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.