those of us who are Christian follow his example for moral integrity, humility, passion for justice, and faithfulness. We still have work to do.

[1]Ralph Ellis, “Civil Rights Icon and Congressman John Lewis Dies,” https://www.webmd.com/cancer/pancreatic-cancer/news/20200718/civil-rights-icon-and-congressman-john-lewis-dies. Accessed July 27, 2020.

[2]Clare Foran, “ Elijah Cummings lies in state at the Capitol,” Elijah Cummings, who died in October 2019, was the first African American lawmaker to lie in state in the Capital Rotunda. https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/24/politics/elijah-cummings-lie-in-state-capitol/index.html. Accessed July 27, 2020.

Dr. Valerie Bridgeman

Dr. Valerie Bridgeman
Dean and Vice President for Academic Affairs
Associate Professor of Homiletics and Hebrew Bible
Methodist Theological Seminary in Ohio

Facebook | @valerie.bridgeman.3

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Church Anew is dedicated to igniting faithful imagination and sustaining inspired innovation by offering transformative learning opportunities for church leaders and faithful people.

As an ecumenical and inclusive ministry of St. Andrew Lutheran Church, the content of each Church Anew blog represents the voice of the individual writer and does not necessarily reflect the position of Church Anew or St. Andrew Lutheran Church on any specific topic.