The Story Is Out of Order

Yesterday, I posted pictures on Facebook of my newly re-bound Bible. It's so pretty. The cover is remade and tight and changed to blue from its original maroon, the binding is stitched and glued without a single interruption or loose leaf. I was particularly happy, because re-binding was something I hadn't even thought about until last month after a random idea: Hmm, I wonder if there's some place that fixes book bindings?

I could see the binding coming loose and knew it was only a matter of time before I'd have to purchase a new Bible. It seemed like a such a pity, because I'm one of those people who writes in my Bible, makes notes, underlines verses, etc. When I read back through passages, I can see in the margins my own growth that has taken place over the years. 

My Bible is one of my most treasured possessions. So this morning when I was leafing through it, looking up verses for the blog, imagine the gut-wrench when I turned to Romans... 

And it wasn't there!

Honestly, I'm still struggling to get over the initial heart failure. It turns out that it is there, but through a mistake in the binding process, the person who took on the project mis-ordered the pages. Halfway through the book of Acts, the narrative jumps to Philippians, then follows the proper book order through Revelation before restarting where it left off in Acts and continuing on to the end of Ephesians. As it is right now, the Bible ends with Ephesians 6.

I knew the bindery had one of those old-fashioned telephone and answering machine set-ups (no cell phones involved), so at 5:30 a.m., I called to leave a message, wishing today wasn't Sunday, wishing I could talk directly with the owner immediately to make sure this error could be fixed as soon as humanly possible. 

I'm still struggling with it; it's a bit like the time I accidentally replaced the required amount of sugar in my pancake recipe... with salt... so as pretty and round and perfect as the circles were on the plate, when I bit into them, I got the shock of my life.

The entire story is present; the pages are simply out of order.

Which brings me to Genesis 17 and God's covenant of circumcision with Abram. This is another reiteration of God's promise to Abram that He will make him the father of a great nation. It's a self-maledictory oath (I had to look that word up), a mirror of what God put himself through a couple of chapters earlier when He, in the visible form of a smoking firepot and a blazing torch, passed through the halves of the sacrificial animals.

A self-maledictory oath essentially means subjecting oneself to the promise of something awful happening if a promise is not kept. So when God passed through the sacrificial animal halves, He subjected Himself to potential recompense if He left His oath unfulfilled, as it shows in Jeremiah 34:18: "The men who have violated my covenant and have not fulfilled the terms of the covenant they made before Me, I will treat like the calf they cut in two and then walked between its pieces."

So God's covenant of circumcision with Abram is meant to be the other side of that: a self-maledictory oath, a cutting-off in a painful manner of a person or nation who is unfaithful to the oath. Circumcision was a symbol of a much larger concept - a small act that symbolized a much bigger consequence.

Three things happen here:

First, God reminds Abram of His covenant to make his descendants as numerous as the stars. They discuss circumcision and all the joy that involves. ;)

Secondly, God changes both Abram and Sarai's names to Abraham and Sarah. 

The name Abram means "Exalted Father." The fact that Abram and Sarai were infertile for long stretches of their lives makes the "exalted" even more prominent when he does indeed become a father.

This could also refer to Abram's obedience to God his Father, as Abram was characterized throughout Scripture by prompt obedience, especially in three places: 1.) Abram left Ur of the Chaldeans and headed off to... the place God would show him (he didn't know when he set out where he was going), 2.) Here in this chapter, after being told to circumcise himself and all male members of his household, Genesis 17:23 says: "On that very day..." Abraham didn't wait around; he didn't let dread build up over the painful procedure. He got it done. And 3.) Perhaps most memorably, Abraham promptly obeyed when God told him to sacrifice Isaac, the son of God's promise.

The name Abraham means "Father of Many." In a way, I see the name change as being almost like an inheritance passed down, a coming-of-age, a stepping into the fulfillment of time. Abram saw God as his Exalted Father, and he obeyed Him accordingly. Now, Abraham becomes the father of many, a father of nations.

Similarly, Sarai and Sarah both mean "Princess," but Sarah is the mature form of Sarai. Looking up name meanings, Sarai is known as the "little girl," Sarah is known as the "noblewoman." It's like when my family used to call me Tammi as a young girl, but my full name has always been Tamara. The name carries the same meaning in both forms, but maturity added a different shape to the word (this should not be taken to mean that those named Tammi are at all lacking maturity). :)

All right, and the third thing: God reiterated the promise to Abraham that Sarah would have a child by her own body, denoting the whole enormous concept of birth order.

Ishmael, Abraham's son by Hagar was thirteen at this point in time, and as the firstborn son of Abraham, he enjoyed certain privileges and inheritances. This reiteration of a son born by Sarah's body capsizes all those privileges and inheritances, invalidating them, even though Ishmael was born first. 

According to the narrative Sarah had begun writing when she gave Hagar to her husband, Ishmael should have inherited a portion of Abraham's wealth and properties. Sarah interrupted the story God was narrating, and she inserted her own interpretation.

As a result of this interruption, heartbreak weaves through the story: heartbreak for Abraham (Genesis 21:11: "The matter distressed Abraham greatly..."), heartbreak for Hagar (Genesis 21:16: "And as she sat there nearby, she began to sob."), and heartbreak for Ishmael (Genesis 21:17: "God has heard the boy crying as he lies there.").

All the pieces of God's perfect plan had been written, but because Sarah took the initiative to step ahead of the Lord, to insert her point of view into God's creation...

Pain abounded.

It's easy to view Sarah as the villain here. She messed up big time. Not only did she force her maidservant to do what today is heinous to us (though it was a culturally appropriate and a recognized, legal act in those times), but she again mistreated Hagar when Isaac came along, and she forced the maidservant and her son to leave, to wander in the desert.

But all the pages of God's story were present. There was redemption that came out of this. God made Ishmael into a great nation, as He'd promised Abraham. He brought laughter back to Abraham and Sarah in their old age through their son Isaac (whose name means "laughter"). 

A note: both Abraham and Sarah laughed in disbelief when the Lord informed them of Isaac's coming birth. Sarah sometimes gets the bad rap, because she laughed. But Genesis 17:17 says: "Abraham fell facedown; he laughed and said to himself, "Will a son be born to a man a hundred years old? Will Sarah bear a child at the age of ninety?"

God turned their laughter of disbelief into laughter of joy. God brought about a redemptive twist to their disbelief and fulfilled His promises, in spite of Sarah's mixing up of the pages, in spite of her disordering of God's story.

It all came out right in the end.

There is so much of this story that applies to today: How we order the stories we hear around us, how we put our own spin on the pieces of news that comes our way, how, if we are Republican, we believe one take, how if we are Democrat, we believe another... 

How God has already written out the entire story, and in the end, it will all come out right, because He is the Creator of the Story, the Great Architect, the Great Author! Hallelujah!